"Capitalism has been so enormously successful at producing widespread material abundance that we today regard wealth as innate to our existence, as our default mode. It is not. Wealth doesn't just happen. Wealth must be created; therefore, wealth has causes. Poverty has no causes. Poverty is humankind’s default mode. It’s what exists if we do nothing. “Creating” poverty -- causing poverty -- is no challenge whatsoever."
-Don Boudreaux

"A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts."
-James Madison

“Understand that you have within yourself, upon a small scale, a second universe: within you there is a sun, there is a moon, and there are also stars.”
-Origen

"The (liberal) West wants to be loved. It can't stand the idea that somebody (anybody) doesn't like us. ...So much of European (and American liberal) foreign policy is based on the idea that being disliked is an enormous indictment, a sign of serious moral failings on our part, rather than resentment, envy or scapegoating on the part of those fomenting anti-Americans."
-Jonah Goldberg

"If I walked across the surface of the Potomac, the headline the next day would be "President Can't Swim" "
-Lyndon B. Johnson

"When it comes to economics, for example, conservatives are interested in the conditions that allow for the creation of wealth to occur, whereas liberals simply assume that the wealth is there, and that it is merely a matter of fairly distributing it."
-Robert Godwin

Real Liberalism

"This is an example of liberalism as I was raised to understand it; you form an opinion but don’t completely shut your mind. You show respect for the a person, and you don’t let a difference of opinion - even a vehement one - get in the way of your own humanity or anyone else’s."
-www.theanchoressonline.com

"Patriotism, I now believe, isn't some sentimental, old conceit. It's self-preservation. I believe patriotism is central to a nation's survival. ...For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to face an existential menace. ...Ben Franklin said it: If we don't all hang together, we all hang separately. Just like you have to fight to protect your friends and family, and you count on them to watch your own back. So you've got to do what you can to help your country survive. That's if you think your country is worth a damn. Warts and all."
-Frank Miller

Superficially Contradictory Views

"I am a mess of superficially contradictory opinions (hands off regulating cable because of adult content; stop marking slut dolls to my little girl) and old-style liberal notions, like the primacy of individuality over race. ... I recycle and abjure waste and live light as possible and dislike Hummers but I’m unimpressed by environmental scaremongering. I believe women are the intellectual equal of men but emotionally and psychologically different. (I don’t want to outweigh the firefighter who attempts to carry me down the steps, and I don’t want a 37-year old man leading my daughter’s Girl Scout troop.)"
-James Lileks

"I dislike most TV, most modern music, and most movies, but love the big messy hot throbbing blob of Western pop culture, partly because I connect with part of it like a dog biting on a live wire, and partly because the loud rude crass mess spells freedom, and that is the root word at the heart of the American experiment."
-James Lileks

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly ... it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."
-Thomas Paine.

"The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music."
-Donald Knuth

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."
-William Arthur Ward

"I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
Dwight Eisenhower

"You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away."
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars

"The road to wisdom?
Well its plain and simple to express:
Err and err and err again,
but less and less and less."
-Piet Hein

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
-Bertrand Russell