"The more that government has controlled the economy and the more bureaucrats, politicians, and intellectuals get to choose winners and losers instead of the marketplace, the less economic growth and innovation there is, the more persistent unemployment is, the slower the improvement in the standard of living."
-John Steele Gordon

Inflation

"Inflation is a tax on money. Like any tax, it will be used. The more subtle, the less detected, and the less avoidable the tax, the better it is for those with predominant political power and the more surely it will be used."
-Don Boudreaux

"Progressive deterioration in the value of money through history is not an accident, and has had behind it two great driving forces -- the [desire of governments to spend] and the superior political influence of the debtor class."
-John Maynard Keynes's 1923 book, Tract on Monetary Reform

"The more one has paid for a forgery, the more one defends it in the face of all the evidence to the contrary."
-George Smiley in John LeCarre's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"

"What I have found is people assign 'fine' standards to items that are expensive, rare, or seem to be liked by a few people. I can enjoy an Oscar Mayer bologna sandwich on white bread with store brand yellow mustard as well as I can a fine steak served with a blue cheese butter. Neither taste is better than the other, they are tastes and I am perfectly capable of finding something good in both of them."
-johnlcallaway

America: It KNOWS how to do things.

"It used to be BAD to say “I can’t do it.” We played games on the freakin’ schoolgrounds where YOU WON. Yeah, somebody else lost, but you talked trash for a little bit and then you went back into class together and at the next recess the teams were different. You might lose gracefully, but it was NEVER OKAY TO LOSE. Quitters? Momma’s boys who ran crying after getting tagged with a wickedly thrown dodgeball or who sniffled and walked off when they had to play deeeeeep right field? We had a name for them. Loser was one of the more benign names. You might lose, but you won if you played at all."
-mostlycajun.com

"Somewhere along the line, we're going to recognize that the caresses we feel on our shoulders are really a hand reaching for our throats.... The policy-makers apparently think that we’ll keep lights on and homes heated by means of windmills and unicorn farts. I’m telling you that we folk who work in a real world have real and immutable laws to work with, things like Ohm’s Law and Boyles’ Law, and these laws and others like them say that you can’t move gas from the well to the end user without horsepower."
-mostlycajun.com

Government Illusion

"The illusion that government can be a universal provider, and yet society still stay free and prosperous.... The illusion that every loss can be covered by a subsidy. The illusion that we can break the link between reward and effort, and still get the effort."
-Margaret Thatcher