Quotation of the Day

Is from Bertrand Russell in his 1932 essay 'In Praise of Idleness':

"The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own."

Hat tip to Chris Dillow for today's quote.

Great Sentences

"In most cases, when a boring, bureaucratic job turns interesting, there’s trouble."

That's from this Vanity Fair article by Rich Cohen, describing the maple syrup industry in Quebec and the theft of some 540,000 gallons (13.4 million dollars worth) of syrup from the FPAQ (Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers) reserve in 2012.

Maple syrup trades at roughly $1300 a barrel, more than 20 times the current price of crude oil.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen for the link.

Quotation of the Day

Is from Chapter 9 of Robert M. Pirsig's novel 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance':

"The real purpose of scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you don't actually know."

Quotation of the Day

Is from David Henderson, blogging at EconLog:

"I would love to have politicians who are effective at protecting and increasing our freedom. But sometimes the best we can do is get politicians who are ineffective at reducing our freedom."

Quotation of the Day

"Hell! there ain’t no rules around here! We are tryin’ to accomplish somep’n!"

 - Purportedly said by Thomas Edison to Martin André Rosanoff circa 1903, first reported in the September 1932 issue of Harper's Magazine.

Quotation of the Day

Edgar Mitchell, 6th man on the moon, describing his experience of seeing the Earth from the Moon:

"You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch'."

Quotation of the Day

Is from Tim Harford (AKA The Undercover Economist), blogging at timharford.com:

"...even when the myth is delightful and the truth is dull, the truth still matters."

Quotation of the Day

Is from Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VII, Section II, Chapter III, 'Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Benevolence':

"Those actions which aimed at the happiness of a great community, as they demonstrated a more enlarged benevolence than those which aimed only at that of a smaller system, so were they, likewise, proportionally the more virtuous. The most virtuous of all affections, therefore, was that which embraced as its object the happiness of all intelligent beings. The least virtuous, on the contrary, of those to which the character of virtue could in any respect belong, was that which aimed no further than at the happiness of an individual, such as a son, a brother, a friend.

In directing all our actions to promote the greatest possible good, in submitting all inferior affections to the desire of the general happiness of mankind, in regarding one's self but as one of the many, whose prosperity was to be pursued no further than it was consistent with, or conducive to that of the whole, consisted the perfection of virtue."

Quotation of the Day

Is from Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VII, Section II, Chapter I, 'Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Propriety':

"The principle of suicide, the principle which would teach us, upon some occasions, to consider that violent action as an object of applause and approbation, seems to be altogether a refinement of philosophy. Nature, in her sound and healthful state, seems never to prompt us to suicide. There is, indeed, a species of melancholy (a disease to which human nature, among its other calamities, is unhappily subject) which seems to be accompanied with, what one may call, an irresistible appetite for self-destruction. In circumstances often of the highest external prosperity, and sometimes too, in spite even of the most serious and deeply impressed sentiments of religion, this disease has frequently been known to drive its wretched victims to this fatal extremity. The unfortunate persons who perish in this miserable manner, are the proper objects, not of censure, but of commiseration. To attempt to punish them, when they are beyond the reach of all human punishment, is not more absurd than it is unjust. That punishment can fall only on their surviving friends and relations, who are always perfectly innocent, and to whom the loss of their friend, in this disgraceful manner, must always be alone a very heavy calamity."

Quotation of the Day

Is from Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VII, Section II, Chapter I, 'Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Propriety':

"Men of letters, though, after their death, they are frequently more talked of than the greatest princes or statesmen of their times, are generally, during their life, so obscure and insignificant that their adventures are seldom recorded by co-temporary historians. Those of after-ages, in order to satisfy the public curiosity, and having no authentic documents either to support or to contradict their narratives, seem frequently to have fashioned them according to their own fancy; and almost always with a great mixture of the marvellous."