Bobby > Bobby's Quotes

“Science gives man ever greater powers but less significance. It gives him better tools with less purposes. It is silent on origins, values, and ultimate aims. It gives life and history no meaning or worth that is not canceled by time and death.”
― Will Durant, The Reformation

“Self Government by extravagance and incompetence brings its own end.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“In philosophy all truth is old and only error is original.”
― Will Durant, The Life of Greece

“When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.”
― Will Durant

“The class war had turned democracy into a contest in legislative looting.”
― Will Durant, The Life of Greece

“...experience has proved the distinction of active and passive courage. The fanatic who endures without a groan the torture of the rack or the state would tremble and fly before the face of an armed enemy.”
― Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume II

“When a public quarrel is envenomed by private injuries, a blow that isn't mortal or decisive can be productive only of a short truce which allows the unsuccessful compeditent to sharpen his arms for a new encounter.”
― Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume I

“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
― Thomas Sowell

“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
― Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
― Thomas Sowell

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
― Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional? And Other Essays

“Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.
”
― Thomas Sowell

“It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of "diversity" that we have heard gushed about for years? Evidence of its harm can be seen — written in blood — from Iraq to India, from Serbia to Sudan, from Fiji to the Philippines. It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word.”
― Thomas Sowell

“The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Movements seeking to change the world often begin by rewriting history, thereby enabling people to reimagine the future.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“Knowledge that does not change behavior is useless. But knowledge that changes behavior quickly loses its relevance.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“During the Agricultural Revolution humankind silenced animals and plants, and turned the animist grand opera into a dialogue between man and gods. During the Scientific Revolution humankind silenced the gods too.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“If any scientist wants to argue that subjective experiences are irrelevant, their challenge is to explain why torture or rape are wrong without reference to any subjective experience.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow