Nick

“Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith

“As long as it (an issue) remains invisible, it is guaranteed to remain insoluble.”
― Margaret Heffernan, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril

“The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation to a little more of administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men. In order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes--will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“I submit respectfully to the House as a general principle that our responsibility in this matter is directly proportionate to our power. Where there is great power there is great responsibility, where there is less power there is less responsibility, and where there is no power there can, I think, be no responsibility.”
― Winston Churchill. In the House of Commons, February 28, 1906 speech South African native races. Wi