Michael Morrison

“In eighteenth-century England a system of professional police and prosecutors, government paid and appointed, was viewed as potentially tyrannical—worse still, French.”
― David D. Friedman, Legal Systems Very Different from Ours

“Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you'll find the real tinsel underneath.”
― Oscar Levant

“Special interest politics is a simple game. A hundred people sit in a circle, each with his pocket full of pennies. A politician walks around the outside of the circle, taking a penny from each person. No one minds; who cares about a penny? When he has gotten all the way around the circle, the politician throws fifty cents down in front of one person, who is overjoyed at the unexpected windfall. The process is repeated, ending with a different person. After a hundred rounds everyone is a hundred cents poorer, fifty cents richer, and happy.”
― David D. Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism

“That illustrates my rule of thumb for reading history: View with suspicion any anecdote that makes a good enough story to have survived on its literary merits.”
― David D. Friedman, Legal Systems Very Different from Ours