Wolves are not killed because they are gray, but because they eat sheep.
Category: Thought
F. A. Hayek
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.
Ortega y Gasset
All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws.
H. L. Mencken
One of the chief objects of medicine is to save us from the natural consequences of our vices and follies. The moment it becomes moral it becomes quackery. A scientific physician should have no opinions about the ethical standards and deserts of his patient.
H. L. Mencken, Minority Report: H. L. Mencken’s Notebooks (1956), p. 7.
Thomas Mackay
We can have exactly as many paupers as the country chooses to pay for.
Thomas Mackay, Methods of Social Reform (London: John Murray, 1896), p. 210.