Lew Rockwell on Trump: "It's a big bonus that all the right people hate him"

It's a big bonus with Trump that all the right people hate him... To my knowledge, there's never been a dictator-businessman.  That says something. Doesn't mean there couldn't be a first time, of course...  I think it's good not to be part of a gang.  Maybe you'd have some new approaches.  It's one of the things that scares the whole regime about him, that he's unpredictable.  And of course I think that's a good thing because if he's unpredictable maybe he'll actually do something good, as shocking as that might be.

~ Lew Rockwell, interview with Jay Taylor, August 30, 2016

Satya Nadella on lifelong learning

If you take two people, one of them is a learn-it-all and the other one is a know-it-all, the learn-it-all will always trump the know-it-all in the long run, even if they start with less innate capability.

~ Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, interview by Dina Bass, Bloomberg Businessweek, August 8, 2016

Walter Block endorses Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson

People instinctively are anti-market.  And it takes an effort of will, or understanding, or knowledge of the sort that Henry Hazlitt so magnificently supplies [in Economics in One Lesson] to pierce through this ignorance.

Walter Block, interview with Jeffrey Tucker about Economics in One Lesson, (9:04), 2008

Ulysses Grant on secession

The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable.

~ Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant
1869-1877

Lincoln on the role of education in molding servile citizens

Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln
1965-1968

Letter to Lincoln: "Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people"

Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.

~ Reverend James Mitchell of Indiana, later appointed Commissioner of Emigration, presented Lincoln with additional reasons why the Negroes should be colonized, May 15, 1862

Lincoln Memorial
1922-1925

Kevin Duffy on the 2016 presidential election

U.S. 2016 election: The Average Joe supports a billionaire while billionaires line up to endorse the candidate who claims to work for the Average Joe.

~ Kevin Duffy, August 13, 2016

Joe Sobran on the politics of theft

Politics is the conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized.

~ Joe Sobran

Friedrich Hayek on the task of economics

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

~ Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich Hayek on power

The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.

~ Friedrich Hayek

John Maynard Keynes on The Road to Serfdom

In my opinion it is a grand book ... Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement. ... What we need therefore, in my opinion, is not a change in our economic programmes, which would only lead in practice to disillusion with the results of your philosophy; but perhaps even the contrary, namely, an enlargement of them. Your greatest danger is the probable practical failure of the application of your philosophy in the United States.

~ John Maynard Keynes

Friedrich Hayek individualism, morals and collectivism

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

~ Friedrich Hayek

Criminologist on fear, lack of trust, and the social fabric

We live in a society with a quarter of a billion people.  Once in a while these terrible things are going to happen to people.  Should we all worry all the time?  What kind of society are we going to have if no one trusts each other? It tears the social fabric apart if we assume that everyone we run into is a criminal.

~ Mark Warr, criminologist, University of Texas, "Are we scaring ourselves to death?," video by John Stossel, 12:42 mark

Harry Dent: "In 2012 the market will be cut in half" (2011)

In 2012 the market will be cut in half, or at the very least fall 30%.

~ Harry Dent, December 30, 2011

Bill Gross: "The cult of equities may be dying" (2012)

The cult of equities may be dying, but the cult of inflation may only have just begun.

~ Bill Gross, July 31, 2012

Lee Iacocca on business

There's no mystery to satisfying your customers.  Build them a quality product and treat them with respect.  It's that simple.

~ Lee Iacocca

Jim Grant on central bankers

The Ph.D. standard is the regime of discretionary monetary management by former tenured economics faculty. Not much is new under the sun in finance, except for this regime of improvisation by college professors trying stuff because it looks good on a blackboard. What it means for investors is thrills and chills.

~ Jim Grant, "Jim Grant Is Bullish on Gold, Bearish on Kraft," Barron's, August 1, 2016

Jim Grant on negative interest rates

We are living in a unique time. Negative rates aren’t a naturally occurring phenomenon in finance but a creation of our ingenious central bankers. Furthermore, they seem to defy common sense. Interest rates exist because we want things now rather than later. That’s the nature of human desire. Negative interest rates turn that on its head. So they are a sign not of constructive policy making, but of trouble.

~ Jim Grant, "Jim Grant Is Bullish on Gold, Bearish on Kraft," Barron's, August 1, 2016

Jim Grant on fiat currencies

We’re on the long, winding road to confetti—to the discrediting of fiat currencies. That is the end game. Adam Smith cautioned against being excessively bearish. One shouldn’t be dogmatic about when things will happen. But we’re on the road to an important perception that central bankers don’t have the answers and are in fact in the process of discrediting the very money they are meant to protect. I would be short the Ph.D. standard, long the periodic table.

~ Jim Grant, "Jim Grant Is Bullish on Gold, Bearish on Kraft," Barron's, August 1, 2016

Jim Grant on the 35-year bond bull market

You are talking to a guy who lived through all but three months of the bond bear market of 1946 to 1981. In the spring of 1946, a long bond yielded about 2.25%, and it ended in 1981 at 15%. Everyone was looking backward to the credit experience of the 1930s and the early ’40s, not anticipating they were about to be treated to a generation-length bear market in interest rates. That was 35 years in the making. And almost 35 years ago, the great bond bull market began that may, or may not, be ending right now. Since the 19th century, the cycles in interest rates are very long-lived. They have ranged from 20-odd years in this country to 85 years in 19th century Britain. So you can’t dogmatize on the timing. At Grant’s, we are very bearish on bonds.

~ Jim Grant, "Jim Grant Is Bullish on Gold, Bearish on Kraft," Barron's, August 1, 2016

Mark Cuban endorses Hillary Clinton for president

I am ready to vote for the American Dream. I am ready to tell the world that I am here to endorse Hillary Clinton.

~ Mark Cuban, "Mark Cuban Drops an Endorsement on Hillary — But the Name He Drops on Trump is Making Headlines," Independent Journal, July 31, 2016