Ayn Rand on charity vs. achievement

We are taught to admire the second-hander who dispense gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible.  We praise an act of charity.  We shrug at an act of achievement.

~ Ayn Rand

Hans Hermann-Hoppe on fiat money

More paper money cannot make a society richer, of course — it is just more printed paper. Otherwise, why is it that there are still poor countries and poor people around? But more money makes its monopolistic producer (the central bank) and its earliest recipients (the government and big, government-connected banks and their major clients) richer at the expense of making the money's late and latest receivers poorer.

~ Hans Hermann-Hoppe

Jeremy Grantham on climate change

Carbon dioxide is going up at an increasing rate, with the three biggest increases occurring in the last three years; the climate is warming at an increasing rate; and the water is warming at an increasing rate; and therefore, the level at which oceans are rising is increasing at an accelerating rate. It’s one thing for the world to be deteriorating, but deteriorating at an increasingly fast rate is particularly dangerous and scary.

~ Jeremy Grantham, "Jeremy Grantham Combats Climate Change, Barron's, October 7, 2017

Kyle Bass on the long/short investment process

I love being long human ingenuity and short financial innovation.

~ Kyle Bass, video at 20:45 mark: "My investment lessons from the school of hard knocks," September 7, 2017

William Galston on avoiding poverty

You need only do three things in this country to avoid poverty - finish high school, marry before having a child, and marry after the age of 20. Only 8 percent of the families who do this are poor; 79 percent of those who fail to do this are poor.

~ William Galston

Warren Buffett on learning from experience

When people tell me they've learned from experience, I tell them the trick is to learn from other people's experience.

~ Warren Buffett