The Skeptical Optimist

FQ.08.25: Favorite Quote for This Week

[In 1952] the Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee considered endorsing [Ronald] Reagan for an open congressional seat but declined to do so on grounds he was "too liberal" . . . Reagan's vision of America as a free society that drew its strength from the courage and bloodstock of its immigrants was then considered a liberal view.  Liberals in those days celebrated the American "melting pot" rather than the diversity of its human ingredients.  The genius of America was not that it perpetuated differences but that it obliterated them and created a new being: an American.
—Lou Cannon, Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power

FQ.08.24: Favorite Quote for This Week

There are distinct types of emotion: fear, anxiety, elation... It is clear why political campaigns seem always to "play to our emotions." In order to change a voter's standing (and mostly unexamined) decision, an appeal to the voter must arouse emotions. Since anxiety seems to be the factor that is causally related to reconsideration, it is natural that campaign managers would try to arouse anxiety.
—Bryan D. Jones, Politics and the Architecture of Choice

FQ.08.20: Favorite Quote for This Week

Economists [according to Martin Wolf] used to discuss two basic concepts, capital and labor. But these are now commodities, widely available to everyone. What distinguishes economics today are ideas and energy. A country can prosper if it is a source of ideas or energy for the world.
—Fareed Zakaria

FQ.08.19: Favorite Quote for This Week

Elite universities [in the twentieth century] nudged science out of the liberal arts undergraduate curriculum—and out of the minds of many young people, who, as the new academic establishment, so marginalized themselves that they are no longer within shouting distance of the action.
—John Brockman

FQ.08.18: Favorite Quote for This Week

I believe that there is a quasi-religious theory of human nature prevalent among pundits and intellectuals... The theory has three parts: The Blank Slate—that we have no talent or temperaments because the mind is shaped completely by the environment (parenting, culture, and society). The second is the myth of the Noble Savage—that evil motives are not inherent in people but spring from corrupting social institutions. The third is the Ghost in the Machine—that the most important part of us is somehow independent of our biology, so that our ability to have experiences and make choices can't be explained by our physiological makeup and evolutionary history.
—Steven Pinker

FQ.08.17: Favorite Quote for This Week

To seek the causes of poverty... is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. The great cold of poverty and economic stagnation is merely the absence of economic development. It can be overcome only if the relevant economic processes are in motion.
—Jane Jacobs

FQ.08.16: Favorite Quote for This Week

Simple rules build complex structures, and complex structures deconstruct into simple rules.
--Benoit Mandelbrot

FQ.08.15: Favorite Quote for This Week

From before Copernicus to the present, change in the way we see the world has never occurred by getting the people in charge to say, "Gee, sorry—I guess we've been wrong all our lives." Change is accomplished by the non-professionals, the young, the people who are not as professionally committed to maintaining the status quo as the "experts" are.
—Dr. Rick Boettger, The Deficit Lie

FQ.08.14: Favorite Quote for This Week

Americans celebrated the end of the Cold War with a mixture of relief and satisfaction.  The people of the United States hoped to enjoy a peace dividend, as U.S. spending on national security was cut following the end of the Soviet military threat.
—The 9/11 Commission Report

FQ.08.13: Favorite Quote for This Week

What shall we do about the board of directors? ... The board was elected to act in place of the owners.  The board's responsibility is to sit in judgment on the management, especially on the performance of the chief executive, and to reward, punish, or replace the management as the board, in its wisdom, sees fit.  That is what is supposed to happen.  That is what may appear to happen.  But it doesn't.
—Harold Geneen