We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
-Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, 1950.
Tag: Quotes
Milton Friedman on the Concentration of Power
Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.
–Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 1962.
The More Numerous The Laws . . .
The more numerous laws, the more corrupt the government.
-Tacitus, Annals, Book III, 27
Whatever Is Rightly Done
Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble.
Henry Royce
How Easy It Is to Make People Believe A Lie . . .
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!
-Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 2
To Be Nobody-But-Yourself
To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else-means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
e.e. cummings, A Poet’s Advice to Students