Quotes

  • 《庄子：人间世》：形莫若就，心莫若和。虽然，之二者有患。就不欲入，和不欲出。形就而入，且为颠为灭，为崩为蹶。心和而出，且为声为名，为妖为孽。

  • The Bible (Matthew 22:21): Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.

  • René Descartes (1596-1650): Cogito ergo sum. (French: Je ponse donc je suis. English: I think therefore I am.)

  • Main de Biran (1766-1824): Volo ergo sum. (French: Je désire donc je suis. English: I desire therefore I am.)

  • Isaac Newton (1720): I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762): L’homme est né libre et partout il est dans les fers.

  • Adam Smith (1759): Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

  • Adam Smith (1759): Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

  • Adam Smith (1776): The most decisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase in the number of its inhabitants.

  • Adam Smith (1776): Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.

  • Adam Smith (1776): In competition, individual ambition serves the common good.

  • Adam Smith (1776): It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

  • Adam Smith (1776): The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.

  • Adam Smith (1776): It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, that universal opulence extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.

  • Jeremy Bentham (1768): The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

  • Jeremy Bentham (1789): It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual.

  • Jeremy Bentham: Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.

  • Jean-Baptiste Say (1803): Products are paid for with products. A glut can take place only when there are too many means of production applied to one kind of product and not enough to another. "Supply creates its own demand."

  • David Ricardo (1817): The value of a commodity, or the quantity of any other commodity for which it will exchange, depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production, and not on the greater or less compensation which is paid for that labour.

  • David Ricardo: Profits are not made by differential cleverness, but by differential stupidity.

  • Thomas Malthus (1826): Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio; substance increases only in an arithmetical ratio. To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas, beyond the power of man.

  • Abraham Lincoln: You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

  • Charles Darwin: It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

  • Oscar Wilde (1892): What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

  • John Maynard Keynes (1923): In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.

  • John Maynard Keynes (1945): The old saying holds. Owe your banker £1000 and you are at his mercy; owe him £1 million and the position is reversed.

  • Winston Churchill: A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

  • Winston Churchill: Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

  • Winston Churchill: We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

  • Eleanor Roosevelt: Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

  • Eleanor Roosevelt: Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift, which is why we call it the present.

  • Milton Friedman (1970): Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.

  • Ronald Coase (1937): Islands of conscious power [firms] in this ocean of unconscious co-operation [market] like lumps of butter coagulating in a pail of buttermilk. (quoting D. H. Robertson)

  • Paul Krugman (2009): One person makes the decision about how much risk to take, while someone else bears the cost if things go badly.