Jim’s Quote of the Day:
“The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B.” – James Yorke
“The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B.” – James Yorke
"…the Constitution does not repose in the Congress the power to bail out individuals or private industry: Bailouts violate the Equal Protection doctrine because the Congress can’t fairly pick and choose who to bail out and who to let expire; they violate the General Welfare Clause because they benefit only a small group and not the general public; they violate the Due Process Clause because they interfere with contracts already entered into… Worse still, Congress lacks the power to let someone else decide how to spend the peoples’ money. "- Judge Andrew Napolitano, November 25, 2008
"The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, it is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain. The corporations which create the paper money can not be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business; …
“The LORD will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail” – Isaiah, 58:11, NKJV
“Never in the history of the world have we faced so much complexity combined with so much incompetence in understanding its properties.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)
“There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.” – Cormac McCarthy (author of the disaster novel The Road )
"How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?" – Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, December 5, 1996
“And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave.” – Nathan Fillion as Captain Mal Reynolds, Serenity , 2005. (Screenplay by Joss Whedon)
"Economists were created to make weather forecasters look good." – Rupert Murdoch
“He doubted whether they could survive the winter, even though they piled broken furniture into the fireplace. Some accident would quite likely overtake them, or pneumonia might strike them down. They were like the highly bred spaniels and pekinese who at the end of their leashes had once walked along the city streets. Milt and Ann, too, were city-dwellers, and when the city died, they would hardly survive without it. They would pay the penalty which in the history of the world, he knew, had always been inflicted upon organisms which specialized too highly.” – George Stewart Earth Abides , …
“[The fallout in subprime mortgages is] going to be painful to some lenders, but it is largely contained." – Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, March 13, 2007
‘There is an old song which asserts ‘the best things in life are free.’ Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted . . . and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.” – Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like. – Will Rogers
“Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you can’t do this or that. That’s nonsense. Make up your mind, you’ll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.” – Sir Douglas Bader, (1910-1982), The legendary British fighter pilot who lost both legs in a flying accident, but went on to fly as a fighter pilot in World War II.
“Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo’s Notebooks