Category: Quote of the Day

“Historically, legal tender laws have been used by governments to force their citizens to accept debased and devalued currency. Gresham’s Law describes this phenomenon, which can be summed up in one phrase: bad money drives out good money. An emperor, a king, or a dictator might mint coins with half an ounce of gold and force merchants, under pain of death, to accept them as though they contained one ounce of gold. Each ounce of the king’s gold could now be minted into two coins instead of one, so the king now had twice as much “money” to spend on …

"Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences." – Robert Louis Stevenson

"If we continue to teach about tolerance and intolerance instead of good and evil, we will end up with tolerance of evil." – Dennis Prager

Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of Biblical proportions. Mayor: What do you mean, "Biblical"? Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff. Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly. Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes… Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave. Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria! – Ghostbusters, 1984

“Genius? Nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! … I’ve failed my way to success.” – Thomas Edison

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." – Thomas Jefferson

“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” – Robert A. Heinlein, Logic of Empire (1941)

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – H. Jackson Brown

Burnett: I was told that it might be possible to rent your boat–we need to get up river. Rambo: Where? Burnett: Into Burma. Rambo: Burma is a war zone. Burnett: Up the Salween river is our best alternative. Rambo: I can’t help you out. Burnett: Please, it will help change people’s lives. Rambo: Are you bringing in any weapons? Burnett: Of course not. Rambo: You’re not changin’ anything. – from the trailer to John Rambo, 2008

“There’s something cool about the thought of being totally off the power grid. It’s a psychological thing. I could rationalize being off the grid by saying it would come in handy if the rest of the world runs out of energy. But realistically, the big worry in that case wouldn’t be powering my iPod so much as not getting eaten by cannibals.” – Cartoonist Scott Adams.

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." – Thomas Jefferson

"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, refrains from giving wordy evidence of the fact." – George Eliot

"A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing that is more important than his personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertion of better men than himself." – John Stuart Mill

“Competition is the life of trade…In a controlled situation, people take what they can get. In a competitive situation, people get what they want.” – William C. Durant, founder of General Motors

“The wheels have come off. Structured finance, which has been the key to this credit bubble, has broken down. We believe that confidence in structures, ratings, collateral, issuers, counterparties, et cetera, has all been lost. Therefore we are in a very precarious position. Credit has driven the economy and has driven markets. Credit has to grow year-over-year in this credit bubble environment in order for the economy to grow. With structured finance having broken down, in our opinion, there is no way that credit will grow year-over-year any longer.” – David Tice of the Prudent Bear Fund, as quoted by …