Bite-sized Wisdom
44 Quotes for a Long Thanksgiving Weekend
I’m a fan of aphorisms, epigrams, and bons mots, and they have been prominent in my writing and teaching. Here are forty-four of my favorites to punctuate the long Thanksgiving weekend. They’re a mix of economics, medicine, science, and philosophy. Print them out and hang them near the stove to entertain you while preparing your turkey (or, in our family, duck), sweet potatoes, casseroles, breads, pies, and libations. If someone brings up politics at the table, use one of these to change the subject or to refute whatever it is that they’re saying. If politics comes up at the table more than forty-four times, you’ll have to find some additional quotes on your own.
Foreign aid defined: [Foreign aid is] “an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.” ― Lord Peter Bauer
Economics & journalists: “[T]rying to learn economics from the popular media is like trying to learn physics by watching Road Runner cartoons.” ― Don Boudreaux
Noisy grasshoppers, quiet cattle: Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour. ― Edmund Burke
Common knowledge: “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” ― G.K. Chesterton
Political statistics: I gather, young man that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic. ― Winston Churchill
Bending the cost curve: What’s the biggest thing we could do to “bend the cost curve,” as well as finally tackle the ridiculous inefficiency and consequent low quality of health-care delivery? Look for every limit on supply of health care services, especially entry by new companies, and get rid of it. ― John Cochrane
Unknown wants: Our whole role in life is to give you something you didn’t know you wanted. And then once you get it, you can’t imagine your life without it. ― Tim Cook
Quantitative perceptions: “Mathematically equivalent information formats need not be psychologically equivalent.” ― Richard Feynman
Other people’s money: “Nobody spends someone else’s money as carefully as they spend their own.” ― attributed to Milton Friedman
Free lunch: "There is no such thing as a free lunch." ― popularized by Milton Friedman (Robert Heinlein used the variant, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch," or TANSTAAFL)
Censorship: Don’t cut the rattle off the rattlesnake. The silence is more dangerous for you than it is for the snake. — Robert F. Graboyes (I can include ONE of my own quotes, right?)
Common sense: Economics, at its very best, is an assault on common sense. Common sense is often incomplete, misleading, or flat-out wrong. And commonly held beliefs, no matter how wrong they might be, are exceedingly difficult to dislodge. — Robert F. Graboyes (OK. It’s TWO of my own quotes.)
Humility: The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. ― Friedrich von Hayek
Secondary effects: "The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups." ― Henry Hazlitt
Bad luck: “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and always opposed by all the right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck”. ― Robert Heinlein
Rationales: “Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth. … We can be absolutely certain about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength. … When a movement begins to rationalize its doctrine and make it intelligible, it is a sign that its dynamic span is over.” ― Eric Hoffer
Doctrine: “For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and the potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap.” ― Eric Hoffer
Fanatics and self-esteem: "A mass movement, particularly in its active, revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self.” ― Eric Hoffer
Here to help you: "A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.” ― Eric Hoffer
Automated medicine: “The first autopilot kept a plane cruising at steady speed and altitude; the cockpit of the future, it is said, will have a pilot, a computer, and a dog. The dog there to bite the pilot if he touches the computer. Much of medicine is now on a similar glide path.” ― Peter Huber (The Cure in the Code)
Technique, not conclusions: "The Theory of Economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions." ― John Maynard Keynes
When evidence changes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" ― attributed to John Maynard Keynes
Measurement and science: [W]hen you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be. ― Lord Kelvin
Measurement and humbug (following from the previous quote): “And when you can measure, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.” ― Frank Knight
Proxy variables: [T]he gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.” ― Robert F. Kennedy
Incentives: "Most of economics can be summarized in four words: 'People respond to incentives.' The rest is commentary. ... 'People respond to incentives' sounds innocuous enough, and almost everyone will admit its validity as a general principle. What distinguishes the economist is his insistence on taking the principle seriously at all times." ― Steven Landsburg
Population: "Increasing population is the most certain possible sign of the happiness and prosperity of a state; but the actual population may be only a sign of the happiness that is past." ― Thomas Robert Malthus
Theory: "Facts by themselves are silent." ― Alfred Marshall
Paternalism: To patients enduring every day for years from every friend or acquaintance, either by letter or viva voce, some torment of this kind, I would suggest the same answer. It would indeed be spared, if such friends and acquaintances would but consider for one moment, that it is probable the patient has heard such advice at least fifty times before, and that, had it been practicable, it would have been practised long ago. ― Florence Nightingale
Last Tweet: “A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP” ― Leonard Nimoy
Language: “The excellent tribe of grammarians, the precisians who strive to be correct and correctors, have as much power to prohibit a single word or phrase as a gray squirrel has to put out Orion with a flicker of his tail.” ― Steven Pinker
People and change: “‘People don’t like change,’ Michael Crichton once told me, ‘and the notion that technology is exciting is true for only a handful of people. The rest are depressed or annoyed by the changes.’” ― Matt Ridley
Health costs: "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free." ― P.J. O'Rourke
Technocracy: “Technocracy … is centralized and inflexible. It asks people with new ideas to justify them to boards and commissions. It establishes rules, from broadcasting regulations to laws against working at home, that assume neither technologies nor tastes will change. It allocates tax breaks, subsidies, and licenses to established lobbies. It rewards the articulate and the politically savvy, punishing those who lack smoothness, connections, or the time, patience, and legal counsel to endure endless meetings. ― Virginia Postrel
Self-interest: 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
Principal-agent: “It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit.” ― Adam Smith
Permissionless innovation: “Trying to preemptively plan for every hypothetical worst-case scenario means the best-case scenarios will never come about. ― Adam Thierer
Econometrics: "Econometric theory is like an exquisitely balanced French recipe, spelling out precisely with how many turns to mix the sauce, how many carats of spice to add, and for how many milliseconds to bake the mixture at exactly 474 degrees of temperature. But when the statistical cook turns to raw materials, he finds that hearts of cactus fruit are unavailable, so he substitutes chunks of cantaloupe; where the recipe calls for vermicelli he used shredded wheat; and he substitutes green garment die for curry, ping-pong balls for turtles eggs, and for Chalifougnac vintage 1883, a can of turpentine." ― Stefan Valavanis
Medical arts: “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” ― Voltaire
Mathematical methods: "In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them." ― attributed to John von Neumann
Learning: “How many times do we need to watch Casablanca before we figure out that Ilsa is going to get on the plane every single time?” ― Kevin Williamson
East is East: Politics is politics and investment is investment and that’s that. When a politician claims to be “investing,” he is engaged in politics. And when businesses partner up with politicians? That’s not politics—that’s an investment. ― Kevin Williamson
Power: “Listen you little wiseacre: I’m smart, you’re dumb; I’m big, you’re little; I’m right, you’re wrong; and there’s nothing you can do about it.” ― Harry Wormwood (Danny DeVito in the film version of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda”)
Managed Care: "The patient said to the doctor, 'It hurts when I do this.' The doctor said, 'Then don't do that.'" ― Henny Youngman
A few weeks back, I posted a song that I recorded a year or so ago—a jazz version of “We Gather Together” (“Wilt Heden Nu Treden”)—a 16th century Dutch song of religious freedom that became the unofficial anthem of America’s Thanksgiving holiday. Have a listen, and may you have the best possible holiday. And if you’re not in the U.S., have a great weekend.
Robert F. Graboyes is president of RFG Counterpoint, LLC in Alexandria, Virginia. An economist, journalist, and musician, he holds five degrees, including a PhD in economics from Columbia University. An award-winning professor, in 2014, he received the Reason Foundation’s Bastiat Prize for Journalism
Also, a pair of thoughts which belong together:
“A statesman is a successful politician—who is dead.”
Congressman Thomas Brackett Reed (1839-1902), a Speaker of the House from 1889-1891 and 1895-1899.
U.S. President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) added in 1958: “A statesman is a politician who’s been dead 10 to 15 years.”
Commenting on present day politics, anonymous added:
"We need more statesmen."
You might wish to add:
STATISTICS: The government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, add them, raise them to the Nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But you must never forget that every one of those figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman who puts down what he damn pleases.
- Sir Josiah Stamp, UK Commissioner of Inland Revenue, 1896-1919.