Much of economics isn't difficult, or rather, the difficulty is in cooking up arguments to "prove" that commonsense conclusions are wrong. The fact is that many commonsense conclusions are quite correct, and it takes a lot of education to get you to believe different.

A smart soldier wants to know the causes of wars. Also how to end them. After all, war is the normal state of affairs, isn't it? Peace is the name of the ideal we deduce from the fact that there have been interludes between wars.

What man has done, man can aspire to do.

We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity. I am afraid. I will taste fear until I die.

...with what we spent in Iraq we could build nuclear power plants and space solar power satellites and tell the Arabs to drink their oil.

And that's another piece of advice I'll give junior writers; when you get to the point where they take you to lunch, let the editor suggest where to go.

A Dark Age is not just a period in which people no longer know how to do things. The real key is that people no longer remember that certain things can be done at all.