Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.

We talk of the enormous virtues of work, but it turns out that that is mostly for the poor. If you're rich enough or if you're a college professor, the virtue lies in leisure and the use you make of your leisure time.

If you get a reputation for being honest, you have 95 percent of the competition already beat.

The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.

The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed.

The fully planned economy, so far from being unpopular, is warmly regarded by those who know it best.

There was the Missile Crisis, but one can't attribute to the [J.F.] Kennedy years anything like the problems that [Franklin] Roosevelt stood over and surmounted.