There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Over the span of man's history, although a phenomenal amount of education, persuasion, indoctrination and incantation have been devoted to the effort, ordinary people have never been quite persuaded that toil is as agreeable as its alternatives. Thus to take increased well-being partly in the form of more goods and partly in the form of more leisure is unquestionably rational.

Inflation does not lubricate trade but by rescuing traders from their errors of optimism or stupidity.

No nice philosophical point has ever been so decisively resolved as this: that those who are not conceived do not miss the pleasure of consuming the goods they do not get born to enjoy.

A wrong decision isn't forever; it can always be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved.

This is a world inhabited not by people who have to be persuaded to believe but by people who want an excuse to believe.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.