Economists and technologists bring the "bits", but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the "wits.

Nothing fails like success, because we do not learn anything from it. We only learn from failure, but we do not always learn the right things from failure. If there is a failure of expectations, that is, if the messages that we receive are not the same as those we expected, we can make three possible inferences.

The illusion that consumption - and its correlative, income - is desirable probably stems from too great preoccupation with what Knight calls "one-use goods," such as food and fuel, where the utilization and consumption of the good are tightly bound together in a single act or event. ... any economy in the consumption of fuel that enables us to maintain warmth or to generate power with lessened consumption again leaves us better off. ... there is no great value in consumption itself.

Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand.

[The loss-of-strength gradient is] the degree to which military and political power diminishes as we move a unit distance away from its home base.

If we saw tomorrow's newspaper today, tomorrow would never happen.

[The historical] development in the international system may almost be defined as the process by which we pass from stable war to stable peace.