In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations

I'm a capitalist but one who is smallist and localist, and who favours businesses where owners are still in charge.

If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.

The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.

Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur

Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.

Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense