Memory

As a protection against financial illusion or insanity, memory is far better than law. When the memory of the 1929 disaster failed, law and regulation no longer sufficed.

--John Kenneth Galbraith

Mystify

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

--Douglas Adams

Brothers and Sisters

Historians and novelists are kin, but they're more like brothers who throw food at each other than like sisters who borrow each other's clothes.

--Jill Lepore

What We Bear

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

--Victor Frankl

Mere Wealth

Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.

--John Pierpont Morgan

Introspection

People at the top need a relaxed perspective, which gives judgment and balance. Workaholism is an introspection-killing disease, the anxious disability of tunnel-vision middle managers.

--Camille Paglia

House of Cards

Banks and brokerages are a house of cards built on the confidence of clients, creditors and counterparties. If you take chunks out of that confidence, things can go awry pretty quickly. It could happen to any one of the brokers.

--David Trone (brokerage analyst)

Nothing Human

Nothing human is beneath a writer's attention.

--Garrison Keillor

Doubt and Belief

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

--Henri Poincaré

Local Group

The fully realized man does not identify with the local group.

--Abraham Maslow

Died Out

If men never succumbed to the attractions of women, then the human species would have died out a long time ago.

--Daniel Spitzer (neurosurgeon, brother of Eliot)

Modified Ape

After all, it is as respectable to be modified ape as to be modified dirt.

--T.H. Huxley

Squandered

We squandered a lot of gifts. Human beings were given a lot of great gifts. We were given the ability to reason, this extra-large brain, walking erect, having binocular vision and the opposable thumb, and all of these things, and we had such promise, but we squandered it on goods and superstition. We gave ourselves over to the high priests and the traders, and they are the ones we allow to control us.

--George Carlin

Answered Prayers

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.

--Truman Capote

What Light I Have

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.

--Abraham Lincoln

I Love Science

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

--Robert Sapolsky

Addiction

Politicians have become completely addicted to money, so trying to change the system is like trying to take heroin from a heroin addict.

--John McCain