Mark Beddard > Mark's Quotes

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!”
― Fydor Dostoyevsky

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”
― Fitzgerald F. Scott, The Great Gatsby

“Everybody has asked the question. . ."What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”
― Fredrick Douglass

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we
are. They are different. ”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The first thing a man will do for his ideal is lie”
― Joseph Schumpeter

“Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by a genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.”
― Eric Hoffer

“The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
― Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
― Thomas Sowell

“People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.”
― Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
― Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional? And Other Essays

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Intellect is not wisdom.”
― Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society

“Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.
”
― Thomas Sowell

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”
― Thomas Sowell

“The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?”
― Thomas Sowell

“Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of "diversity" that we have heard gushed about for years? Evidence of its harm can be seen — written in blood — from Iraq to India, from Serbia to Sudan, from Fiji to the Philippines. It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word.”
― Thomas Sowell

“The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know,
is that the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romantic
person has a desperate confidence that they won't.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby