Chris King

“for in every country of the world, I believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained in their coins.”
― Michael Lewis, The Real Price of Everything: Rediscovering the Six Classics of Economics

“Stalin understood that in the Soviet economy, people had few incentives to work hard. A natural response would have been to introduce such incentives, and sometimes he did—for example, by directing food supplies to areas where productivity had fallen—to reward improvements. Moreover, as early as 1931 he gave up on the idea of creating “socialist men and women” who would work without monetary incentives. In a famous speech he criticized “equality mongering,” and thereafter not only did different jobs get paid different wages but also a bonus system was introduced.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

“Dare to think! Have the courage to use your own reason!’ is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment,” as stated in 1784 by the great German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant.1”
― Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism

“The stress on observation and the reality principle—you can believe what you see, so long as you see what I see—paid off beyond understanding.”
― David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor