Karl

“And did not Spinoza's refusing to flee from excommunication by his church and community mean the same inner battle of integrity, the same struggle for the power not to be afraid of aloneness, without which the noble Ethics, certainly one of the great works of all time, could not have been written?”
― Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself

“Eternal vigilance is the price of an open mind.”
― Henry Hazlitt, Thinking as a Science

“Friendship is not born in conditions of need or trouble. Literary fairy tales tell of ‘difficult’ conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough. If tragedy and need brought people together and gave birth to their friendship, then the need was not extreme and the tragedy not great. Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friends. Only real need can determine one’s spiritual and physical strength and set the limits of one’s physical endurance and moral courage.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

“There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations