QUOTE MACHINE

From Atlas Shrugged:

"Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours - when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you know that your society is doomed... Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: "Account overdrawn".

I have to go see the movie version of Atlas Shrugged this summer. These are my four "must see" movies for they year. Never been a big movie buff before and I may cheat a little and get a DVD version for home viewing on a couple of them, but all four come highly recommended.

Atlas Shrugged
http://www.atlas-shrugged-movie.com/

The Cartel
http://www.thecartelmovie.com/

Waiting for Superman
http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/

Inside Job
http://www.insidejob.com/

Talent is like a marksman who hits a target that others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target others cannot even see. (Schopenhauer).

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. (Plato)

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: "It might have been". (John Greenleaf Whittier)

You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?" (George Bernhard Shaw)

Worse than being blind, is to see and have no vision. (Helen Keller)

When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail. (Abraham Maslow)

We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet. (Anon)

Zimmerman's Law of Complaints: Nobody notices when things go right.

There are two classes of forecasters: Those who don't know... and those who don't know they don't know. (John Kenneth Galbraith).

• If you think the world is all wrong, remember that it contains people like you. (Mahatma Gandhi).
• Everybody wants to save the world, but nobody wants to help Mum with the dishes. (P.J. O'Rourke).

The price of hating other humans is loving oneself less. (Eldridge Cleaver)

• The hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. (Dante Alighieri)
• To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. (Confucius)

• The truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought. (Richard Feynman)
• When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books. You will be reading meanings. (W. E. B. Du Bois)

In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. (Stephen Jay Gould)

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. (John Kenneth Galbraith)

• Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. (George Bernard Shaw)
• Traditional human government consists of thieves and murderers. By adopting the electoral process, we have weeded out the murderers. This is actually about as good as it gets. (Anon)
• Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. (Ronald Reagan).

A developer is someone who wants to build a house in the woods. An environmentalist is someone who already has a house in the woods. (Dennis Miller)

• Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach. (H.L. Mencken).
• Those who cannot teach -- administrate. (Martin)

• To generalize is to be an idiot. (William Blake)
• A witty saying proves nothing. (Voltaire)
• There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it. (Cicero)
• Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it. (George Santayana)