February 19th, 2008 | Published in Productivity, Quotes, Work
I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
–Thomas Jefferson, U. S. President (1801–1809), as quoted in Richard Templar, The Rules of Management (Prentice Hall, 2005), p. 112.
February 18th, 2008 | Published in Business, Economics, Quotes
[In 2003,] Sears made more than half of its profits from its credit cards and Circuit City made all of its profits from its credit cards, while losing $17 million on its sales.
—Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 99-100.
February 17th, 2008 | Published in Quotes, Writing
The perfect ending should take your readers slightly by surprise and yet seem exactly right. They didn’t expect the article to end so soon, or so abruptly, or to say what is said. But they know it when they see it.
—William Zinsser, On Writing Well, pp. 65-6.
February 16th, 2008 | Published in Agriculture, Culture, Food, Language, Quotes
Our words for unhealthy contamination—“soiled” or “dirty”—suggest that if we really knew the number-one ingredient of a garden, we’d all head straight into therapy.
—Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins: 2007), p. 10.
February 15th, 2008 | Published in Evolution, Quotes, Science
A quick and simple way to debunk the theory of evolution would be to find a fossil horse in the same geological stratum as a trilobite. According to evolutionary theory, trilobites and mammals are separated by hundreds of millions of years. If such a fossil juxtaposition occurred, and it was not the product of some geological anomaly (such as uplifted, broken, bent, or even flipped strata—all of which occur but are traceable), it would mean there was something seriously wrong with the theory of evolution.
–Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design (Times Books, 2006), p. 16.
February 14th, 2008 | Published in Politics, Quotes, Work
In a country that puts an absolute premium on labor-saving measures, short workdays, and retirement, why should there by any surprise at permanence of unemployment and welfare dependency? Those are only different names for our national ambitions.
–Wendell Berry, “What Are People For?” in What Are People For? (1990), p. 125.
February 13th, 2008 | Published in Productivity, Quotes, Work
It is amazing how much you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
–Harry Truman, U. S. President (1945-53), as quoted in Richard Templar, The Rules of Management (Prentice Hall, 2005), p. 35.
February 12th, 2008 | Published in Economics, Quotes
Scarcity means that everyone’s desires cannot be satisfied completely, regardless of which particular economic system or government policy we choose–and regardless of whether an individual or a society is poor or prosperous. Therefore competition among people for these resources is inherent. It is not a question of whether we like or dislike competition. Scarcity means that we do not have the option to choose whether or not to have an economy in which people compete. That is the only kind of economy that is possible–and our only choice is among the particular methods that can be used for this competition.
–Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 75.