Quotes and Resources

'Food for Thought' on All Things That Matter

These are some of the thoughtful quotes that were published in the right panel on this site, underneath the site's menu. They're much more than someone's convenient, good-sounding cliches - they provide profound comments on various subjects and other things that matter.

As such, they're 'food for thought'. We give you another opportunity to thoughfully reflect on these valuable and insightful quotes, from famous and not so famous sovereign individuals. These were posted on our site in descending order, from the most recent on the top. This is also a good resource page for some of the finest financial and privacy books and newsletters.

BIG TECH A.I. DELUSION

The great delusion of Silicon Valley today is to bet on artificial intelligence and machine learning as replacing human minds, rather than merely aiding and enhancing them.

- - - George Gilder, Gilder's Daily Prophecy, January 19th, 2021

GOLDEN ERA OF FREEDOM

It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody's permission or to obey anybody's orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today.

- - - - Friedrich Hayek reflecting back to the golden era of freedom in the 19th century
(quote courtesy of Free-Man's Perspective newsletter)

VIOLATION OF BASIC SOCIAL CONTRACT

What's happening in our country today has gone so much further than even I thought it would. I mean the idea that the government has the right to tell private businesses when to open and when to close,
that it could tell individual citizens when we can travel or when we can worship; these are shocking violations of the basic social contract that we as Americans have always had with our government.

The idea that I am somehow responsible for my neighbor's health is a reversal of the American way of life.

- - - Porter Stansberry
(The Stansberry Digest)

SCIENCE vs TECHNOLOGY

(Science has become secular religion.) That’s because what we call science is mostly speculation, as depicted by Thomas Kuhn, The Nature of Scientific Revolutions.

It is secular religion, with a succession of faith-based systems following one another, from multiple parallel universes to gender studies, often without traction or truth. But engineering and technology are real and cumulative.

George Gilder, "Gilder's Daily Prohecy"

INTERESTING COMPARISON

'...Many users of social media are undoubtedly addicted to it – observe the compulsive way in which people use their phones in public.
...(T)here are only two industries that describe their customers as “users,” the tech industry and the drug industry.

---"The Social Dillema", the documentary by Netflix

'Social media’s creators admit (social media) dehumanizes people, disrupts social fabric and destroys democracy'

LIVING COURAGEOUSLY

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break your bonds; your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.

--- Patanjali (2nd century BC) - Indian sage

DIVERSITY 2020

...(B)e mindful of why you're holding gold, silver, stocks, cash, bitcoin, or whatever else... you stand a good chance of making money over the next few years, even if everyone else around you is losing it.

---The Stansberry Digest - August 22, 2020 

DESTRUCTIVE HUMILITY and THE LACK OF PRIDE

There runs a strange law through the length of human history – that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves.

The great sin of mankind… is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility. This is the great fall, the fall by which every man… in the fullest and most literal sense, forgets himself.

---G.K. Chesterton’s book, The Defendant
(Courtesy of Paul Rosenberg - freemansperspective.com)

NEOLIBERALISM and GLOBALISM

...Each nation state needs to rethink and recategorize its priorities...

The health, safety and prosperity of the citizenry should be placed above identity politics, the toxicity of an entitled cancel culture and mob rule by social media.

...Covid-19 has illustrated how (global) interdependence can cost lives...

---Michael Feierstein
(Investor, banker, and author of "Planet Ponzi")

TIME THEORY OF MONEY

Posing the only real threat to (today's) happy scene are the politicians. In their grim global rebellion against the truth of time. They don scarecrow costumes of false disasters such as climate change, trade gap trumpery, debt doom or middle-class woe.

They scowl and leer and demand more power. They rant and vamp like vandalistic clowns of an apocalypse that will never come unless they summon it with their own lunatic fits and furies.

---George Gilder, Gilder's Daily Prophecy 

WHEN LIFE BEGINS

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

— Alfred D. Souza

WEALTH TODAY

...[T]he mob has a point. Much of the wealth (today) enjoyed by the rich has come to them unfairly. It’s not the fruit of honest economic expansion; instead, the feds rigged the system.

Bill Bonner, Bill Bonner's Diary

FAKE NEWS

In his 1972 book, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, anthropologist Gregory Bateson coined the phrase “a difference that makes a difference”…

Real news is reporting on a difference that makes a difference. Everything else is fake news, designed to consume your attention and rob you of your thought.

Dan Denning, Bill Bonner's Diary

BIG GOVERNMENT

"In a small government, citizens can run the show. They know what is going on, and have a say in what happens next.

In a global Deep State Empire, on the other hand, citizens play largely symbolic roles. They vote, but their votes don’t really matter.

They voice their opinions, but no one really cares what they think."

- Bill Bonner, Bill Bonner's Diary 

TECHNOLOGY AND WISDOM

"Technology is advancing at warp speed while moral wisdom is sinking into a swamp. That unfortunate combination makes me wonder if the coming singularity might end up being an extinction-level event."

- John Hunt, MD - in an interview at Casey Daily Dispatch 

EDUCATION

"Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality."

Thomas Sowell -
Currently Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution, at Stanford University, Thomas Sowell is an American libertarian economist and political commentator.

USE OF COERCION

Frederick August von Hayek

Friedrich August von Hayek -
F.A. Hayek was born on 8. May 1889 and died in 1992. One of the greatest economists of the 20th century and most important libertarians. Nobel Prize winner in 1974.

MONEY AND WEALTH RELATIONSHIPS

Gold is the currency of kings,
silver is the money of gentlemen,
barter is the money of peasants,
but debt is the money of slaves.

Norm Franz - Money and Wealth in the New Millennium

MONEY

"Money is not an invention of the State. It is not the product of a legislative act. Even the sanction of political authority is not necessary for its existence. Certain commodities came to be money quite naturally, as the result of economic relationships that were independent of the power of the State."

Carl Menger - the founder of the Austrian school of economics

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

Noam Chomsky - an American social critic, cognitive scientist and philosopher