Mark Wood - Personal Homepage

Quotes:

"Consciousness is probably the way information feels when it's being processed in certain, very complicated ways" - Max Tegmark, 'What's the Universe Made Of? Math, Says Scientist', by Tanya Lewis, Space.com January 30, 2014, http://www.space.com/24497-the-universe-is-math.html?cmpid=514630_20140131_17874874

"You can always wait for the newer technology, in which case you'll never build anything," says Mark Lewis of the University of Maryland in College Park and president of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

"Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other." - Oscar Ameringer.

(John) P.T. Bauer once described foreign aid as "the transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries".

"Government is the problem. It cannot be the solution." - Ron Paul.

"Consider this remarkable irony: most citizens put their faith in government - the entity that steals from us, causes wars, imprisons and starves innocent citizens, and is an absolute monopoly - to provide for us and keep us safe. At the same time, they see businesses - which have eradicated diseases and starvation, engaged in peaceful exchanges instead of war, produced virtually everything we currently own and enjoy, paid us our wages and provided capital for us to improve our productivity, all the while being fully restrained by hungry competitors (in free markets) - as our enemies from whom we need protection. These commonly held but irrational prejudices for government and against businesses form the very foundation of the political arguments espoused by professional anticapitalist "thinkers." - Kel Kelly.

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan (1986).

"In the Star Trek universe, pretty much anyone who hasn't joined the United Federation of Planets is a bad guy. (Sound familiar?)" - Jon Ippolito.

"property exists in nature: for it is impossible that every one should not be the proprietor of his individuality and of his faculties." - Count Destutt de Tracy (Mentor of Thomas Jefferson).

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals. And you know it." - Agent K, Men in Black.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have," Gerald R. Ford, in an address to the joint session of Congress on August 12, 1974.

"Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help..." - MK Gandhi.

"Anyone going to his neighbor's home and taking his money at gunpoint, regardless of all the wonderful, selfless things he promised to do with it, would be promptly arrested as a thief. But for some reason it is considered morally acceptable when government does that very thing." -- Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto, 2008.

"The 7 Deadly Sins: Wealth without work; pleasure without conscience; knowledge without character; commerce without morality; science without humanity; worship without sacrifice; & politics without principle" - MK Gandhi.

"Our inherited moral idiom is thus being challenged by another, in which individuals find their identifying essence in supporting public policies that are both morally obligatory and politically imperative. Such policies are, I suggest, 'politico-moral.' Such an attitude dramatically moralizes politics, and politicizes the moral life. It feeds on our instinctive support for good causes. Yet it also suggests that the most important sign of moral integrity, of decency and goodness, is not found in facing up to one's responsibilities, but in holding the right opinions, generally about grand abstractions such as poverty and war. This illusion might well be fingered as the ultimate servility." - Dr Kenneth Minogue.

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

"...the concepts of the rule of law and constitutionalism are so closely related to each other that they can almost be used interchangeably. The most important trait of the rule of law is that the law is to be applied equally to all persons (isonomia), government leaders included." - Stefan Voigt.

"I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor." - D.H. Lawrence.

"Heaven is blessed with perfect rest but the blessing of earth is toil." - Henry van Dyke.

"The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea." - Isak Dinesen.

"Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason." - Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612.

Re the big two: "I've always distinguished them this way: the Democrats definitely don't believe in economic freedom, but they say they believe in social freedom, while the Republicans definitely don't believe in social freedom, but they say they believe in economic freedom. Neither believes in both - that would make them libertarians." - Doug Casey.

"The only good thing about the Democratic party is that they're at least consistent: they are collectivists and statists through and through. They are collectivists in what they say, and they are collectivists in what they do. That gives them the appearance of being more honest than the Republicans." - Doug Casey.

"Makes me mad. It adds insult to injury that Ronald Reagan got elected on essentially libertarian rhetoric - smaller government, lower taxes, getting the state off the little guy's back, etc., and the signed appropriations bills that saw government grow by huge, then-unprecedented amounts. Many people today think the Reagan years prove that less government is a bad idea!" - Louis James.

"Remember what the Reagan team used to say, "If not us, who? And if not now, when?" As it turned out, it wasn't them and it wasn't then. The worst enemies of individual liberty are knaves that claim they're for it but utterly betray it, and incompetents and ineffectual fools who say they're trying to save freedom by increasing the size of the state." - Doug Casey.

"The one that really gets me, and not just from Americans but from people all around the world, is: "My country, right or wrong!" That means you're willing to support what you know is wrong. It's pathological." - Louis James.

"Aristotle, in the fourth century BC, was the first person to define what money is. And what is it? It's a store of value and a medium of exchange." - Doug Casey.

"Progressive taxation of income and profits means that precisely those parts of the income which people would have saved and invested are taxed away" - Ludwig von Mises.

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand" - Milton Friedman.

"The greediest thing I can think of is a generous government." - John Jay Myers.