Samizdata

You know, being a test pilot isn’t always the healthiest business in the world.

Alan B. Shepard, aviator and astronaut. I also rather like his terse message to Mission Control at the time of his flight in 1961: “Why don’t you fix your little problems and light this candle”.

I am sure he would be thrilled at the private sector space ventures that Dale has been tirelessly writing about lately.

Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.

Isaiah Berlin, reminding us of the value of stating truths over and over, even if you fear you are just preaching to the converted.

“Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast to the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.”

– John Kenneth Galbraith (1984), an American intellectual who passed away yesterday.

In an odd sort of way, contemporary soft leftists are both obsessed with politics and unpolitical at the same time. That is, their political involvement seems as much about showing what kinds of people they are (caring, concerned etc) as making a difference. The plausibility of a political strategy is less important than being involved.

– Andrew Norton, Research Fellow at the excellent Centre for Independent Studies, editor of Policy magazine and resident at Catallaxy

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.

– David Hume, one of the giants of the Scottish Enlightenment. I wonder what he would have made of our own times?