Why is there so little money in politics? If a government subsidy is worth, say, a billion dollars to certain stakeholders, then we might expect them to spend nearly that amount in lobbying and bribes to secure its success.
Generally, this doesn’t happen. The potential beneficiary of a policy will typically spend only a small fraction of its value to bring it about. Economist Gordon Tullock first pointed this out in 1980; the reasons for it are still debated.
A recent survey of London school children has shown that youngsters between the ages of five and seven have forgotten so many of the attributes of peacetime living that they will have a hard time adjusting themselves to normal conditions again.
Most of the children, when questioned about such things as street lights or foods like bananas, stared suspiciously at the teacher and indicated plainly that they did not believe in their existence.
— New York Times, June 1943
(Shown a seashell, one boy replied, “That’s no shell. Shells come out of guns.”)
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.
— Emerson, “The American Scholar,” 1838
(Daniel Dennett: “A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.”)
We have more respect for a man who robs boldly on the highway, than for a fellow who jumps out of a ditch, and knocks you down behind your back. Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.
— James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791
A “prayer to the local deities” offered by Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus:
Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as a temperate man and he only can bear and carry.
“Anything more? The prayer, I think, is enough for me.”
“A few precepts to repeat whenever you are in need of comfort,” by Gabriel Hanotaux, French minister of foreign affairs from 1894 to 1895:
“Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.”
(Via André Maurois’ The Art of Living, 1939.)
We can’t control external events, but we can control our response to them. So, the Stoics taught, it’s wise to accept a fate that we can’t change. Zeno and Chrysippus summed this up in a parable:
When a dog is tied to a cart, if it wants to follow, it is pulled and follows, making its spontaneous act coincide with necessity. But if the dog does not follow, it will be compelled in any case. So it is with men too: even if they don’t want to, they will be compelled to follow what is destined.
Cleanthes expressed this in a prayer:
Lead me, Zeus, and you too, Destiny,
To wherever your decrees have assigned me.
I follow readily, but if I choose not,
Wretched though I am, I must follow still.
Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling.
Jeremy Bentham made a table of the springs of action, where every human desire was named in three parallel columns, according as men wish to praise it, to blame it, or to treat it neutrally. Thus we find in one column ‘gluttony,’ and opposite it, in the next column, ‘love of the pleasures of the social board.’ And again, we find in the column giving eulogistic names to impulses, ‘public spirit,’ and opposite to it, in the next column, we find ‘spite.’ I recommend anybody who wishes to think clearly on any ethical topic to imitate Bentham in this particular, and after accustoming himself to the fact that almost every word conveying blame has a synonym conveying praise, to acquire a habit of using words that convey neither praise nor blame.
— Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals, 1929
Bentham had published the table in 1817. “By habit,” he wrote, “wherever a man sees a name, he is led to figure to himself a corresponding object, of the reality of which the name is accepted by him, as it were of course, in the character of a certificate. From this delusion, endless is the confusion, the error, the dissension, the hostility, that has been derived.”
The humorous will of Dr. Dunlop of Upper Canada is worth recording, though there is a spice of malice in every bequest it contains.
To his five sisters he left the following bequests:
‘To my eldest sister Joan, my five-acre field, to console her for being married to a man she is obliged to henpeck.
‘To my second sister Sally, the cottage that stands beyond the said field with its garden, because as no one is likely to marry her it will be large enough to lodge her.
‘To my third sister Kate, the family Bible, recommending her to learn as much of its spirit as she already knows of its letter, that she may become a better Christian.
‘To my fourth sister Mary, my grandmother’s silver snuff-box, that she may not be ashamed to take snuff before company.
‘To my fifth sister, Lydia, my silver drinking-cup, for reasons known to herself.
‘To my brother Ben, my books, that he may learn to read with them.
‘To my brother James, my big silver watch, that he may know the hour at which men ought to rise from their beds.
‘To my brother-in-law Jack, a punch-bowl, because he will do credit to it.
‘To my brother-in-law Christopher, my best pipe, out of gratitude that he married my sister Maggie whom no man of taste would have taken.
‘To my friend John Caddell, a silver teapot, that, being afflicted with a slatternly wife, he may therefrom drink tea to his comfort.’
While ‘old John’s’ eldest son was made legatee of a silver tankard, which the testator objected to leave to old John himself, lest he should commit the sacrilege of melting it down to make temperance medals.
— Virgil M. Harris, Ancient, Curious, and Famous Wills, 1911
I do not object to being bored if I am paid for it, but I never am paid for it. So many people have run up such long scores with me in this respect, and never paid me, that I will give no more credit. I must have cash down before I will be bored at all, but my figure is very low; so long as I get paid at all I will give people as much fun for their money, by way of letting them bore me, as anyone is likely to do.
— Samuel Butler, Notebooks, 1912