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“ Of course, the outlook is not all bad. Some of you will find good jobs — those who have used your time wisely, by studying science and engineering. It’s only the rest of you who are screwed. […] As to journalism, there are a few skills you need to know, which you could pick up in an afternoon; the rest is undifferentiated. You look. You ask questions. You think. And you tell the world what you come up with. No college necessary. In fact, college may hinder you. Instead of using your own eyes and your own brain, and developing your own way of looking at things, you spent your best years in class absorbing the claptrap du jour of the mainstream media. […] Others among you have read popular novels or a few history books. You think you know something. Maybe you call yourself a historian. Or perhaps a literary critic. My advice is to keep that to yourself. You have paid a lot of money for something that millions of other people — just as smart as you are — do for a hobby or past-time. There’s not much real knowledge in either of those things…just opinions and ideas which are more vanity and entertainment than genuine learning. […] Same thing for those who have spent years studying ‘politics’ or ‘economics.’ Drop the pretense that you know something. You don’t. All you have is a full plate of opinions…most of them preposterous…and most of them indigestible by a thoughtful person. ”

“ It is easier to be smart than to be good; that’s why there are so many smart people, and so few good ones. Smart men get elected to high office. They run major corporations.They write editorials for the newspaper. Pity the poor good man; he goes to parties and has nothing to say that is not mocking and cynical. Others talk about their smart deals, their smart ideas, their smart plans and successes. Women crowd around them; a smart man grows taller as he speaks.The good man shrinks. ”

“ Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds — justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner. ”

“ Any man who has had teenage children will tell you to be suspicious of logic, for as soon as a teenager gets the hang of it, his sense of reason seems to leave him — and doesn’t return for at least five or six years. Or, if he takes up politics, law, or economics, it may never return. “If there really were a God,” says the teenager triumphantly, “He wouldn’t let there be people starving, He wouldn’t allow Bush to kill people, and He wouldn’t make me do homework on Friday night.” But we’ve been around long enough to believe that God can do any damned thing He wants, even if it makes no sense to a 15-year-old. ”

“ The single man, on the other hand, is a desperado. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were, effectively, single. So was Alexander the Great. They had no private lives; they had perforce to make public spectacles of themselves. The single man still feels the need to be a conqueror — of women or of men — by seduction or by brute force. That is why the public generally elects family men to high office; they don’t trust the lone wolf. That may be one reason why George W. Bush — a married man — is likely to be denied the success that more notorious, and single, world improvers have had. ”

“ We see people reading “The World Is Flat” numbly on airplanes. […] For a long time, we couldn’t bring ourselves to read the book, but finally we did. As expected, it is suitable only for children … and only for them to sit on or club each other over the head with. ”

“ The truth is that no risk-control gimmick however complex, can protect a whole market for the simple reason that the whole market cannot outperform itself. The more people climb onto an investment platform - whether it is derivatives, dot-coms, dollars… or dirigibles - the more it creaks and cracks. [Ed. FAZ?] ”

“ You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. ”

“ There is enough uncertainty in entrepreneurship without adding inflation, deflation, interest rates and exchange rates to the list of barriers standing in the way of innovation. The U.S. economy as guided by the Fed has seen continual asset bubbles, crashes, panics, booms and busts in the forty years since the United States left gold. It is time to diminish the role of finance and empower the role of commerce. ”