Margaret Atwood: “[W]e are a species that deceives. Other species deceive, too. But we do it more elaborately, and we do it with stories. Other animals go in for camouflage and deception, but we were able to go in for camouflage and deception using words. And we can, for instance, make up false stories about our enemies to get other people to dislike them and turn against them. And if you go into the history of propaganda in wartime, you will find a lot of clever inventions about stuff that wasn’t true, done for the purposes of deceiving. So we are a species that deceives. Other species deceive, too. But we do it more elaborately, and we do it with stories.”
Milton Friedman: “At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.””. [via Scott Sumner]
Ajay Shah: “IT is India’s biggest industry.”
