A reader who communicates regularly sent several interesting quotations that are relevant in today’s world. Some are repeated here.

As a young person studying economics, I revered J.K. Galbraith’s witty optimism. He was the opposite of many economists, including one I had at UBC. The prof arrived late for every lecture and spoke to the class without interacting with individual students, other than to say that answers to questions could be found in the course’s main textbook. Of course, he was the author of that book.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), born in Ontario, a Harvard professor of economics, prolific writer and, according to Paul Krugman, a policy entrepreneur. 

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

Young me also read H.L. Mencken’s words with enthusiasm. Looking at his work today, I see large doses of misogyny and undemocratic thinking. Mencken’s private diaries, published 25 years after his death, showed anti-Semitism, racism and pro-Nazi leanings. Yet, if one can get past some of the content, he had an admirable way of constructing words.

Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956), an American writer, humourist and scholar:

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

Like other boys, I was introduced to Mark Twain at an early age. Beyond The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there was much more. Nineteenth century critics banned some of Twain’s writing as inelegant, irreligious, and “suitable only for the slums.” Schools in modern times ban some of Twain’s writing “to protect the dignity of our students.”

Bowdlerized versions of Twain are available but these change the author’s meanings. Deeply anti-racist, Mark Twain put racial epithets in the mouths of characters because they would have used those words in real life. In my opinion, he did great work.

Mark Twain 1835-1910, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, American humourist, lecturer, author, and failed investor.

If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. 

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. 

When these powerful sisters entered the field in 1848 woman was what she had always been in all countries and under all religions, all savageries, all civilizations — a slave, and under contempt. The laws affecting women were a disgrace to our statute book. Those brave women besieged the legislatures of the land, year after year, suffering and enduring all manner of reproach, rebuke, scorn and obloquy, yet never surrendering, never sounding a retreat.