Quotes by Thomas Hoover

“Back in my old neighborhood, there was a special contempt for the kind of guy who was always trying to get two other guys to fight each other. Today, it is considered a great contribution to society to incite consumers against producers, tenants against landlords, women against men, and the races against each other.””

“Nisbet could find much to disturb a traditional conservative even in the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan: “President Reagan’s deepest soul is not Republican-conservative but New Deal-Second World War Democrat. Thus his well noted preference for citing FDR and Kennedy as noble precedents for his actions rather than Coolidge, Hoover, or even Eisenhower. The word ‘revolution’ springs lightly from his lips, for anything from tax reform to narcotics prosecution. Reagan’s passion for crusades, moral and military, is scarcely American-conservative.””

“Some things must be done on faith, but the most dangerous kind of faith is that which masquerades as “science.””

“There was a pair of books, one by Hemingway, another by Thomas Wolfe. Each had written a long inscription to the other. A knowledgeable dealer had to inform the unfortunate owner who had just paid a pretty penny for them that the inscriptions were not authentic, and that the value was not what he had hoped. Later, another dealer discovered that they were spectacular forgeries: Wolfe had written Hemingway’s inscription, and Hemingway, Wolfe’s.””

“the passing decades have taught me that political elites and cultural elites are doing far more damage than the market elites could ever get away with doing.””

“There’s a quote that reminds me of you, from Dylan Thomas. My favorite poet.”“What is it?”A slow smile warms its way across his mouth. He dips his head and whispers the quote against my lips. “‘I have longed to move away but am afraid; Some life, yet unspent, might explode.””

“But it is already light. How long has it been light? All this while, light has come percolating in, along with the cold morning air flowing now across his nipples: it has begun to reveal an assortment of drunken wastrels, some in uniform and some not, clutching empty or near-empty bottles, here draped over a chair, there huddled into a cold fireplace, or sprawled on various divans, un-Hoovered rugs and chaise longues down the different levels of the enormous room, snoring and wheezing at many rhythms, in self-renewing chorus, as London light, winter and elastic light, grows between the faces of the mullioned windows, grows among the strata of last night’s smoke still hung, fading, from the waxed beams of the ceiling. All these horizontal here, these comrades in arms, look just as rosy as a bunch of Dutch peasants dreaming of their certain resurrection in the next few minutes.””

“It is easy to die for what you believe. What is hard is to live for what you believe.””

“Zen would have our perception of the world, indeed our very thoughts, be nonverbal.””

“Chuang Tzu was invited to the court to serve as a minister, an invitation he declined with a typical story: An ox is selected for a festival and fattened up for several years, living the life of wealth and indulgence”

“Whereas the logical mode of thought can only manipulate the world view of given paradigm, intuition can inspire genuine creativity, since it is not shackled by the nagging analytical mind, which often serves only to intimidate imaginative thought.””

“The master Wen-yu summed it up when he answered a demand for the First Principle of Ch'an with, "If words could tell you, it would become the Second Principle.””

“Being natural means to exist spontaneously without having to take any action.””

“When we act on our spontaneous judgment, we are almost always better off.””