It is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.
What It Means To Be Creative
What it means to be creative is pretty simple. It’s to do something human, something generous, something that might not work. It has to be all three of those things. You will find creative accountants, politicians, housekeepers and engineers… being creative is to solve interesting problems.
The Economist’s Responsibility To The Maintenance Of Freedom
Economists have a particular responsibility to relate policy decisions to the maintenance of freedom, so that when the combination of special interest groups, bureaucratic pressures, and congressional appetites, calls for still one more increment of government intervention, we can calculate the cost in these terms.
Only A Crisis Produces Change
Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.
– Milton Friedman
Stories Develop From Mysteries You Want To Solve
I want to laugh at how old-fashioned and easily entertained I must sound to a kid today, who has a lot more seductive electronic shit competing for their attention. But a story is a story, in any era. And the best ones, I’ve always thought, develop from mysteries you want to solve.
Never Once Done That Thing
All the best things that I did at Apple came from (a) not having money and (b) not having done it before, ever. Every single thing that we came out with that was really great, I’d never once done that thing in my life.
The Fruit Of Labour And Thought
All the genius I have lies in this – when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labour and thought.
That Leaves Us
Fitting Old Things Into The New Form
When any new form comes into the foreground of things, we naturally look at it through the old stereos. We can’t help that. This is normal…We’re just trying to fit the old things into the new form, instead of asking what is the new form going to do to all the assumptions we had before.