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Quote by George Stigler

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George Stigler
George Stigler

George Stigler, born on January 17, 1911, in Chicago, Illinois, and died on December 1, 1991, was an American economist and a Nobel laureate. He is known for his contributions to the fields of industrial organization, economic history, and econometrics. more

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“Are you trying to find out what the IQ of the society you live in is? Don't bother, just look at the results of the elections. If a society makes the right decision in the election, it means its IQ level is high! So, what is the right decision? If the government you have chosen has enriched your nation as a whole without harming other nations, if it has discarded armament and aimed at disarmament, if it has increased freedom, eliminated irrational belief systems and promoted reason and science, then the decision is very correct!”

“For the Arabs, and the above all for the 1.2 million Arabs of Palestine, the partitioning of the land in which they had been a majority for seven centuries seemed a monstrous injustice thrust upon them by white Western imperialism in expiation of a crime they had not committed. With few exceptions, the Jewish people had dwelt in relative security among the Arabs over the centuries. The golden age of the Diaspora had come in the Spain of the caliphs, and the Ottoman Turks had welcomed the Jews when the doors of much of Europe were closed to them. The ghastly chain of crimes perpetrated on the Jewish people culminating in the crematoriums of Germany had been inflicted on them by the Christian nations of Europe, not those of the Islamic East, and it was on those nations, not theirs, the Arabs maintained, that the burden of those sins should fall. Beyond that, seven hundred years of continuous occupation seemed to the Arabs a far more valid claim to the land than the Jews' historic ties, however deep.”

“The local Red Cross chapter volunteered to publish his book. It came out in a deluxe, gold-embossed, Japanese-paper edition to remind the reader of human artistry, which can be a refuge from evil and a source of new, platonic stirrings. One copy was reserved for His Imperial Majesty Nicholas II. (The Tsar fairly devoured mystical works, believing that hell could be avoided by a combination of education and deceit.) "The Book of Kings and Fools," p. 136.”

“The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world...”

“Regarding the convenient claim that Judaism avoids the “cultist” tendencies of, for example, the Roman Catholic Church, by not claiming to be “the one and only true faith,” thus allegedly allowing followers to leave the religion without penalty: In the Olam Ha-Ba [i.e., the Messianic Age], the whole world will recognize the Jewish G-d as the only true G-d, and the Jewish religion as the only true religion (Rich, 2001). Could one have expected any less, though, given the “chosen group” complex of the entire tradition? Of course it’s “the one true religion”! How could they be the “Chosen People” if it wasn’t?”