Daniel Klein

Dishonest, unethical, and ignorant people tend to be rewarded with political power. We should keep trying, anyway.

"Before the 1770s, liberal meant generous, munificent, as in “with a liberal hand,” or tolerant and befitting a free man, as in liberal arts and liberal sciences. Those meanings were not political." ~Daniel Klein

"It is said that an armed society is a polite society. Smith, by analogy, suggests that an international cosmos of armed nations will be a polite international cosmos." ~Daniel B. Klein

"He really did help to establish a presumption of liberty—that is, 'allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way' as a presumption." ~ Daniel B. Klein

"Marx should be seen as but one—historically salient, to be sure—irresponsible human indulging perennial mentalities and bents that deny modern realities." ~ Daniel B. Klein

"Classical liberals who lead research endeavors need to persuade not only fellow researchers, but the audience of the research, including the anti-liberal minefield of academia." ~ Daniel B. Klein

"What is the place of God in our ethics? What is our nature? What is our civilization? Which way is up? The Smith tercentenary is a special opportunity to come together in Adam Smith." ~ Daniel B. Klein

"More liberty means less government, and less government means less miserableness, servility, fickleness, hypocrisy, denial, mendacity, baseness, and degeneracy. Liberal backbone checks the evil that is the governmentalization of social affairs." ~ Daniel B. Klein

"Admirers of The Theory of Moral Sentiments range across academic and scholarly fields and disciplines, across countries and continents, and, most remarkably, across landscapes of political ideology." ~ Daniel B. Klein

"There is an imprudence in forgetting that liberal principles, suitably cherished, are a check on power, the levers of which are, one day to the next, to be controlled by the good’s worst enemies." ~ Daniel Klein & Daniel J. Mahoney