59 Quotes by Amity Shlaes

Entitlements seem to grow with prosperity; not only because they are indexed to inflation or GDP, but also because a prosperous country tells itself it can afford more benefits.

Anyone who experienced World War I close-hand was grossed out by it forever. It just was so awful.

Everybody should pay some tax, just as everybody should vote.

With demands for special education or standardized test prep being shouted in their ears, public schools can't always hear a parent when he says: 'I want my child to be able to write contracts in Spanish,' or, 'I want my child to shake hands firmly,' or, 'I want my child to study statistics and accounting, not calculus.

There's something unsettling about the education of a child who comfortably enumerates the rules for surviving zombie apocalypse but finds it uncomfortable to enumerate the rules of his grandparents' faith, if he knows them.

If you do a serious presidential bio, you want to supply the reader with maximum material because otherwise you're offending the reader. A president for many people is a serious thing and they want to know everything.

Policy people suffer their own kind of agony, and no wonder. After all, what is the average life of the policy person? You go into government if you are lucky, do your best, aren't appreciated, take all the blame for policies for which you are only partly responsible, leave, realize your reputation has been damaged, maybe permanently.

Although unions may be good for a worker, singular, they are not always good for workers, plural. Especially when it comes to finding a job.

Disillusionment can come as fast as a gust, but building faith that the government won't inflate again is like building a new sailboat, a project of years.