59 Quotes by Amity Shlaes

In the end, all new schools, public or private, snobby or not, add value to the education market, making it bigger and more efficient, in the same way that Zuckerberg added wealth to the economy even for non-Facebook fans.

The difference between recession and depression is simple. Recession, goes the saying, is when you lose your job; depression is when I lose mine.

The 1920s are the decade that signaled the arrival of a gift that still means a lot to us: Saturday.

People value Halloween, like Valentine’s Day, because they can tell themselves that it’s not merely secularized but actually secular, which is to say, not Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim.

Coolidge believed higher taxes were wrong because they took away from men money that was their property; he believed lower rates were good precisely because they encouraged enterprise, but also because they brought less money. Low rates starved the government beast.

We’re in a kind of vicious cycle where the media tell the politicians, and the politicians tell the people, that perception is reality, and the perception of saving dooms a politician. I don’t believe perception is reality, or that all Americans think that.

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.

Most presidents place faith in action; the modern presidency is perpetual motion. Coolidge made virtue of inaction.

One should never trouble about getting a better job. But one should do one’s present job in such a manner as to qualify for a better job when it comes along.” The.