16 Quotes by David D. Friedman

Seldom do the silent Speak foolishly.

Safe to tell a secret to one, Risky to two, To tell it to three is folly.

The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations.

Successful revolutionaries do occasionally end up in positions of power, but they seem more likely, on the historical record, to end up dead, courtesy of their comrades. In any case, revolution has its own logic, and it is, like that of politics, a logic of power. So revolution, like politics, selects out for success those with the desire and ability to wield power.

In eighteenth-century England a system of professional police and prosecutors, government paid and appointed, was viewed as potentially tyrannical – worse still, French.

Pretending to others that your opponents are stupid may sometimes be a sensible tactic. Believing that they are is usually a serious mistake.

That illustrates my rule of thumb for reading history: View with suspicion any anecdote that makes a good enough story to have survived on its literary merits.