I have been gradually coming under the conviction, disturbing for a professional theorist, that there is no such thing as economics - there is only s… - Kenneth E. Boulding

There is a kind of second law of cultural dynamics which states simply that when anything has been done, it cannot be done again. In other words, we start off any system with a potential for novelty which is gradually exhausted. We see this in every field of human life, in the arts as well as the sciences. Once Beethoven has written the Ninth Symphony, nobody else can do it. Consequently, we find that in any evolutionary process, even in the arts, the search for novelty becomes corrupting. The "entropy trap" is perhaps the most subtle and the most fundamental of the obstacles toward realising the developed society...

The only religion that still demands human sacrifice is nationalism.

The world moves into the future as a result of decisions, not as a result of plans. Plans are significant only insofar as they affect decisions.