John Cowperthwaite Quotes & Sayings

THE VALLEY OF FEAR — Arthur Conan Doyle

I would suggest to my honourable Friend that the foreign investor is at least as discouraged by high national debt for that, as all example shows, is the surest precursor of high taxation. — John James Cowperthwaite

If people want consultative government, the price is increased complexity and delay in arriving at decisions. If they want speed of government, then they must accept a greater degree of authoritarianism. I suspect that the real answer is that most people prefer the latter so long, that is, as government's decisions conform with their own views. — John James Cowperthwaite

I have wanted to do this," he said, "every moment of every hour of every day that I have been with you since the day I met you. but you know that. You must know. Don't you? — Cassandra Clare

A glimmer of light is better than no illumination at all. — John James Cowperthwaite

Or maybe I hadn't. Maybe I'd just been waiting for this moment, right now. — Morgan Matson

I hold that two principles are important; first that there should be a steady expansion of public services, not an irregular one related to revenue accruing in any particular year; the second that taxes should be constant over long periods (provided, that is, that they are neither burdensome nor inequitable). — John James Cowperthwaite

I am afraid that I do not believe that any body of men can have enough knowledge of the past, the present and the future to establish "development priorities" which presumably means procuring some developments as being good and prohibiting others as being bad. — John James Cowperthwaite

One trouble is that when Government gets into a business it tends to make it uneconomic for anyone else. — John James Cowperthwaite

I should like to begin with a philosophical comment. I do not think that when one is speaking of hardships or benefits one can reasonably speak in terms of classes or social groups but only in terms of individuals. — John James Cowperthwaite

We enjoy a considerable net inflow of capital and I am sure that a condition of its coming, and staying, is that it is free to flow out again. It is also important for Hong Kong's status as a financial centre that there should be a maximum freedom of capital movement both in and out. — John James Cowperthwaite

Official opposition to overall economic planning and planning controls has been characterized in a recent editorial as "Papa knows best". But it is precisely because Papa does not know best that I believe that Government should not presume to tell any businessman or industrialist what he should or should not do, far less what he may or not do; and no matter how it may be dressed up that is what planning is. — John James Cowperthwaite

Over a wide field of our economy it is still the better course to rely on the nineteenth century's "hidden hand" than to thrust clumsy bureaucratic fingers into its sensitive mechanism. In particular, we cannot afford to damage its mainspring, freedom of competitive enterprise. — John James Cowperthwaite

What gives me concern in so much of the comment is the implication that the people of Hong Kong have to be given a reward, like children, for being good last year, and bribed, like children, into being good next year. I myself repudiate this paternalistic, indeed colonialist, attitude as a gross insult to our people — John James Cowperthwaite

I am also, I must confess, a little sceptical of the theory that we have a right, if we could, to pass on our capital burden to future generations. I remarked last year in this context that our predecessors had not passed any significant part of their burden on to us. — John James Cowperthwaite

The fact that previous generations have handed down to us a substantial public heritage by way of roads, port, etc. almost completely free of debt, seems to me to impose some limitation on the validity of the theory that by borrowing we should, or could, pass on the burden of development to the next generation. — John James Cowperthwaite

Wash me." Damen had never performed a servile task in his life, but he supposed that this one would not overwhelm either his pride or his comprehension. By now he knew the customs of the baths. But he felt a sense of subtle satisfaction from Laurent, and a corresponding internal resistance. It was an uncomfortably intimate form of attendance; he was not restrained, and they were alone, one man serving another. All — C.S. Pacat

My own views on all matters of public revenue and public expenditure are conditioned by an acute appreciation of whose is the sacrifice that produces public revenue and to whom accrues the benefit of public spending. — John James Cowperthwaite

I am confident, however old-fashioned this may sound, that funds left in the hands of the public will come into the Exchequer with interest at the time in the future when we need them. — John James Cowperthwaite

The Roaring Twenties were the period of that Great American Prosperity which was built on shaky foundations. — J. Paul Getty

Obviously dick was involved." "Hashtag dick. — Karina Halle

I must confess my distaste for any proposal to use public funds for the support of selected, and thereby, privileged, industrialists, the more particularly if this is to be based on bureaucratic views of what is good and what is bad by way of industrial development. An infant industry, if coddled, tends to remain an infant industry and never grows up or expands. — John James Cowperthwaite

But Mockingjays were never a weapon," said Madge. "They're just songbirds. Right?"
"Yeah, I guess so," I said, But it's not true. A mockingbird is just a songbird. A mockingjay is a creature the capitol never intended to exist. They hadn't counted on the highly controlled jabberjay having the brains to adapt to the wild, to thrive in a new form. They hadn't anticipated its will to live. — Suzanne Collins

As a child she had believed that wrongs would always be righted, that somehow the world would not let the innocent suffer, but now she realised that this was not true. Old oppressors were replaced by new ones, from another distant place or from right next door. Old lies were replaced by new ones, backed up by old threats. — Alexander McCall Smith

This is night, Diddykins. That's what we call it when it goes all dark like this. — J.K. Rowling

In the beginning, Adam was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow - not Eve. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother's place is in the home! — Ezra Taft Benson

Deficit financing proper is rather the process whereby a Government spends more money that it withdraws from the economy by taxation, borrowing, running down reserves, etc.; thereby causing in most circumstances, and very acutely in ours, monetary inflation and severe pressure on the balance of payments. — John James Cowperthwaite

I still believe that, in the long run, the aggregate of the decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is likely to do less harm than the centralized decisions of a Government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster. As I said earlier in this debate, our economic medicine may be painful but it is fast and powerful because it can act freely. — John James Cowperthwaite

We're all stumbling towards the light with varying degrees of grace at any given moment. — Bo Lozoff

Money cannot be converted into houses or trained teachers or hospitals at the touch of a magic wand. There are limitations to our physical and intellectual resources. — John James Cowperthwaite

Revenue has increased in this way is in no small measure, I am convinced, due to our low tax policy which has helped to generate an economic expansion in the face of unfavourable circumstances — John James Cowperthwaite

I largely agree with those that hold that Government should not in general interfere with the course of the economy merely on the strength of its own commercial judgment. If we cannot rely on the judgment of individual businessmen, taking their own risks, we have no future anyway. — John James Cowperthwaite

A condom is a rubber thing shaped like a wiener that hums. — Bill Engvall

The intoxication with the theatre, with its limelight, costumes, and masks, and with its passions and conflicts, accords well with the adolescence of a man who was to act his role with an intense sense of the dramatic, and of whose life it might indeed be said that its very shape had the power and pattern of classical tragedy. — Isaac Deutscher