Henry Hazlitt Quotes

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

The left is really good at selling bad ideas and the right is really bad at selling good ideas.

To be considered presidential timber, there has to be a measure in the way you present your argument.

Maybe Rock and Elizabeth Warren could team up and shore up each other's weaknesses. Elizabeth Warren has a plan for everything and all the experience, and The Rock could sell it to the people, 'cause the people could smell what Rock is cooking.

It's not important how many mistakes you make; it's about how many chances you create and how many goals you score. That is my philosophy.

Milton Friedman had the grace and good sense to recognize that he wanted to talk to the general public. He wasn't going to just lecture to the people who happened to appear in his classroom in Chicago or on some lecture circuit. He went out to talk to the general public, believing that you had to convince a democratic nation to change its ways, and he succeeded to a considerable extent.

Mistakes, I know I've made a few. But I'm only human, you've made mistakes, too.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practised [sic] and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech. And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too much on speech-making. If any one, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.

he who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors

Let me just acknowlege that the function of grammar is to make language as efficent and clear and transparent as possible. But if we’re all constantly correcting each other’s grammar and being really snotty about it, then people stop talking because they start to be petrified that they’re going to make some sort of terrible grammatical error and that’s precisely the opposite of what grammar is supposed to do, which is to facilitate clear communication.

Philosophy can be compared to some powders that are so corrosive that, after they have eaten away the infected flesh of a wound, they then devour the living flesh, rot the bones, and penetrate to the very marrow. Philosophy at first refutes errors. But if it is not stopped at this point, it goes on to attack truths. And when it is left on its own, it goes so far that it no longer knows where it is and can find no stopping place.

But in the end one also has to understand that the needs that religion has satisfied and philosophy is now supposed to satisfy are not immutable; they can be weakened and exterminated. Consider, for example, that Christian distress of mind that comes from sighing over ones inner depravity and care for ones salvation - all concepts originating in nothing but errors of reason and deserving, not satisfaction, but obliteration.

Talk less-you will automatically learn more, hear more, see more-and make fewer blunders.

Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.

Merely stating a truth isn't enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship.

Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

Man errs as long as he strives.

One can usually put one's thoughts better in one's own words.

... the approach of admitting our errors, besides being most true to a gospel of grace, is also most effective at expressing who we are. Propaganda turns people off; humbly admitting mistakes disarms.

All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between extremes.

Please tell me you will remember, no matter how much I do wrong that I had the best of intentions all along.

I try to most effectively and persuasively present our argument, in a way that gives other people the information they need to decide, on the merits, the wisdom of the path that the president has advocated.

Since the time of Plato and Aristotle philosophers have had an interest in taking note of common fallacies in reasoning.

Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.