Tony's Garden

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, youdon’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is notdoing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, orless sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we haveproblems with our friends or family, we blame the otherperson. But if we know how to…

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” ― Milton Friedman BIRTHDAYS: 1684 Jean-Antoine Watteau, French Rococo painter 1700 Lambert-Sigisbert Adam, French sculptor 1713 Johann Ludwig Krebs, German organist and composer. Prelude and Fugue in C major 1738 Benjamin West, Anglo-American painter 1813 Giuseppe Verdi, Italian…

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” ― Frederic Bastiat BIRTHDAYS: 1585 Heinrich Schütz, German organist and composer. Lobe dem Herren 1626 John Ferrabosco, composer. Four-Note…

“A wounded tiger is a dangerous beast.” ― Arthur Golden BIRTHDAYS: 1551 Giulio Caccini, Italian composer, violist, tenor, and teacher. Tu ch’ai le penne amore, and Amor ch’attendi 1868 Max Slevogt, German painter 1869 J. Frank Duryea, American inventor (Duryea Motor Wagon Company, first auto built in the US) 1893 Orovida Camille Pissarro, British painter…

“The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” ― Aldous Huxley BIRTHDAYS: 1698 Henri Madin, French composer. Te Deum For The Victories of Louis XV 1798 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, French musical instrument inventor, luthier and violin maker (Octobass) 1821 William Still, African-American abolitionist, businessman and…

“You can’t tax your way to a balanced budget without tanking the job creation that actually generates tax receipts.” ― Matt Kibbe BIRTHDAYS: 1866 Reginald Fessenden, Canadian-American inventor and radio pioneer. 1882 Karol Szymanowski, Polish pianist and composer. Prélude Op. 1 Nr. 1 1914 Thor Heyerdahl, Ethnographer, Archaeologist and Explorer. 1950 David Brin, American sci-fi…

“Decentralized means learning cannot easily be curtailed by autocratic governments and is considerably more immune to socioeconomic upheaval.” ― Peter H. Diamandis BIRTHDAYS: 1590 Johann Schop, German composer and violinist. Nasce la pena mia, and Lachrimae Pavan from Uitnemend Kabinet, Amsterdam, 1649. 1684 Johann Jacob de Neufville, German composer. Ciacona 1712 Francesco Guardi, Italian painter…

“Seizing the results of someone’s labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities. If people force you to do certain work, or unrewarded work, for a certain period of time, they decide what you are to do and what purposes your work is to serve apart from…

“What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds…

“Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.” ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi BIRTHDAYS: 1817 Gunnar Wennerberg, Swedish poet and composer. Gör portarna höga 1890 Groucho Marx, Third-born of the…