It takes only a few seconds to make history new again.

War World War I Awful

Anyone who experienced World War I close-hand was grossed out by it forever. It just was so awful.

- Amity Shlaes

Like New Sailboat

Disillusionment can come as fast as a gust, but building faith that the government won't inflate again is like building a new sailboat, a project of years.

- Amity Shlaes

Deal Through Taxes

Interest groups are not the same as individuals. Through false nostalgia for the New Deal, you are taking the younger generation hostage. They are the ones who are going to have to pay far greater taxes. They are the future's forgotten men.

- Amity Shlaes

Study Firmly Parent

With demands for special education or standardized test prep being shouted in their ears, public schools can't always hear a parent when he says: 'I want my child to be able to write contracts in Spanish,' or, 'I want my child to shake hands firmly,' or, 'I want my child to study statistics and accounting, not calculus.'

- Amity Shlaes

Next Students Graduates

Grades can matter, especially for those students and parents who live for the next round of applications to graduate or professional schools. But there's a problem with the grade emphasis. Math or science graduates earn more than students majoring in the humanities.

- Amity Shlaes

Subject Lucky Friendship

Anything can be done if you find friends to do it with. The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.

- Amity Shlaes

Some Should Everybody

Everybody should pay some tax, just as everybody should vote.

- Amity Shlaes

Reader Otherwise Offending

If you do a serious presidential bio, you want to supply the reader with maximum material because otherwise you're offending the reader. A president for many people is a serious thing and they want to know everything.

- Amity Shlaes

Some I Think Prove

I think some authors suffer from a need to try to prove that they're clever and educated. I try not to suffer from that. I would rather sacrifice my own narrative in the exercise of writing a biography. So I'm not worried about whether I'm clever.

- Amity Shlaes

Think All Americans Kind

We're in a kind of vicious cycle where the media tell the politicians, and the politicians tell the people, that perception is reality, and the perception of saving dooms a politician. I don't believe perception is reality, or that all Americans think that.

- Amity Shlaes

Tell Benefits Economy

Coolidge believed that government officials who tell themselves that spending benefits the economy delude themselves and the citizens. Government budgets promote human freedom.

- Amity Shlaes

Something Wrong Economy

In my view, if you have one in 10 unemployed - something is wrong with the economy whether you call it recession or not.

- Amity Shlaes

Change Rates Fired

A while ago I did a story comparing the change in employment rates in recessions in the U.S. and in Europe, and what I found was that America fired a lot of people and rehired a lot of people faster than Europe. That difference is disappearing, and that is a problem.

- Amity Shlaes

Business Desperate Leaders

When you see government leaders really bullying business, you know that government's economic policy is failing. They get angry and they get desperate.

- Amity Shlaes

Always Marketplace Wanting

I'm always for lower taxes because lower taxes make people want to do things. Less burden, more fun, and economics is about people wanting to have fun. Growth is fun for people in the marketplace.

- Amity Shlaes

Think Always Pat

When you do something moral and upright and wander off by yourself, well, everyone doesn't always follow you, do they, right? You pat yourself on your sanctimonious back but it doesn't mean the crowd rewards you for doing what you think is right.

- Amity Shlaes

Other Concerned United

Eventually the dollar won't always rule. Eventually there will be a challenge to the United States and it will have to be like other countries that are a bit concerned about their currency, and then have to ratchet back in order to - right, in order to sustain. We just haven't reached that point yet.

- Amity Shlaes

College New Inclusive

By playing on people's desire to belong to groups, Facebook creates a new, inclusive society. After all, Facebook is not like Harvard College. Anyone with access to the Internet can sign up.

- Amity Shlaes

Education Private Added

In the end, all new schools, public or private, snobby or not, add value to the education market, making it bigger and more efficient, in the same way that Zuckerberg added wealth to the economy even for non-Facebook fans.

- Amity Shlaes

Internal Gender Efficiency

The result of the collaborative culture is that corporations or government institutions focus intensely on internal culture and pour their energy into achieving minuscule policy changes relating to workplace efficiency, gender or race.

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