Quote

People value Halloween, like Valentine's Day, because they can tell themselves that it's not merely secularized but actually secular, which is to say, not Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim.

Amity Shlaes

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Amity Shlaes
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 10
Author
Biographer
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
Actually
Valentine
Christian
Halloween
Tell
Secular
Like
Muslim
People
Jewish
Merely
Value
Secularized
Values
Hindu

More quotes by Amity Shlaes

Image
If Coolidge were a stock, he'd be a buy. The experts have historically ranked Coolidge in the bottom quartile or bottom half of all presidents. But his economic performance and his statesmanship suggest Coolidge belongs in the top quarter of presidents. The disparity between the Coolidge price and Coolidge value is huge. So revision is warranted.
Amity Shlaes
Image
Right now we're concerned about budget. Right now we're concerned about the prospect of interest rate rise. We're concerned about government corruption, government handing out deals to specific groups. Coolidge fixed a problem like that. He came into a rough time and he, and Harding before him, fixed that by budgeting.
Amity Shlaes
Image
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
Image
Everybody should pay some tax, just as everybody should vote.
Amity Shlaes
Image
The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.
Amity Shlaes
Image
Coolidge's stat was so low he's ranked in the bottom half of presidents. What I found when I encountered this man was the leader I might like to see today.
Amity Shlaes
Image
Coolidge and his treasury secretary Mellon loved new technology. Like JFK, C.C. divined that a new technology could lift the nation out of its doldrums the only difference was that JFK's new technology was space travel, and Coolidge's travel by airplane.
Amity Shlaes
Image
The 1920s are the decade that signaled the arrival of a gift that still means a lot to us: Saturday.
Amity Shlaes
Image
Coolidge really hated government being in the power business. He thought it was wrong. He saw the potential for growth in the power business. He didn't want the federal government in it.
Amity Shlaes
Image
To investors, job creation is a second-order effect. Market participants care first about interest rates, exchange rates, bond prices and the one great factor that affects all three: the long-term solvency of a bond company called the U.S. government.
Amity Shlaes
Image
In a way, Calvin Coolidge is better than Reagan. His tax rates were lower, and he cut budgets.
Amity Shlaes
Image
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
Image
Europe unified its monetary policy through the euro before it unified politically, therefore sustaining member countries' abilities to pursue the kind of independent fiscal policies that can strain a joint currency.
Amity Shlaes
Image
Anyone who experienced World War I close-hand was grossed out by it forever. It just was so awful.
Amity Shlaes
Image
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
Image
Our conscience, our faith, our local community, even our online hobby clubs - all civilize us.
Amity Shlaes
Image
I think the Bushes would have liked President Coolidge, though I often wonder what nickname 43 would pick for 30. President Bush has great respect for his father, and so did President Coolidge, whose father was also in government, albeit in a smaller way.
Amity Shlaes
Image
Economics are part of our life. We try to treat them separately, like over there is the economy and here is history. Econ affects history and history often doesn't get it right if it doesn't respect econ.
Amity Shlaes
Image
There's something unsettling about the education of a child who comfortably enumerates the rules for surviving zombie apocalypse but finds it uncomfortable to enumerate the rules of his grandparents' faith, if he knows them.
Amity Shlaes
Image
Coolidge was a pragmatist. He didn't start out with a tax theory. But he observed over time that lower tax rates sometimes brought in extra revenue. The success of his and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's experiment with rate cuts has been obscured by our modern history books.
Amity Shlaes