Vasily Stalin was "fine proof that the abuser of power corrupts everyone he touches, including his own children.  The Caesars, having reached the acme of their power, often left behind them children flawed in body and soul, morally dead while the dictator was still living and revelling in his own immorality."  -Dmitri Volkogonov

Svetlana Stalin, daughter of Josef, was by many standards mediocre at best.  She had several children by several men with whom she had short relationships, wasn't particularly productive, and at times equivocated between the USA and USSR.  And yet -- having some of the most awful parents in the world -- perhaps she was great.  As Jay Nordlinger writes, "[Stalin's] lone daughter broke through the mesmerism... Her conscience rose in rebellion against her father and his state.  This makes her exceedingly rare..."

John McWhorter wrote, "Being middle class, upwardly mobile, and Black has been quite common during my existence" and "I neither need nor want anyone to muse on how whiteness privileges them over me."  Hear hear.  

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”  -Friedrich Nietzsche

If a man can be driven to suicide by guilt, perhaps so can a nation.

It's very easy to repudiate racial stereotypes.  Unless you're a cab driver.  Unless you're a shop owner.  Unless you're a cop.  Unless you're someone whose life or livelihood depends on stereotyping.

Just like it's easy for me to repudiate dialysis since I have two working kidneys.

A remarkable number of free people today follow the maxim, "A still tongue makes a wise head."  I’m not sure our country can survive the quiet of the good.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/11/the-fallacy-of-white-privilege-and-how-its-corroding-society/

"Here is an industry, which supplies convenience and comforts to the day laborer which kings could not command half a century ago."

Samuel Insull was quite a man:  Personal secretary to Edison before becoming an energy magnate.  Then an international fugitive.

"Aim for the top. There is plenty of room there. There are so few at the top it is almost lonely there."

Most of the quotes for the episode came from They Made America by Harold Evans.  It's one of Thomas Sowell's favorite books, so you should probably buy it:  https://www.amazon.com/They-Made-America-Centuries-Innovators/dp/0316277665/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=harold+evans+they+made+americac&qid=1595317983&sr=8-1

A "Very Good" copy available now for $6.  Unbelievable deal for this tome.

'Why is it that people who worry the most about mankind have the least concern for any actual human being?'  -Ayn Rand

I read an excerpt from "Not With a Bang But With a Whimper" by Theodore Dalrymple.  He writes of a British man who was convicted of assaulting or raping 15 women before being released and murdering Naomi Bryant.

The Scorpion and the Frog and is the best explanation of evil I know of.

Forgiveness is overrated.  Case in point:  An Arkansas woman forgave and even befriended her mother's killer.  He then killed her.

“There are pleasures, no doubt, to be had in crying in the wilderness, in being a man who thinks he has seen farther and more keenly than others, but they grow fewer with time. The wilderness has lost its charms for me.” -Theodore Dalrymple

https://people.com/crime/ark-woman-befriended-moms-killer-out-of-spiritual-obligation-and-then-he-murdered-her/