Virginia Postrel Quotes

Glamour doesn’t just happen, people don’t wake up in the morning glamorous.

Glamour is all about transcending this world and getting to an idealized, perfect place.

The impulse for personal adornment is hard to stamp out.

In a dynamic, decentralized system of individual choice and responsibility, people do not have to trust any authority but their own.

Glamour is translucent — not transparent, not opaque. It invites us into the world but it doesn’t give us a completely clear picture.

On the Internet, people on the tails of the bell curve can find one another.

The glamour of air travel - its aspirational meaning in the public imagination - disappeared before its luxury did, dissipating as flying gradually became commonplace.

Progress through trial and error depends not only on making trials, but on recognizing errors.

The mobile middle class gravitates to the cities where housing is affordable.

Medicare is immune from the competitive pressures that force private insurers to pay attention to what patients and doctors want.

At the simplest level, only people who know they do not know everything will be curious enough to find things out.

The children who are 'our future' will inherit a world created not just by parental devotion but by the sort of zealous, focused endeavors that can preclude good parenting.

Surprise drives progress because innovation depends on the sort of knowledge no one can gather in a central place.

The growth of medical expenditures in the U.S. is not caused by administrative costs but by increases in the technical intensity of care over time - a.k.a. medical progress.

The glamour of twentieth-century air travel helped to persuade once-fearful travelers to take to the skies and encouraged parochial Americans to go out and see the world.