Blame Games ..
Dogmatic Evolution ..GKC on Education ..Puritanism ..
Tuesday 31 October 2023
Saturday 28 October 2023
Monday 23 October 2023
Exhaust Alternatives
If at first you don't succeed, try try again ..........
"The question is whether there is any reason to believe that such a new era may yet come to pass. If I am sanguine on this point, it is because of a conviction that men and nations do behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. Surely the other alternatives of war and belligerency have now been exhausted." ~ Abba Eban*
And indeed, we often know how to do things by the philosophy that was expounded by another Irishman I know. He said that you can depend on Americans to do the right thing when they have exhausted every other possibility. ~ U.S. Congressional Hearing in 1970
Sunday 22 October 2023
GKC on Education
"I was told about [Greek capital letters] merely for fun while I was still a child; while the others I learnt during the period of what is commonly called education; that is, the period during which I was being instructed by somebody I did not know, about something I did not want to know." [GKC, Autobiography CW16:60]
Friday 20 October 2023
Ideas, Events, People, (Self)
Great Minds Discuss Ideas; Average Minds Discuss Events; Small Minds Discuss People. ~ Variously attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Stewart, Henry Thomas Buckle, James H. Halsey, Hyman G. Rickover, Anonymous.
Updated version: Great Minds Discuss Ideas; Average Minds Discuss Events; Small Minds Discuss People; Narcissists Praise Themselves. ~ moi
“Men and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence; you can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons; the next by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas.” ~ Henry Thomas Buckle (per Charles Stewart, 1901)
Men and women actually operate in four cognitive classes: narcissists focus on self, lowest on persons, middling on things, intellectuals on ideas.
Monday 16 October 2023
Lying
“The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”
― Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs .
― Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs .
Moronic UNpresident
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
Saturday 14 October 2023
Opinions
Just remember: Opinions are like gods. There may be a countless array of them, but people still only believe in their own. ~ Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
Friday 13 October 2023
Patriotism vs Nationalism
"Le patriotisme c'est l'amour des siens. Le nationalisme c'est la haine des autres. ... Si l'on retranchait du patriotisme de la plupart des hommes la haine et le mépris des autres nations, il resterait peu de choses." [Charles de Gaulle]
Translation: "Patriotism is the love of one's own. Nationalism is hatred of others. ... If we extracted the hatred and contempt of other nations from the patriotism of most men, little would remain."
More simply: “Patriotism is love of one's own; nationalism is hatred of others.” [Charles de Gaulle]
“Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.” [George Orwell]
“The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.” [Sydney J. Harris]
Puritanism
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”~ H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
Friday 6 October 2023
Wasted Talent
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." -- Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
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