Thursday, March 9. 2023
A dogmatic belief in science is contrary to the principle of science itself.
Joseph Cropsey - full quote at Powerline
Friday, February 17. 2023
Via Powerline:
John Adams: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
Mark Twain: “Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.”
Tuesday, January 31. 2023
Friday, January 27. 2023
“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tuesday, January 10. 2023
"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing poorly."
G.K. Chesterton, reminded by AVI
Depends on what the thing is, doesn't it?
Thursday, December 22. 2022
About 5 years ago there was a Political QQQ posted. Today I'll post another by the same person.
"How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being?" ~Auberon Herbert
I recently was in a heated debate with someone who called volunteerism a "Republican guilt complex", stating that government directed welfare was better and anything done voluntarily would never live up to overall needs as effectively.
I disagreed. I believe compelling people to do something doesn't make them good. Furthermore, it opens the door to corruption, destruction, and destitution. Politicians view the money collected as 'theirs' and they will do as they please with it. But you get to feel good. You 'did' something, right?
Thursday, October 27. 2022
Wednesday, October 5. 2022
"It is difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding something."
Upton Sinclair
Tuesday, October 4. 2022
Via Powerline:
“When a religious scheme is shattered…it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Thursday, August 18. 2022
"I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened."
Mark Twain
Monday, July 11. 2022
I would like to say I'm sorry for disappearing for so long. Not that I'm essential to the inner workings of Maggie's, but I've seen a few people (specifically Doc Mercury, who pulled me in) simply vanish. I'd prefer to not just disappear. But it's been a strange time for me the past 7 months. I'll share more on that at another time. I am writing specifically because I finished the podcast "Revolutions" which, frankly, is worth the time and effort if you have it. I listened on the train every morning and evening - and then at the gym when there was no train. As it turns out the most interesting revolutions were the French and Russian. Which were also the longest portions, by far.
There was a lot to consume, but it did leave me with many thoughts. Not the least of which is that the U.S. is bordering on its own French Revolution, of sorts. The Woke/Cancel/BLM/CRT crowd are aligned in one thing. Eliminating what they view as injustice and privilege - which is, in essence, the elimination of liberty.
Mikhail Bakunin:
"Liberty, without socialism, is privilege and injustice. But socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality."
The founders of Marxist revolutions were acutely aware that Socialism/Marxism was unworkable. Even Bakunin knew it - though he couched his 'reality' by saying it "might" work with liberty.
The problem is, of course, socialism cannot work with liberty. It's unworkable. Once people can do as they please, the system reverts to a mad form of crony capitalism - basically fascism. If you're not doing what the government wants, what's the point? In a weird way, fascism IS socialism "with" liberty...
And there's the rub. While I do not believe liberty is privilege and injustice (far from it, I do believe liberty is whatever you want it to be and if you fall into the realm of permanent victimhood, then so be it. Don't blame the system, blame your world view and yourself), I understand the nature and value of how a system of liberty makes things better for everyone. Even if some privilege and some injustice sneak in. Because the alternatives are, frankly, far, far worse.
So it's always fun to hear someone say "I'm a trained Marxist." Because Marx left no blueprints. Unlike most other economic systems, which follow some basic laws or guidelines, Marxism has none and never did. It was just an ideal propped up by bland sayings which pulled at heartstrings, morality, and a general feeling of what is "fair" and "just". I like to say that "fair" means different things to different people. There is no "fair". "Fair" is what a 5 year old says when it wants what it wants. "It's not fair."
The sad part is, even as Leftists push for "fair" they are the first to invoke "life isn't fair" as they destroy people along the way.
Ironic, and sad. But Eric Hoffer was wise to all that...
Friday, June 24. 2022
"Grandchildren don’t make a man feel old, it’s the knowledge that he’s married to a grandmother that does."
J. Norman Collie
Tuesday, June 7. 2022
I like vacations because I can escape all of my possessions.
- Scott Adams
Thursday, June 2. 2022
George Balanchine, paraphrased: "Any distinction between art and entertainment is not worth making."
If something is labeled as "art," I think we tend to give more attention to what is done. Is that right?
Tuesday, May 31. 2022
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.
- Michelangelo
Tuesday, April 12. 2022
Camping: where you spend a small fortune to live like a homeless person.
My doctor asked if anyone in my family suffers from mental illness. I said, "No, we all seem to enjoy it."
Thursday, March 17. 2022
In his science fiction novel Nemesis, Isaac Asimov describes a female character as possessing the "unloveable virtues": Serious, Practical, Responsible, Dutiful.
When I googled the concept, I found this: "Stan Asimov used to say that his brother Isaac had "all the unlovable virtues". Then, while describing a character in Nemesis, Isaac wrote "she possesses what someone once described to me as all the unlovable virtues"."
Tuesday, March 8. 2022
'The first casualty, when war comes, is truth.'
- Hiram Johnson (1866-1945)
I do not believe a single thing I read about this war. It is all propaganda lies from all sides.
Friday, February 18. 2022
"The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident."
Charles Lamb
Monday, December 13. 2021
From a reader:
“It had happened to so many of my friends. The lecture ends, “Slow down. You’re not as young as you once were.”
And I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it’s such a sweet trap.
“Who doesn’t like to be a center for concern? A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby.”
John Steinbeck, from Travels with Charley
Tuesday, December 7. 2021
Politicians are the same all over: they promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
Nikita Khrushchev, Russian Soviet politician
Sunday, December 5. 2021
"Liberals have invented whole college majors -- psychology, sociology and women's studies -- to prove that nothing is anybody's fault."
P. J. O'Rourke, via Nothing is Anybody's Fault
Tuesday, November 30. 2021
"What is the chief end of man?” And we answered together so one of us could carry on if the other forgot, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.”
Sunday, October 24. 2021
Knowing about something, and knowing something, are different
- Anonymous
Monday, October 11. 2021
"Live and don't learn, that's us."
- Hobbes, the Tiger
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