Insights, Snippets, Quotes, Epiphanies & All That Sort of Things

[Karl Henning]

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

[Wakefield]

Brilliantly insightful. Mandatory for everyone interested in the future of physical books, e-books and almost any form of digital copy:

"Used e-book, slightly foxed" by Nicholas Carr [enriched with some stupendous comments by him and some readers]:

http://www.roughtype.com/?p=2869

[Wakefield]

I'd love to know the source of this great G.B. Shaw's quotation, but I haven't found it:

If I have an idea and give the idea away it is not gone, but I still have it! This experience does not conform to the arithmetic of things.

Let us examine this experience from the point of view of exchange. If I have an apple and you have an apple and we exchange apples -- then you have an apple and I have an apple. But if I have the idea that the apple is red and you have the idea that the apple is small and we exchange ideas, then you have two ideas and I have two ideas. It is quite obvious, therefore, that the laws governing thoughts or ideas are different from the laws governing things. If I have an idea and give it away, I still have it to give again, and if I give the idea away again and again, I still have the idea left.

[Wakefield]

... the legend (says) that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a novel in just six words. His heartbreaking result: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

-- Things Don't Have to Be Complicated by Larry Smith (2012)

[Wakefield]

G.K. Chesterton explaining to his dedicatee C. F G. Masterman, M. P., his reasons to write What's Wrong with the World:

Well, I do it partly because I think you politicians are none the worse for a few inconvenient ideals; but more because you will recognise the many arguments we have had, those arguments which the most wonderful ladies in the world can never endure for very long. And, perhaps, you will agree with me that the thread of comradeship and conversation must be protected because it is so frivolous. It must be held sacred, it must not be snapped, because it is not worth tying together again. It is exactly because argument is idle that men (I mean males) must take it seriously; for when (we feel), until the crack of doom, shall we have so delightful a difference again? But most of all I offer it to you because there exists not only comradeship, but a very different thing, called friendship; an agreement under all the arguments and a thread which, please God, will never break.

[Florestan]

From Erich Fromm's The Sane Society (1955)

A relatively primitive village in which there are still real feasts, common artistic shared expressions, and no literacy at all—is more advanced culturally and more healthy mentally than our educated, newspaper-reading radio-listening culture..

In the development of both capitalism and communism, as we visualize them in the next fifty or a hundred years, the processes that encourage human alienation will continue. Both systems are developing into managerial societies, their inhabitants well fed, well clad, having their wishes satisfied, and not having wishes that cannot be satisfied. Men are increasingly automatons, who make machines which act like men and produce men who act like machines; there reason deteriorates while their intelligence rises, thus creating the dangerous situation of equipping man with the greatest material power without the wisdom to use it.

In spite of increasing production and comfort, man loses more and more the sense of self, feels that his life is meaningless, even though such a feeling is largely unconscious. In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

[Florestan]

St. Thomas Aquinas on government:

A King who is unfaithful to his duty forfeits his claim to obedience. It is not rebellion to depose him, for he is himself a rebel whom the nation has a right to put down. But it is better to abridge his power, that he may be unable to abuse it. For this purpose, the whole nation ought to have a share in governing itself; the constitution ought to combine a limited and elective monarchy, with an aristocracy of merit, and such an admixture of democracy as shall admit all classes to office, by popular election. No government has a right to levy taxes beyond the limit determined by the people. All political authority is derived from popular suffrage, and all laws must be made by the people or their representatives. There is no security for us as long as we depend on the will of another man.

[MishaK]

I like this thread and decided to help it float to the top:

"Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top."

--Edward Abbey

Ha! This needs a small amendment: "If you don't stir it up once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top and the bottom gets burned." 

"Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks!"

I prefer:

"Everything in moderation, including moderation."

This seems to have been attributed to several people from Oscar Wilde to Julia Child.

Along the same lines, one of my favorites, from a fortune cookie I once received:

"He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough."

[springrite]

On my recent trip to Sichuan, China, I saw these two signs, one on entrance to the freeway and the other on a street corner, apparently using quotes from a local official.

"You may enjoy driving. You may enjoy grabbing tits. But never do both at the same time!"
(This after photos of someone driving while grabbing the tits of a lady on the passenger seat was posted online.)

"As a society, we need good Sameritans, but not ones without life insurance."
(This after a good sameritan was killed and the family sues the government for financial support.)

[Parsifal]

I'd love to know the source of this great G.B. Shaw's quotation, but I haven't found it:

If I have an idea and give the idea away it is not gone, but I still have it! This experience does not conform to the arithmetic of things.

Let us examine this experience from the point of view of exchange. If I have an apple and you have an apple and we exchange apples -- then you have an apple and I have an apple. But if I have the idea that the apple is red and you have the idea that the apple is small and we exchange ideas, then you have two ideas and I have two ideas. It is quite obvious, therefore, that the laws governing thoughts or ideas are different from the laws governing things. If I have an idea and give it away, I still have it to give again, and if I give the idea away again and again, I still have the idea left.

That strikes me as fuzzy thinking.

When you "give" an idea away you do not give away the idea itself, you give away the right to the proceeds of the idea.  If, for example, your idea is an algorithm for comparing finger prints and you "give it away" you will have lost the opportunity to make money from your idea, and others will gain the opportunity to make money from your idea.  Their gain is your loss (although it is not strictly zero-sum.)  That is why advanced countries have copyright/patent laws, so people can sell their ideas to those who can make use of them.

[Wakefield]

On my recent trip to Sichuan, China, I saw these two signs, one on entrance to the freeway and the other on a street corner, apparently using quotes from a local official.

"You may enjoy driving. You may enjoy grabbing tits. But never do both at the same time!"
(This after photos of someone driving while grabbing the tits of a lady on the passenger seat was posted online.)

"As a society, we need good Sameritans, but not ones without life insurance."
(This after a good sameritan was killed and the family sues the government for financial support.)

I like the first one. 

I have a question for you about the following paragraph, dear springrite:

The Chinese word for "crisis" (simplified Chinese: 危机; traditional Chinese: 危機; pinyin: wēijī; Wade–Giles: wei-chi) is frequently invoked in motivational speaking along with the statement that the two characters it is composed of represent "danger" and "opportunity." Some[who?] Western linguists consider this analysis fallacious, arguing that the character jī alone does not necessarily mean "opportunity."

From the standpoint of common sense -I know you're not a linguist-, has any sense this explanation of the Chinese word for "crisis"? 

[springrite]

I have a question for you about the following paragraph, dear springrite:

From the standpoint of common sense -I know you're not a linguist-, has any sense this explanation of the Chinese word for "crisis"? 

From a linguistic standpoint, yes, it does make sense although it is not the only interpretation. Ancient Chinese is very, how should we put it? inprecise, which is part of its beauty. It could also mean "moment of danger" or "window of danger", etc. But the most likely scenario is that it meant all of the above but opportunity most of all. Early words are like zen lessons.

[Florestan]

Anton Pavlovich Tchekhov

I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.

The person who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing can never be an artist.

When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day. Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries.

Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.

People should be beautiful in every way—in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts and in their innermost selves.

When we retreat to the country, we are hiding not from people, but from our pride, which, in the city and among people, operates unfairly and immoderately.

Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?

Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.

Pharisaism, obtuseness and tyranny reign not only in the homes of merchants and in jails; I see it in science, in literature, and among youth. I consider any emblem or label a prejudice.... My holy of holies is the human body, health, intellect, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute of freedoms, the freedom from force and falsity in whatever forms they might appear.

He is no longer a city dweller who has even once in his life caught a ruff or seen how, on clear and cool autumn days, flocks of migrating thrushes drift over a village. Until his death he will be drawn to freedom.

[kishnevi]

St. Thomas Aquinas on government:

I got curious about that, and did a bit of googling.  Apparently that passage is more what Lord Acton would have liked Aquinas to say,  and not what Aquinas actually said.
See here, although it expands out from discussing the "quote" towards a more general Catholic political theory.
http://religionandliberty.blogspot.com/2005/09/aquinasfirst-whig-novaks-catholic-whig.html

[Geo Dude]

Excellent set of Chekhov quotes, Florestan, though I am a bit suspicious about what he may have labeled as perversion.

[Florestan]

I got curious about that, and did a bit of googling.  Apparently that passage is more what Lord Acton would have liked Aquinas to say,  and not what Aquinas actually said.

Yes, that's true but I realized it only after I posted it.

See here, although it expands out from discussing the "quote" towards a more general Catholic political theory.
http://religionandliberty.blogspot.com/2005/09/aquinasfirst-whig-novaks-catholic-whig.html

Interesting article, thanks for posting.

Actually, the terms "liberal" and "liberalism" are perhaps the most difficult political ones to define with certainty, their sad perversion in USA notwithstanding . Socialism and conservatism can be explained in 5 minutes to anyone, but liberalism requires a whole seminary in the history of ideas. 

http://www.acton.org/pub/religion-liberty/volume-2-number-4/four-liberalisms

http://www.mmisi.org/ir/33_01/leddihn.pdf

[Florestan]

Excellent set of Chekhov quotes, Florestan, though I am a bit suspicious about what he may have labeled as perversion.

Well, as a physician, he might have known a thing or two about it. 

[Geo Dude]

Well, as a physician, he might have known a thing or two about it. 

Hehehe, nice reply.  I'm just suggesting that his viewpoint on what constitutes a 'perversion' may be a bit outdated...at least in Western countries

Great set of quotes, though.  Where are they pulled from?  I'd love to read more of his thoughts.

[Wakefield]

Well, as a physician, he might have known a thing or two about it. 

Our moral autonomy is proved when we disapprove what it is tolerated by our sensibility.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Escolios a un texto implícito, Atalanta, p. 90



http://www.amazon.es/Escolios-texto-impl%C3%ADcito-Brevis-atalanta/dp/8493724718/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366472643&sr=8-1&keywords=nicolas+gomez+davila

Naturally, I won't need to recall that my first encounter with Gómez Dávila was, some months ago, when he was quoted by you. Thanks again.

[Florestan]

Hehehe, nice reply.  I'm just suggesting that his viewpoint on what constitutes a 'perversion' may be a bit outdated...at least in Western countries

Oh, I do I agree that "sexual perversion" is hard to define; if you ask me, the things that qualify are paedophilia, necrophilia, zoophilia and coprophilia. 

OTOH, if we talk about perverting words' meaning, "liberal" is a prime example: in USA it means "more or less socialist" (actually, more than less) while elsewhere it means the opposite: free market and free trade. 

BTW, here are some gems from Gladstone, a genuine liberal:

I think that the principle of the Conservative Party is jealousy of liberty and of the people, only qualified by fear; but I think the principle of the Liberal Party is trust in the people, only qualified by prudence.

Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.

The rule of our policy is that nothing should be done by the state which can be better or as well done by voluntary effort; and I am not aware that, either in its moral or even its literary aspects, the work of the state for education has as yet proved its superiority to the work of the religious bodies or of philanthropic individuals.

But let the working man be on his guard against another danger. We live at a time when there is a disposition to think that the Government ought to do this and that and that the Government ought to do everything. There are things which the Government ought to do, I have no doubt. In former periods the Government have neglected much, and possibly even now they neglect something; but there is a danger on the other side. If the Government takes into its hands that which the man ought to do for himself it will inflict upon him greater mischiefs than all the benefits he will have received or all the advantages that would accrue from them. The essence of the whole thing is that the spirit of self-reliance, the spirit of true and genuine manly independence, should be preserved in the minds of the people, in the minds of the masses of the people, in the mind of every member of the class. If he loses his self-denial, if he learns to live in a craven dependence upon wealthier people rather than upon himself, you may depend upon it he incurs mischief for which no compensation can be made.

Great set of quotes, though.  Where are they pulled from?  I'd love to read more of his thoughts.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chekhov

Besides that, his short stories and plays are chock-full of "Insights, Snippets, Quotes, Epiphanies & All That Sort of Things" which are best appreciated in their proper context.  IM(not so)HO he was one of the geatest minds ever to tackle the human condition.