Tag: Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day – America

Seawriter
Seawriter
119
 

“People say America is like 50 countries in a trench coat… eh… It is more like 200 countries bouncing on a trampoline. – Jack Wylder

This is excerpted from an essay available on Larry Correia’s webpage. (Click on the link and read the whole thing.  It is worth it.) In it, the author asserts the US is made up of a collage of intermixed but different cultures and identities. It is true and part of the genius of America. There are so many choices that everyone can find some place they fit in.

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Quote of the Day – Equality of Outcome

Seawriter
Seawriter
3311
 

A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. – Milton Friedman

I do not know what I can add to this. Equality of outcome is the heart of DEI and the heart of communism. It is the antithesis of the traditional American values of freedom and equality of opportunity and letting those who use their freedom and opportunities best prosper most.

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Quote of the Day – Enemy Action

Seawriter
Seawriter
86626
 

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action. – Auric Goldfinger, in the Ian Fleming novel, Goldfinger.

I am late today. It has been quite the week. I came back from visiting family in Dallas with a cold. Not a bad cold, but one that filled my lungs with goo making good sleep impossible. Most days I had four hours sleep. Last night I managed eight, but in four blocks of two hours each.  Lack of sleep makes you stupid. Regardless, I still put in eight hours of each day at the day job. Working from home mostly, but working stupid.

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Quote of the Day – Adaptability

Seawriter
Seawriter
89
 

Global sea temperatures in the Ordovician period were sweltering, estimated at around 100F at the equator – John Long, The Secret History of Sharks

I am reviewing The Secret History of Sharks for Epoch Times. (It is a first-rate account of the development of sharks from their origins to the present.  I recommend it.) This passage struck me when I read it because of all the fuss about global warming climate change going on today. The Ordovician Period began 485.4 million years ago and ended 443.8 million years ago. It followed the Cambrian Era. We are talking about a long time ago. Since life still populates Earth, it demonstrates that 100F tropical water temperatures are survivable.

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Quote of the Day – Liberty

Seawriter
Seawriter
37
 

And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. It shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. – Leviticus 25:10, KJV

“Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof Lev. XXV X” is the inscription on the Liberty Bell, originally in the steeple of Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall. It was cast in its present form in 1753 and was used to announce the start of Pennsylvania Assembly sessions. It is most associated with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.

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Quote of the Day – Success and Failure

Seawriter
Seawriter
65
 

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. – Winston Churchill

I used this quote once before but felt it worth repeating after the Supreme Court decisions of the last week. Several decisions served to encourage. Others proved problematic and discouraging.  In all, I think there was much more of the former than the latter. I say take victories where you can. A baseball player who manages to consistently connect with the ball at the plate, getting on base seven times out of twenty, is bound for the Baseball Hall of Fame. It matters little that he fails the other thirteen at-bats.

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Quote of the Day – Consent of the Governed

Seawriter
Seawriter
89
 

. . . you can do everything with bayonets except sit on them. If you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you have to get consent of the ruled.  – Aldous Huxley

There are multiple variants to this quote. It is often ascribed to an interchange between Napoleon and Talleyrand when the former told his foreign minister, “You can do anything with a bayonet,” and Talleyrand responded, “Yes, sire, except sit on them.” Talleyrand pointed out a throne made of bayonets had to be sat upon very carefully.  What had been created by force could easily collapse.

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Quote of the Day – Reason (or the Lack Thereof)

Seawriter
Seawriter
1711
 

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
-Thomas Paine

He is right. Try discussing climate science with those who have drunk the environmentalist Kool-Aid. Or maybe the reality of two sexes with someone all-in on gender fluidity. Try discussing crime with someone fully convinced that punishing criminals for their actions is really an expression of systemic racism. Who honestly believes bigotry in favor of people of color is somehow different than bigotry that favors those who are white? That it is not just appropriate, but laudable.

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QotD: Perpetual Amusement

dajoho
dajoho
1910
 

I’m an early riser. It did not start out that way but that’s the way it is now. I get the sideways looks I most certainly gave others when I say I wake up between 0430-0530 daily without an alarm. So in that vein, I also know that there are things I can do or accomplish early as well. Home Depot opens at 0600 on Saturday and no one is there, it’s magical.

So in the wee hours of a Saturday morning, I alone pulled into the 24-hour gas station on Ft. Belvoir, tapped my card on the fuel pump, put in my zip, and then the screen told me I was good to go. I was going to quietly ride out my fill-up, but then it happened. The small screen atop the pump began with some incredibly loud, zippy infomercial shattering my relaxing dawn. I could not get away from it.           

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Quote of the Day – Texas

Seawriter
Seawriter
3113
 

Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may. – Sam Houston

I moved to Texas from Michigan in 1979 (along with about a quarter of the state) and never looked back. (I even wrote about the move on Ricochet, but cannot find the piece.) Texas has been home ever since.

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Quote of the Day – Government

Seawriter
Seawriter
69
 

I want a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution. – Harry Browne

The US Constitution is not a long document. As written on parchment it takes but five pages. The original constitution is just 4408 words – the length of a short story. All the amendments add another 3098 words, which still does not get the combined document beyond short story length. Most state constitutions are longer, yet none approach the doorstop-tome length of the EU constitution. It is 70,000 words; ten times longer and about 1/10th as understandable as the US Constitution.

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Quote of the Day – Theories

Seawriter
Seawriter
379
 

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong. – Richard Feynman

Science is supposed to be about following the facts as revealed by experimentation. If the facts revealed something contrary to your expectations and beliefs, you went with the facts. In 1911 Ernest Rutherford conducted an experiment firing alpha particles through gold foil. It was a test of the Thompson model of atomic structure.

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Quote of the Day – Democracy’s Gyroscope

Seawriter
Seawriter
2310
 

There’s something amazing about America’s democracy, it’s got a gyroscope and just when you think it’s going to go off the cliff, it rights itself.  – Albert Einstein

Einstein made this observation in a private letter to his son in the 1950s. He was being urged to leave the United States because the son feared the US was about to turn into a fascist state in reaction to the Cold War. Einstein did not think that would happen.

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[Member Post]

Fractad
Fractad
15
 

“In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights, and a common destiny.” Frederick Douglass It’s hard to believe how far from Douglass’ ideal identity politics have taken us. Preview Open

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Quote of the Day – Scarcity

Seawriter
Seawriter
37
 

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. – Thomas Sowell

I am not sure I can improve on this bit of Sowell food for the brain. It explains what is happening in politics today. Politicians see someone in need, and sensing an opportunity for a future vote, provide largess. It does not matter if the resources they allocate are available.  They feel they have done good by legislation of the requirement to provide them.

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Quote of the Day – Public Education

Seawriter
Seawriter
68
 

The aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is the aim in the United States and that is its aim everywhere else. – H. L. Mencken

All you have to do is look at what is going on at today’s college campuses to realize the accuracy of Mencken’s century-old observation. Conformity and obedience are what is being taught by today’s educational establishment. It may not be the conformity of the “squares” that Mencken envisioned, but it is just as rigid.

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Quote of the Day: Question Everything

Seawriter
Seawriter
1511
 

Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything. – George Carlin

I had not heard this George Carlin quote when I was raising my sons, but that is how my wife and I raised our boys.  We taught them to read, to question what they read, and to question everything.  To question whether it was right or wrong.

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