“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quoted in J.W. Marriott Jr. and Kathi Ann Brown, The Spirit to Serve: Marriott’s Way.
“The kid, meantime, is frozen, like a rabbit frozen by the eyebeams of a cougar. He knows it is time to split, but he can’t move. He is stricken stiff and fascinated by his own impending destruction.”
Tom Wolfe The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (regarding a hapless young man being tormented by a Hells Angel)
“Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.”
Charles F. Kettering, quoted by Jeff Hayden on Inc. online (www.inc.com/jeff-haden/top-350-inspiring-motivational-quotes-to-tweet-and-share.html
“If we stand still, we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road, we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? ‘Be strong and of a good courage.’ Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. Above all, let us dream no dreams, and tell no lies, but go our way, wherever it may lead, with our eyes open and our heads erect. If death ends all, we cannot meet it better. If not, let us enter whatever may be the next scene like honest men, with no sophistry in our mouths and no masks on our faces.”
End of James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty Equality Fraternity (as the footnote in my copy notes, the quotation is from Deuteronomy XXXI:6-7)
“When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
Jonathan Swift, as “Quote of the Week” in Watt’s Up With That “Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #488” January 24, 2022
“One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.”
Will Durant, quoted in Globe & Mail June 2, 1999
“One of the most popular supposed short cuts is imagining that we can make our decisions easier by bypassing value judgments and assigning numbers to everything. Call this the numerical fallacy, or the fallacy of false precision. I’m not saying that it’s never useful to count things.... if a lot of people are out of work, I want some idea of how many, and if prices are going up, I want some idea of how much. The problem is that we rely on numbers too much, too carelessly, for too many things, and we trust them far more than we should. Excessive trust in numbers is part of the technocratic ideology which supposes that government by experts is not political.... There just isn’t a way of generating measurements that isn’t based on value judgments. The only question is which value judgments it depends on, and how transparently or obscurely it depends on them.... Fortunately, there is an instrument for making judgments: The human mind. And there is a way to calibrate it: Experience, deliberation, debate, and the cultivation of practical wisdom. Sorry, but there aren’t any short cuts.”
J. Budziszewski “Underground Thomist” Dec. 27, 2021 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/the-technocratic-fallacy-of-false-precision].
In my latest Epoch Times column I defend the desire of normal people to protect pleasant neighbourhoods from social engineering cement.