“Stupidity may have no defenders but it has lots of practitioners.”

Me February 29, 2004 [an alternative variant same day had “adherents” as the final word].

“the most important trait of survivors is a ‘nonselfconscious individualism,’ or a strongly directed purpose that is not self-seeking. People who have that quality are bent on doing their best in all circumstances, yet they are not concerned primarily with advancing their own interests…. Narcissistic individuals, who are mainly concerned with protecting their self, fall apart when the external conditions turn threatening. The ensuing panic prevents them from doing what they must do; their attention turns inward in an effort to restore order in consciousness, and not enough remains to negotiate outside reality.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience [summarizing the ideas of Richard Logan].

“The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know what it is – what it was intended to do, and how it is meant to be used. After that has been discovered, the temperance reformer may decide that the corkscrew was made for a bad purpose, and the communist may think the same about the cathedral. But such questions come later. The first thing to understand first thing is to understand the object before you: as long as you think the corkscrew is meant for opening tins or the cathedral for entertaining tourists you can say nothing to the purpose about them. The first thing the reader needs to know about Paradise Lost is what Milton meant it to be.”

The opening paragraph of A Preface to Paradise Lost by C.S. Lewis, quoted in Harry Lee Poe, The Making of C.S. Lewis [and how relevant to reactions by proudly atheist French politicians when Notre Dame de Paris caught fire].

“Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best.”

Ragnar Lothbrok, quoted in an email from a friend, and it turns out to be from a TV series called Vikings, in 2015 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3623674/characters/nm1379938).

“To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn’t.”

Primo Levi, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail Feb. 25, 2004

“Not to decide is to decide.”

Harvey Cox, quoted in J.W. Marriott Jr. and Kathi Ann Brown, The Spirit to Serve: Marriott’s Way.

“In chapter 13 [of A Preface to Paradise Lost], C.S. Lewis… discussed the tendency, since the time of William Blake and Percy Shelley for critics to regard Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost. Lewis put this idea in its place through an examination of the self-delusion of Satan as one who regarded himself as the injured party, and by reference to Milton's theology. Lewis declared, ‘We know from his prose works that [Milton] believed everything detestable to be, in the long run, also ridiculous; and mere Christianity commits every Christian to believing that “the devil is (in the long run) an ass”.’ Lewis said that we see the same ridiculous trait of the ‘Sense of Injured Merit’ in a variety of familiar situations: the spoiled child, the film star, politicians, and minor poets.”

Harry Lee Poe The Making of C.S. Lewis

“all scientific knowledge ‘depends upon the validity of reasoning.’ The reasoning of a person in a psychologically irrational state lacks validity and tends to be open to doubt by others. On this basis, Lewis proposed a rule: ‘No thought is valid if it can be fully explained as the result of irrational causes.’”

Harry Lee Poe The Making of C.S. Lewis [describing Lewis’s reasoning in Miracles and quoting it].