“My dear friend, the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, was once accosted by a lady who complained that the synagogue service did not say what she meant. ‘Madam,’ said Heschel, ‘the idea is not that the service should say what we mean but that we should mean what the service says.’”
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in response to a letter in First Things August-September 2004
“There are no stupid questions… but if there were…”
Another of mine, from Nov. 3 2014 [probably I was about to ask one that strove to qualify].
In my latest Mercatornet column I say the election of Donald Trump has certainly had a depressing effect on the giant climate gabfest in Baku but far more as symptom than as cause.
“But leadership, no matter whether you are a midshipman or an admiral, is never easy. Even those who seemed carry the burden of leadership with ease often struggle. Carl von Clausewitz, the great nineteenth-century general who wrote the consummate book On War, once said that ‘everything in war is simple, but the simple things are difficult.’”
Author’s “Introduction” to William H. McRaven The Wisdom of the Bullfrog
“Everyone pretends to be strong, everyone pretends to be wise, and in the wonderful motto of Robert Musil, ‘if it were not so hard to distinguish stupidity from talent, progress, hope, or improvement, no one would want to be stupid.’”
David Warren in Ottawa Citizen July 31, 2004 [prompted by something Bill Clinton said to the DNC about being strong and smart]
“First ponder, then dare.”
Helmuth von Moltke, quoted in J.W. Marriott Jr. and Kathi Ann Brown The Spirit to Serve
“Devil-worshipping Polish influencer ‘Satan’s doll’ charged with hacking parents to death with machete”
From Human Events March 4, 2024 and my “Who saw that one coming?” file [https://humanevents.com/2024/03/04/devil-worshipping-polish-influencer-satans-doll-charged-with-hacking-parents-to-death-with-machete]
“When Mr. Chesterton visited Warsaw recently the papers stated that he was accompanied from the station to his quarters by a squadron of glittering Polish cavalry: a pleasing attention, only his due, and one that I am sure he heartily appreciated. But a thoroughly adequate escort for him would include not merely armed horsemen, but cohorts of magicians, clowns, princesses, priests, kings, vegetarians, Puritans, drunkards, landlords, politicians, millionaires, minstrels out of which he has made the fairy-tale world of his poems. The fairy-tales always have a point; it was long ago said that Mr. Chesterton’s value as a moralist was largely based on the fact that he made virtue amusing. Yet even when he is most vigorously jousting against slimy monsters or caitiff knights his spear usually has a few balloons tied on to it, and can be used, when he tires of the more formal tourney, as a quarterstaff or even a slapstick. His jests are mingled with his protestations of anger and love … he has one foot in fairyland and another in Fleet Street …”
The now-forgotten J.C. Squire in 1927, quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)