“There is a proof that common sense and the higher mysteries lie very close together. It is the fact that they are frequently and even continually absent simultaneously from the same person.”
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News April 2, 1904, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 # 6 4-5/05
“The idea that church and state should never mix has always been popular among those who think churches should not exist…. To a faithful Christian mind, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Sikh … the issue can’t be as simple as that. The elector votes with his whole heart…. Moreover, the state does not exist in a moral and spiritual vacuum… Government and electorate are alike bound, even when they deny it, to standards deeper and older than themselves…. even in our present rather sunken condition of public life, the vast majority of people are prepared to distinguish right from wrong under earnest cross-examination. And so powerful is the hold of nature, and nature's law upon them, that they will more or less agree on the moral inadvisability of murder, extortion, theft, perversion, fraud, perjury and so forth. This hardly means they are free of temptation to crime themselves, in their private lives. Nor am I denying the existence of a growing vanguard who in the absence of real social pressure are prepared to argue that fair is foul and foul is fair.”
David Warren in Ottawa Citizen Nov. 20, 2005
“They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer – not an easy answer – but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.”
Ronald Reagan “A Time for Choosing” (a.k.a. “The Speech”) October 27, 1964
“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.”
James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion (this quotation, verbatim or slightly modified, has been misattributed to others including Robert Oppenheimer)
In my latest Mercatornet article I warn that AI is moving further and faster than we understand, with potentially disastrous consequences even if it gives us the life we think we want.
“It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.”
Réné Descartes, Discours de la Méthode (I’ve seen it variously translated; the original is “Ce n'est pas assez d'avoir l'esprit bon, mais le principal est de l'appliquer bien.”)
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. If the cause of the trouble lies in your own character, set about reforming your principles; who is there to hinder you? If it is the failure to take some apparently sound course of action that is vexing you, then why not take it, instead of fretting? ‘There is an insuperable obstacle in the way.’ In that case, do not worry; the responsibility for inaction is not yours. ‘But life is not worth living with this undone.’ Why then, bid life a good-humoured farewell; accepting the frustration gracefully, and dying like any other man whose actions have not been inhibited.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations