“peaceful anarchy, than which nothing could be more impossible, given human nature as it is.”
Mortimer J. Adler Ten Philosophical Mistakes
“Happiness is not mostly pleasure; it is mostly victory.”
Harry Emerson Fosdick, quoted in Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
“You may come to ask yourself, ‘What should I do today?’ in a manner that means ‘How could I use my time to make things better, instead of worse?’”
Jordan Peterson on Instagram (quoting himself and all upper-case in the post) November 11 2020
“You recall that Timothy was warned by St. Paul that anyone who neglects to provide for his own house (meaning his own family) has disowned the faith and is ‘worse than an infidel.’”
Margaret Thatcher to the Church of Scotland, quoted in Fr. James V. Schall Religion, Wealth and Poverty
“‘An angry man,’ said Confucius, ‘is always full of poison.’”
Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
“The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.”
President George W. Bush in his address to the nation on the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia, quoted in OpinionJournal February 1 2003
“It is admitted, one may hope, that common things are never commonplace. Birth is covered with curtains precisely because it is a staggering and monstrous prodigy. Death and first love, though they happen to everybody, can stop one’s heart with the very thought of them.”
G.K. Chesterton What’s Wrong with the World
“when we scrape away the varnish of wealth, education, class, ethnic origin, parochial loyalties, we discover that however much we’ve changed the shape of man’s physical environment, man himself is still sinful, vain, greedy, ambitious, lustful, self-centered, unrepentant, and requiring of restraint.”
Barry Goldwater With No Apologies (though elsewhere in the book even he said new technologies and ideas might make the world way better in the 21st century)