“The feeling of having taken a wrong turning in life was made worse by the fact that he could not, for the life of him, remember having taken any turnings at all.”
“Charles Fernyhough, writer”, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail June 11, 2010
“I am unbelievably lucky: a. to be an American; b. To have my wife, the world’s finest human; c. To have never been severely or at least life-threateningly ill; d. To have never been in combat; e. To have had loving, caring, prosperous parents; f. To have an interesting, well-paid career; g. To have great friends, a great sister, nephew, niece, cousins, and, above all, son; h. Above all, to have learned to love and worship a God of love and understanding.”
“Benjamin J. Stein’s Diary” on his 60th birthday in The American Spectator February 2005
“There is bad religion, just as there is bad cooking, bad art or bad sex...”
Karen Armstrong in the Ottawa Citizen “Citizen’s Weekly” May 12, 2002.
“A really boring remark or conversation is a said-ative.”
Me July 9, 2004.
“One thing, however, I am very sure of: and that is, that if all mankind agreed to meet, and everyone brought his own sufferings along with him for the purpose of exchanging them for somebody else’s, there is not a man who, after taking a good look at his neighbour’s sufferings, would not be only too happy to return home with his own.”
Herodotus The Histories
“It was Macaulay who remarked that it was not pleasant to live in times about which it was exciting to read.”
Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media
“a person who drank cyanide because he felt a compelling desire to do so would also be considered rational under the present aim standard. The obvious difficulty of this standard is that it permits virtually any behavior to be considered rational merely by asserting that a person prefers it.”
Robert H. Frank, Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions (criticizing the philosophical “present aim theory” doctrine of rationality, which is essentially the economists’ “revealed preference” doctrine although he doesn’t say so):
In my latest Epoch Times column I note the tragicomic contrast between the cosmic aspirations and vaulting self-regard of our politicians and their incapacity to discharge even basic functions of government.