Quote of the Day – Anonymous

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”  ~~ Anonymous

 

It has been attributed to Albert Einstein, but a search of the da’Net revealed that it has been around as long as there have been cars, and gentlemen taking ladies out for a drive. Plus it was a common vaudevillian joke.

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Quote of the Day — Turkish Proverb

When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.”~~ Turkish Proverb.

A little research revealed that this is not an actual Turkish proverb, but that the proverb has been adopted from a Circassian proverb:

“When an ox moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king, but the palace becomes a barn.”

Either one works for me to describe the current cluster f*** in Washington.

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Quote of the Day — John Lewis

“Don’t give up, don’t give in, don’t give out. Don’t get lost in a sea of despair.” ~~ Rep. John Lewis

Howsomever, that hand with three fingers raised that you can barely see bobbing in the Sea of Despair belongs to yours truly.  Since they have given my country to a con man, I have lost all hope.

It is a nice thought though.

But so it should not go. We are a better people than the cluster f*** that happened last election… or so I used to think.

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Quote of the Day — Robert A. Heinlein

“… I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy . . . censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free.” “ Robert A. Heinlein in Revolt in 2100

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Quote of the Day – Oscar Wilde

  1. Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence. I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

“I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability”.  ~~ Oscar Wilde

I don’t generally put out two postings a day, but I stumbled across this quote I had queued up and I could not resist.

Heaven forbid I should question such a wordsmith as Oscar Wilde so I am assuming the ambiguity is intentional. Did God overestimate his own ability  or that of Man?

Want to know more about Oscar Wilde: Oscar Wilde – His Life and Confessions by Frank Harris

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Quote of the Day – Thomas More

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

“Plato by a goodly similitude declareth, why wise men refrain to meddle in the commonwealth. For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people.” ~~ Thomas More

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Quote of the Day – Karl Popper

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

“All life is problem solving” ~~   Karl Popper

Scores of years ago I decided that I have never had an original thought in my life.  When I think I have one now days, a quick Google search dissuades me from the delusion.

All to say that years ago I also decided that life was nothing more than a series of problems to be solved.  Even if you want to do something fun, say a trip to Tahiti, there are a series of steps — problems — that need to be resolved.  Once I had this epiphany, for lack of a better word, I stopped being so upset by the many speed bumps or even craters that life throws our way.

Take my profound advice and $2 and change, and you will be able to buy yourself a soda pop.

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Quote of the Day – L. P. Hartley

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” ~~ L. P. Hartley: The Go-Between

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Quote of the Day – Immanuel Kant

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

Always treat persons (including yourself) and ends in themselves, never merely as a means to your own ends.” ~~Immanuel Kant

If you have been playing along at home, you no doubt realize that this is a second quote from Kant very soon after the first:

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” 

I discovered this quote in a Wondrium philosophy course I was watching, Think like a Stoic: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World.  In my first posting I commented that it was a high brow version of the Golden Rule.

I went from watching the course on Stoic philosophy to another Wondrium course, The Big Questions of Philosophy which had today’s quote.

Both are statements of what philosophical types are calling Kant’s Categorical Imperatives which are “commands or moral laws all persons must follow, regardless of their desires or extenuating circumstances.”

The professor in the first course just put the quote out there.  In the second course, the professor spent one whole class discussing Kant. Spoiler alert he is not a fan.  However, he mentioned two or three times in the 30 minutes that Kant’s Categorical Imperative is not the Golden Rule, with a brief explanation as to why.  Mainly, that the Golden Rule is more concerned with how the individual feels that any universality, i.e. self centered.

I can buy his arguments for my original Kant quote.  It probably reflects my philosophical naivety more than anything else, but the second quote does not seem that far removed from the Golden Rule.

In any event, Kant’s approach to morality is a little too rigid for me. I am never sure if it is good or bad, but I live in the gray zone on many of these moral/ethical issues. One of the few lessons I have learned from life is that there are no certainties.

I’ll go back to being least serious in another post, I promise.

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Quote of the Day – Paul Randolph Rush

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

“Bond, James Bond…”

“Oh, James, you’ve just killed lots and lots of people, and I’m horny as hell.”

~~ Paul Randolph Rush riffing on what ever Bond girl would be thinking if not saying

A wise-ass, but very to the point, comment he made to an email going around amongst my siblings and the 6th Rush Boy.  Probably the best exposition of the 007 movies I have ever seen or heard.

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