Great Truths and Pithy Maxims

Few are the friends of your own self; most are the friends of your success.

Show me an idealistic person who says that life must be preserved at any cost and I will show you a practical person who will betray anyone, anytime, to remain alive.

Liberals rank whales higher than humans. Conservatives rank whales higher than some humans.

The synthetic power that holds the cosmos together and makes of it a harmonious unity defies rational exploration and discovery. Man can know this transcendent order only
1) through the faculty of "intuitive awarness", since reason provides only fragmentary, partial insight, or 2) through devine revelation.

Pay greater heed to a happy exit than an applauded entrance.

We live in a post-literate age, where the only history the average man knows, comes to him from Hollywood.

Those who climb soap boxes to preach "tolerance" of all "lifestyles" are typically the most intolerant of all. It is easy enough to prove: simply tell such preachers of intolerance that you have an opposite opinion.

At one time, a liberal arts education was a discipline of mind, a training in mental rigor and clarity. Now in 50 year decline, it is little more than a prolonged exposure to fashionable attitudes.

Every age has had its scientists who believe that Science has reached a summit; who believe that the great questions have been answered and only the details need to be filled in. They have always been wrong.

With the whole world full of fools, there is none who thinks himself one, or even suspects it.

Blacks and Democrats are attempting to make of Martin Luther King a national deity, and a realistic examination of him is becoming increasingly impossible.

I do not regard myself as belonging to so nebulous a notion as "all mankind" traveling on "spaceship earth." I have rather profound biases on the relative "value" of various cultures around the world (some cultures dine With their neighbors, others dine On their neighbors), and the distinctions I draw place me into a most narrow group. While America is indeed in moral and cultural decline, I still regard American culture (as defined by the Judeo-Christian ethic that reigned until about 1960) as superior to all others in the world, and so I retain a sense of patriotism and national identity.

Liberals always talk about the "Haves" and the "Havenots" but never about the "Doers" or the "Do-nots", those who contribute and those who merely take.

If life on Earth were to evaporate, and the planet be visited by alien anthropologists, they will wonder at the regularity with which they find brown bottles and aluminum cans in the hollow spaces of concrete walls, and they will conclude that these artifacts represent some sort of offering to some kind of deity with the short name "Beer" and they will discover that the delphic oracle for this God was no doubt a place called "Milwaukee" since it will be there that they will find where most of the icons to this God were created.

You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.

Better to put a fence around a cliff, then put an ambulance at the bottom.

The Humanist says he does not believe in God because the supposed God behaves in a morally arbitrary way: allowing innocents to die, scoundrels to live, some to have wealth, others to be poor, some to be in pain, and others to be healthy. This, they say, is morally arbitrary, and does not fit with how they think a "real" God would behave. Then THEY get to play God, by deciding on the fate of the unborn child: will they let it live or kill it? This, they insist, is their moral "right".
      These two positions are completely contradictory, a thoroughly unreasonable philosophy for people who claim their philosophy is based entirely on reason.

If true, rarely beautiful. If beautiful, rarely true.

Theistic evolution can be thought of as a biologic process in the form of a coherent "unfolding" rather than a mere sequence of random novelties.

Religion embraces ecumenism only in decline. Ascendent, it is exclusive, intolerant.

While it is true that an omnipotent God could make our world and universe and the things within it in any way he chose, it is our firm belief that a choice was made, and it is our intellectual challenge to discover which way God chose to make it.

Science can be defined as Observation for the purpose of Prediction.

The expansion of the Roman Empire so as to control most of the then known world, was the result not of a deliberate policy or strategy on the part of the Roman Senate, but rather of the accumulative random acts of Rome's various generals at the periphery, who, seeing territory available or having a score to settle or merely responding to personal ambition - and having an army at the ready - seized territory, usually successfully.

Environmentalists are folks who convert suspicions into certain conclusions.

The culture and sensibilities of the 60's were defeated in the larger world, but are now found, coagulated, in the academy.

The God that is small enough to fill your philosophy is not going to be large enough to fill your need.

The feminist movement seeks to make sameness out of things that should be different, such as combat and fire fighting, and to make different (by gender"perspective") things that should be the same, such as literature, philosophy, science.

Here are the differences between Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World:

         Orwell                        Huxley
   Books are banned.          No reason to ban books;they are worthless.
   Deprived of information.   Give people too much information.
   Truth is concealed.        Truth is drowned in irrelevance.
   A captive culture.         Culture is trivial: "feel good".
   Control via pain.          Control via pleasure.
   What we hate ruins us.     What we love ruins us.

We always expected that 1984 might be our fate, but that one fell to 
the Soviet Union. We are, in fact, well along in Brave New World.

Conservatives believe in creating wealth, Liberals in redistributing it.

If one's condition as a member of the freest generation of females in the history of the world can be made to seem wondrously deprived, than anything is possible when idealogy overrides common experience.

How do we know for sure that no two snowflakes are the same - we haven't got anybody watching.

The mathematicians and physicists cannot really claim truth - never final, never absolute - but in sorting out a lot of things that do not work, they travel along side truth, building, in the process, a rational system that does not lack for coherence.

The average person, if asked if he is satisfied with his income, invariably replies that "about 25% more" would be satisfactory. If asked if he is satisfied with his intelligence, he invariably replies that he is.

A man is unlikely to pay homage to an idol on an altar if he knew it as a stump in the forest.

The modern main stream Christian church is a dull exponent of conventional, politically correct, liberal political ideas, with a vaguely religious tint.

The intelligent physician, having missed the cure, readily calls upon another who, under the title of consultant, helps him carry the coffin.

Political Correctness (PC) is an assumption of the moral wrongness of habits of thought and language deemed detrimental to marginalized groups, who are in turn, by the very fact of their inferiority in power, presumed to possess superior, or at least unappreciated moral and intellectual wealth. Proponents of PC use rewards, financial or honorific, to favor either the victim classes or the enlightened who adopt their cause.

Far better to be cheated in the price than in the goods.

Here is the difference between Communism of the Soviet variety, and that of the Chinese: In the Soviet Union, there was a list of things you could not do. If what you wanted to do was not on the list of prohibited things, you could do it. In China, there is a list of things you may do. If what you want to do is not on the list, then you cannot do it. The Soviet system left some wiggle room, albeit not much. The Chinese system leaves none at all.

A rapid departure is a parent's final courtesy to his children.

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    Most of these expressions originated with me, others I picked up along the way - or modified - from obscure sources. Vanity prevents me from remembering which are which. If you can identify a specific phrase from a particular person, email me and tell me who should get attribution.