Tuesday, September 08, 2020
An instrument
"Be an instrument of gold or of steel, of platinum or of iron - big or small, delicate or rough. They're all useful. Each serves its own purpose. Who would dare say that the carpenter's saw is any less useful than the surgeon's scalpel? Your duty is to be an instrument."The Way, 484
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
QOTD
Government is just a word for the things we do together, like cracking down on free popcorn at hardware stores - Overlawyered
Labels: quotes
Friday, March 20, 2015
The Universe
"Considering the marvelous complexity of the universe, its clockwork perfection, its balances of this against that, matter, energy, gravitation, time, dimension, I believe that our existence must be more than either of these philosophies. That what we are goes beyond Euclidean or other "practical" measuring systems, and that our existence is part of a reality beyond what we understand now as reality."
Captain Picard, "Where Silence Has Lease"
Labels: quotes
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Converts
"How many converts have I made?" Or at least, how much thought and effort have I given to the making of converts? That is a question that each of us ought to ask himself, at least once a year. The thought of standing before God in judgement, empty-handed, is a thought to make us tremble. "Where are your fruits, where are your souls?" He rightly will ask - and he will ask it of the layman as well as of the priest or religious.Get to it.
The Faith Explained, p. 174
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Gratitude
“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”As found here.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
Labels: quotes
Sunday, September 08, 2013
Somewhere to go
Raskolinkov and Marmeladov:
"Why do you go?" put in Raskilnikov.
"Well, when one has no one, nowhere else one can go!. For every man must have somewhere to go. Since there are times when one absolutely must go somewhere!"
Labels: literature, quotes
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Fear and Responsibility
Most modern freedom is at the root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.G. K. Chesterton, of course.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Happiness?
Overrated!
As C. S. Lewis said in God in the Dock, "I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity."I need a little more religion, and a lot more wine.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Quote of the day - never!
If you're thinking that seems to mean the feds can charge anyone with use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction based on the use of anything that can be described as a "bomb," you'd be right. However, as an American, I live in confidence that the government would never exaggerate the existence of WMDs.From Popehat.
Monday, April 15, 2013
QOTD - Honesty
Thank you. I will now quote you as if I had though of it myself in future conversations.As seen on Hacker News.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Increasing the power of the king
From the first book of Utopia:
Another proposes that the judges must be made sure, that they may declare always in favor of the prerogative, that they must be often sent for to court, that the King may hear them argue those points in which he is concerned; since how unjust soever any of his pretensions may be, yet still some one or other of them, either out of contradiction to others or the pride of singularity or to make their court, would find out some pretence or other to give the King a fair color to carry the point: for if the judges but differ in opinion, the clearest thing in the world is made by that means disputable, and truth being once brought in question, the King may then take advantage to expound the law for his own profit; while the judges that stand out will be brought over, either out of fear or modesty; and they being thus gained, all of them may be sent to the bench to give sentence boldly, as the King would have it; for fair pretences will never be wanting when sentence is to be given in the prince's favor. It will either be said that equity lies on his side, or some words in the law will be found sounding that way, or some forced sense will be put on them; and when all other things fail, the King's undoubted prerogative will be pretended, as that which is above all law; and to which a religious judge ought to have a special regard.
Self-reliance, positively put
A fine essay, and a fine conclusion.
Regardless of why we have such a culture of advice-seeking, we should be conscious of its effects on us. When we are told that someone else has answers, we are de-incentivized from seeking out our own answers. Yet someone else does not always have answers, or at least the appropriate answers to questions that are unique to each of us. When we fall into the habit of relying on others, we become incapable of coming to our own conclusions.This dude has read Montaigne, for sure.
Labels: a full life, quotes
Friday, March 15, 2013
Some refreshing anticlericalism from the new pope
The good kind, of course, that avoids the idolization of them, not the bad kind that wants to kill them. Mark Shea links Sherry Weddell linking an interview:
BERGOGLIO: Their clericalization is a problem. The priests clericalize the laity and the laity beg us to be clericalized… It really is sinful abetment. And to think that baptism alone could suffice. I’m thinking of those Christian communities in Japan that remained without priests for more than two hundred years. When the missionaries returned they found them all baptized, all validly married for the Church and all their dead had had a Catholic funeral. The faith had remained intact through the gifts of grace that had gladdened the life of a laity who had received only baptism and had also lived their apostolic mission in virtue of baptism alone. One must not be afraid of depending only on His tenderness…Rather refreshing, given that I was once advised not to start a bible study because no one would come if I didn't have a priest there. For what purpose one is not sure.
Labels: catholic, quotes, trends
Thursday, March 14, 2013
QOTD
I hope that by now I've communicated the nature of my own arrogance in the whole matter. I didn't like the way things kept changing, especially after I'd committed myself emotionally to one way of doing things. Attachment is a sure-fire recipe for frustration.From Mystic Microsoft, Chapter 2.
Labels: computers, quotes, work
Thursday, February 21, 2013
QOTD - Portrait
—Then—said Cranley—you do not intend to become a protestant?—A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, p. 287 in the 1928 Modern Library edition.
—I said that I had lost the faith—Stephen answered—but not that I had lost selfrespect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?—
Labels: catholic, literature, quotes
Friday, February 08, 2013
QOTD - Engineers and honesty
What’s at work here is the principle that companies lie, bosses lie, but engineers are generally incapable of lying. If they lied, how could the many complex parts of a computer or a software application be expected to actually work together?From Cringley's Accidental Empires.
“Yeah, I know I said wire Y-21 would be 12 volts DC, but, heck, I lied.”
Nope, it wouldn’t work.
Labels: morality, quotes, technology
Monday, February 04, 2013
QOTD
The most useful line I learned in five years of studying the philosophy of a Jesuit named Bernard Lonergan was, "I don't have enough data to make a judgement."From SS, and something that I often say when someone tries to force an opinion out of me on a subject that I don't know much about.
Labels: philosophy, quotes
Monday, May 14, 2012
Quote of the Day - Hedge
Saturday, April 14, 2012
A trenchant quote or two
First an observation about SCOTUS
and then a bit of duplicity observed
That is basically the situation.
Putting aside the “strong majority” nonsense (the deeply unpopular Affordable Care Act got through the Senate with the minimum number of votes needed to survive a filibuster and passed 219-212 in the House), saying that it would be “unprecedented” and “extraordinary” for the Supreme Court to strike down a law that violates the Constitution is like saying that Kansas City is the capital of Kansas.
and then a bit of duplicity observed
Oddly enough, Prof. Obama didn’t seem too concerned about “an unelected group of people” overturning a “duly constituted and passed law” when we were discussing all those famous Fourteenth Amendment cases – Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, Romer v. Evans, etc.
That is basically the situation.
Labels: law, politics, prolife, quotes
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Quote of the week
And it's just Sunday!
P.S. - Sanity tip: Whenever one of your lawsuits is against the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, maybe you should say to yourself: "You know, I wonder if I'm way off the deep end here?"
