Aphorisms and Observations – Maverick Philosopher

Do Great Minds Think Alike?

Sometimes. But it doesn't follow that minds who think alike are great.

Choice of Model

Take no one man as your model; take many in the drafting and crafting of your inimitable self.

Whatever we are here for, we are not here to pass time. Our time is to be used and used well. You say it doesn't matter how we spend our time since nothing matters? That may or may not be so. But it matters which. If something does matter and you live as if nothing matters you may end up not only having wasted your time but your eternity as well. So time spent getting to the bottom of this question is time well spent.

The Philosopher

A philosopher is one sensitive to the strangeness of the ordinary, and open to the puzzles hidden in platitudes.

I don’t live by the sword . . .

. . . but I aim not to die by one either; so I need a sword.

The Lion and the Lamb

Perhaps someday the lion will lie down with the lamb. Should that day come, I would still prefer to be the lion. (To repackage a remark I heard Tom Cotton make last night.)

Agapic Love

It is rare are among humans, but common in relation to our pets.

The Moral Horror of Murder

One man takes from another what neither can give: life.

It is passing strange that leftists do not share with us this moral horror, as witness their casual attitude toward even the most vicious modes of criminality.

List and Precision Obsession

You are list-obsessive if you write down an already completed task just so you can cross it off your list. You are precision-obsessive if you point out that a task, completed or not, is not the sort of thing that can be crossed off a list.

An admirable concern for precision can veer off into pedantry, punctiliousness, preciosity.

Sorry Gottlob, Sorry Bertrand

Attributes are at the things to which they are attributed. Existence, then, is in a broad sense an attribute of existing items despite adding nothing to the quiddity of the thing to which it is attributed apart from its capacity to have a quiddity.