Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Maxims, Mottoes, Epitaphs, etc.

  • A Pronoun Puzzle: “He who hesitates is lost”

    Grammatically, 'he' is a pronoun. Pronouns have antecedents. What is the antecedent of 'he' in the folk saying supra? It does not have one.  A Yogi Berra type joke is in the offing. We're hiking. We must go forward; we can't go back. But the path forward is perilous and requires a bold step over…

  • Best Friend, Worst Enemy

    In your practical life, be your own best friend; in your spiritual and intellectual life, your own worst enemy.

  • Too Many Memories?

    Are you bothered by too many memories? Live more actively and thoughtlessly! Enter the diaspora of mundane dis-traction. Lose yourself in the quotidian. Take the drug of busy-ness. Not my way, but it could be yours.

  • Let it Go and Move on

    Let the past go and move on. Pack as much life as possible into the few years that remain. Squeeze in as much vital thinking and thoughtful vitality as you can. Move up and away from your vices. Consign your hebetude to history. Break useless contacts. Keep your nose to the grindstone. Mill the grist.…

  • Kadın erkeğin şeytanıdır

    "Woman is man's devil." (Turkish proverb) Never underestimate the power of concupiscence to derange, disorient, and delude. When Spanish bishop Xavier Novell resigned last month, the Roman Catholic Church cited strictly personal reasons without going into detail. It has now emerged in Spanish media that he fell in love with a woman who writes Satanic-tinged…

  • Resist Not the Folly of the Fool

    Resist not the folly of the fool who is his own undoing.  Apply this maxim to the leftist whose race- and sex-delusionality increases daily. If you encourage by not resisting the acceleration of his madness, you may hasten the day when common sense reasserts itself. 

  • Happiness Maxims

    Just over the transom: I do want to thank you again for the 'happiness maxims'. I've been reading them to wifey recently, and over time I've benefited hugely from them. Here they are again, easier to read, and slight emended.  This is a re-post from 26 May 2013. ………………………………….. These maxims work for me; they…

  • Epitaph

    Let it be said When I am dead That I became in deed What I was in seed.

  • Grievance and Gratitude

    Do not indulge your sense of grievance without compensatory attention to the many good things that have come your way in the form of opportunities, unearned advantages, narrow escapes, strokes of luck, and the like.  Make a list and see whether the occasions for gratitude don't outnumber the occasions for grievance.

  • Self-Admonition

    Aspire to think justly of yourself whether or not that results in your thinking highly of yourself.

  • The Philosopher and the Gunslinger

    First live, then philosophize! Shoot first, ask questions later!

  • Weakening Thoughts

    Thoughts of past weakness are weakening thoughts. Don't entertain them.

  • Believing on Insufficient Evidence

    The notion that we should always and everywhere apportion belief to evidence in such a way that we affirm only that for which we have sufficient evidence ignores the fact that belief for beings like us subserves action. If one acted only on those beliefs for which one had sufficient evidence one  would not act as one…

  • The Harder I Work . . .

    . . . the more 'privileged' I become.

  • Contention Got You Down?

    Two observations to buck you up: No abrasion, no pearl. No pressure, no diamonds.