Category: Maxims, Mottoes, Epitaphs, etc.
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Hic Rhodus, Hic Salta
"Here is Rhodes, jump here." From Aesop's Fables #209, "The Boastful Athlete." A man who had been off in foreign lands, returns home. He brags of his exploits. He claims that in Rhodes he made a long jump the likes of which had never been seen. A skeptical bystander calls him on his boast: Here's your Rhodes,…
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Wer Schreibt, Der Bleibt
I fondly recall my late German neighbor, Günter Scheer, from whom I learned this expression. "He who writes, remains." Write on!
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Primum Non Nocere
"First of all, do no harm." Not just for medicos. Also for the benighted politicos who would 'fix' health care. Their approach is a bit like fixing a roof leak by tearing down the house and building a new one. And don't you just love the way these idiots use 'fix' and broken'? Talk like a…
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Memory and Happiness
It is we who supply the blood that enlivens the spectral vampires that haunt us from our past. A part of mind control is purgation of memory, and without mind control happiness is achieved with difficulty, if at all.
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Balık baştan kokar
Balık baştan kokar is Turkish for "The fish stinks from the head." Quite apropos of the Obama administration the corruption, incompetence, and stupidity of which boggles the mind. He's done everything wrong. But there is hope: Obama's fiscal irresponsibility and liberty-destroying socialist malfeasance has suffered a massive rebuke in, of all places, the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. Here are…
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The Citadel of the Here and Now
Retreat ever and again into the citadel of the Here and Now, and the dragons of elsewhere and elsewhen will turn to chimeras.
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It Is What It Is
Maybe not. It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is. Seriously, though, this saying is seeing quite a lot of use lately. It is a sort of present-tensed Que sera, sera. Things are the way they are. Don't kick against the pricks. Acceptance and resignation are the appropriate attitudes. From a philosophy-of-language point…
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Antagonize Parsimoniously
Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity.
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A Philosopher’s Motto
Distinguo ergo sum.
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Political Action and the Principle of Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien
Attributed to Voltaire. "The best is the enemy of the good." Meditation on this truth may help conservatives contain their revulsion at their lousy choices. Obama, who has proven that he is a disaster for the country, got in in part because of conservatives who could not abide McCain. Politics is a practical business. It…
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The Tal and the Short of It
Why, with so many painful losses to my 'credit,' do I continue to submit my aging self to the rigors of tournament chess? Because the strenuous life has a property Bobby Fischer once ascribed to 1. P-K4: it is "best by test."
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Feeble Stuff
Another motto for this weblog: What I am writing here may be feeble stuff; well, then I am just not capable of bringing the big, important thing to light. But hidden in these feeble remarks are great prospects. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 65)
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Serious Conversation
It is best avoided with ordinary folk. Serious conversation about matters beyond the mundane demands effort and people resent being made to work. Besides, ordinary folk do not 'believe in conversation' the way some philosophers do. They don't believe that truth can be attained by dialectical means. They might not believe in truth at all,…
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Never Buy a Book You Haven’t Read
It's a good maxim. But I hear an objection coming. "If you've already read a book, why do you need to buy it?" Because the only books worth owning are the ones worth reading more than once.
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Study Everything, Join Nothing
Do I live up to this admonition? Or am I posturing? Is my posture perhaps a slouch towards hypocrisy? Well, it depends on how broadly one takes 'join.' A while back, I joined a neighbor and some of his friends in helping him move furniture. Reasonably construed, the motto does not rule out that sort…