Tag: Quotation of the Day

Quote of the Day: Muggeridge on the Progressive Mind

 

“One of the great weaknesses of the progressive, as distinct from the religious, mind, is that it has no awareness of truth as such; only of truth in terms of enlightened expediency. The contrast is well exemplified in two exact contemporaries — Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir; both highly intelligent and earnestly disposed. In all the fearful moral dilemmas of our time, Simone Weil never once went astray, whereas Simone de Beauvoir, with I am sure the best of intentions, has found herself aligned with apologists for some of the most monstrous barbarities and falsehoods of history.”
— Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge in “A Knight of the Woeful Countenance” in The World of George Orwell (1972) edited by Miriam Gross, p. 167

And here one finds it exactly. For Progressives, means to an end don’t matter. Thus, anything is possible and excusable. For the religious, the means should accord with the goal. The goal gained through ill means is not gained at all, but merely is a step in the wrong direction. For Progressives, elections are far too important to be left in the hands of the unwashed voters. They will achieve their Great Democracy without the common people. You know, the Demos.

Quote of the Day: Maria Mitchell on the Great Danger of Student Life

 

“There is this great danger in student life. Now, we rest all upon what Socrates said, or what Copernicus taught; how can we dispute authority which has come down to us, all established, for ages? We must at least question it; we cannot accept anything as granted, beyond the first mathematical formulae. Question everything else.” — Maria Mitchell

Maria (pronounced in the proper English way after the Great Vowel Shift with a long-I sound, not the foreign European way we generally do now) Mitchell was an astronomer and astronomy professor in the middle to late Nineteenth Century. Back in her day, the students were at least learning Socrates and Copernicus and Aristotle. (How many teeth do women have, Aristotle? Have you tried asking a few to open their mouths to let you count?) Now, the students learn nonsense and pay coming and going for the pleasure, but how many of their professors would suggest they question what they are being taught?

Quote of the Day: A Child Mishears

 

Aunt Florence was a pistol from a young age, and she hated school. She seems to have taken a dislike to it early on and found more and more reasons to dislike it.

Her mother would drive her and drop her off at school, and Florence would be sitting on the back porch before she got back home.