Tag: “Quote of the Day” Series

Member Post

BastiatJunior
BastiatJunior
4646
 

I just think COVID is God’s gift to the left.  That’s a terrible thing to say. I think it was a very difficult thing to send down to us, but it has ripped the Band-Aid off who [Trump] is and what he stands for and what is being done to average people and working people […]
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Quote of the Day: Courage

Seawriter
Seawriter
21131038
 

God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless.  – Chester Nimitz

It is easy to look at what is going on in the world and feel despair. Things look hopeless. Crime seems out of control, inflation is running wild, there are shortages of life’s necessities, and a real possibility of a nuclear exchange exists. Some days you feel like going back to bed and crawling into a fetal ball.

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Quote of the Day: Grief and Love

Seawriter
Seawriter
99842
 

“Grief is the price of love, but it is love that makes the world go round, or at least one of the most important things that make life worth living. Love and the moral sense complicate life greatly, and make it difficult for most of us, for without them there would be no grief or any apprehension of evil; but without them we should be little different, conceptually, from an amoeba under a microscope.” – Theodore Dalrymple

Today is my 45th anniversary. It is the fifth one I have spent without Janet, my wife of 40 years, but despite her death, it is still our anniversary. I still miss her deeply and remember her in my daily prayers. I will go to her grave today and give her flowers. (Something I could never do while she lived due to her allergies.)

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Quote of the Day: When You Chop Wood, Chips Fly

Arahant
Arahant
2915833
 

“There will be some innocent victims in this fight against Fascist agents. We are launching a major attack on the Enemy; let there be no resentment if we bump someone with an elbow. Better that ten innocent people should suffer than one spy get away. When you chop wood, chips fly.” — Nikolai Yezhov

Today is the 127th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Yezhov. He was, for a time, the head of the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB and whatever the secret police in Russia is called this week) and Stalin’s right-hand man, the go-to guy for getting rid of political enemies. Until one day he wasn’t, and instead, he was just another chip of wood.

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Member Post

Seawriter
Seawriter
109162
 

Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed […]
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Quote of the Day: Open Minded

Seawriter
Seawriter
158870
 

“It is important to be open minded, but not so open minded that one’s brain falls out.” – Richard Feynman

I pride myself on being open-minded. Whenever I start an analysis, I start with the assumption that everything I know is wrong until I prove otherwise. That drives an open-minded approach. When facts disagree with my position, I adjust my position to match the facts. Equally, however, if the facts disagree with the position that counters my beliefs I maintain the position that matches the facts. Examples of this approach can be seen in various hot-button issues in today’s news.

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Quote of the Day: A Thought on the Eve of Western Easter

Seawriter
Seawriter
48791
 

God never sends suffering. Never. It is never “God’s will” that we should suffer. God would like us not to suffer. But since the world brings suffering, and since God refuses to use His almighty power and treat us as foolish children, He aligns Himself with us, goes into Auschwitz with us, is devastated by 9/11 with us, and draws us with Him through it all into fulfillment. This is a high price to pay for our human freedom, but it is worth it. To be mere automatons for whom God arranges the world to cause us no suffering would mean we never have a self. We could not make choices. — Sister Wendy Beckett

God understands suffering. He has been through it himself. A little over 2,000 years ago, He sent His Son to Earth to suffer and die for our sins. This I believe. Those of us who are Christian may celebrate it on different days (the Orthodox Church observes Pascha next Sunday), but that matters less than the meaning of the day and the acceptance of the sacrifice.

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Quote of the Day: Navigating the Law

Seawriter
Seawriter
27171145
 

“I believe if you work your butt off and pay taxes, you should be able to easily understand and navigate the laws, tax codes, health care, and anything else the government puts in place that affects us all.” — Robert James Ritchie (Kid Rock)

When I was in college I took a business law class. (I needed an elective and it was in a time slot I could attend.) One of the things I learned about was the “reasonably prudent person” standard. Oversimplified, it states the law should be based upon how reasonable person would have acted or what that person would have foreseen. Boiled down, it holds that a normal person should be able to understand the law. At least that is how my instructor (who was a lawyer and an engineer) explained it to the class. Mind, this was back in the 1970s. Things seemed to have changed since then.

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Quote of the Day: Victory

Seawriter
Seawriter
581019
 

“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.” – Winston Churchill

There has been a lot of talk recently about victory and defeat in Ukraine recently. But what defines victory? The definition of victory is set by both sides, and are not necessarily “we win, they lose” binary. They often are, but depending on what each side seeks, it is possible for both sides to be convinced they won. (The classic example of this is the Battle of Kafji in the Gulf War. The Coalition felt they won the battle because they drove off the Iraqis. On the other hand, the Iraqis held it up as a victory because they had successfully conducted a raid against the Coalition forces. They even used it as an example of a successful battle in their war college.)

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Quote of the Day: War

Seawriter
Seawriter
46161158
 

“No war is over until the enemy says it’s over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.” – James Mattis

We are seeing an application of this in real-time as the war in Ukraine unwinds. Certainly, Russia has learned the enemy gets a vote. Their three-day war has turned into a month-long quagmire (literally in the north, with its Rasputitsa “mud season”). Now the Russians are declaring victory in Ukraine, claiming their goal was to liberate the Donbas and that has been achieved. Of course, the enemy, Ukraine, gets a vote. They have begun limited counteroffensives, and Russia may not find it easy to end the war by declaration as Russia hopes.

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Quote of the Day: Preferring Disgrace to Danger

Seawriter
Seawriter
43191647
 

“The nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one.” – Alexander Hamilton

A recent poll revealed if the United States were invaded, 55% of those polled stated they would flee the United States rather than fight to defend it. Naturally, the percentage of those who would flee was greatest among Democrats and lowest among Republicans. (That three-quarters of the Democrats would flee is unsurprising as that party is split 3:1 between grifters and dupes, and grifters always run when their grift ends.) Some people found that discouraging. I did not; rather the opposite. While only 55% staying and fighting might be lower than it was 70 to 50 years ago, it is certainly consistent with historical percentages – and maybe a little higher.

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Quote of the Day: Confusing Thinking With Feeling

Seawriter
Seawriter
1110846
 

“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” – Thomas Sowell

This bit of Sowell food really hits the problem we are facing today: confusing thinking with feeling. That is what is behind so many of the outrage storms today. Don’t like a bill banning the sexual grooming of kindergarteners through second-grade students? Frame it as “Don’t Say Gay” and get everyone feeling badly about it. Mad at Putin? Ban Russian breeds at cat shows. (That surely deserves a prize for peak feelz.) Upset at inflation? Blame greedy corporations. Go for the emotional appeal.

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Quote of the Day: Being Wrong

Seawriter
Seawriter
229730
 

“Considering how often throughout history even intelligent people have been proved to be wrong, it is amazing that there are still people who are convinced that the only reason anyone could possibly say something different from what they believe is stupidity or dishonesty.” – Thomas Sowell

We have been seeing a lot of this over the last few weeks. Even here on Ricochet. Ironically, some of those most willing to call out others as dishonest and stupid seem to be wrong themselves. (We heard plenty of that at the State of the Union, didn’t we? But I can name other examples.)

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Quote of the Day: Catching a Tartar

Seawriter
Seawriter
46
 

An Irish soldier in the Imperial [Russian] service, in a battle against the Turks, shouted to his comrade that he had caught a Tartar. “Bring him along, then,” said his mate. “But he won’t come,” cried Paddy. “Then come along yourself,” said his comrade. “Arrah!” replied Paddy, “I wish I could, but he won’t let me.” — E. Cobham Brewer

It appears two men, on two different continents have caught themselves Tartars. On this continent, Justin Trudeau, through invocation of a public order emergency using the Emergencies Act. In Eurasia, Vladimir Putin by invading Ukraine. Both are now mired in situations they cannot walk away from.

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Quote of the Day: ‘Two Weeks in Philadelphia’

She
She
1713
 

“The first prize is a week in Philadelphia.  The second prize is two weeks in Philadelphia.” — W.C. Fields

To be perfectly honest, this wasn’t my original post for today’s Quote of the Day.  (I might get that one out the door a bit later.)  But–as sometimes happens–events overtook me while I slept, and I woke up to a headline this morning to the effect that Joe Biden has agreed to a meeting with Vladimir Putin, just as long as Putin meets certain conditions, and doesn’t invade Ukraine beforehand.

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Quote of the Day: Truth

Seawriter
Seawriter
96850
 

“The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” – Eric Blair (George Orwell)

We certainly saw that illustrated this week in Canada. Lying has become reflexive there among those in government. Rather than engage in discussion with the Freedom Convoy, the Liberal politicians there instead choose to lie about it. They are violent.  When you push for examples you get explanations that they are not violent yet, but they will be. Or they have violent potential. To undercut support they claim – with negligible proof – the truckers are Nazis or Confederate sympathizers or White supremacists or (most risible of all) Trump supporters.

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Quote of the Day: Orders

Seawriter
Seawriter
2114
 

“Never give an order you know won’t be obeyed.” — Advice given to officer trainees by senior officers

I know I heard some variant of that when I was in ROTC back in the 1970s. Back then, it was advice rooted in practicality and even self-preservation. US troops in Vietnam were disregarding orders, and occasionally avoiding the consequences of disobeying orders by “fragging” the officer who gave the order to ensure no charges would be pressed. “Did we disobey the butterbar, Captain? Of course not. Didn’t hear no order, and I’m sure the second looie would tell that himself if he hadn’t dropped that grenade in his tent. Ya know captain, he struck me as suicidal, but we don’t want his family burdened with that. Let’s just tell them it was an accident. Right, guys?” (And everyone else agrees.)

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Quote of the Day: A Lincoln Quote on Lincoln’s Birthday

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
139958
 

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

This is the concluding paragraph of Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Cooper Union Address. The speech helped launch his successful presidential campaign, running as the first presidential candidate of a new party. The conclusion, the charge to the audience, is evergreen.

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