Tag: “Quote of the Day” Series

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The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools. ― Thucydides In Ancient Greece Socrates fought in the phalanx and Xenophon, a military leader wrote works of scholarship.  There was no separation between scholars and warriors.  Nor was there in Republican Rome. Cicero […]

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Member Post

 

Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, […]

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Quote of the Day: Fight for the Right

 

“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” – Winston Churchill

Churchill knew of what he spoke. He was in Parliament when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936 in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Had France and Britain moved in with just a battalion or two of troops each, the Germans would have been rolled back. The entire occupation was a bluff and could have been easily reversed. Hitler would have been deposed by the German Army.

Quote of the Day: War and Peace

 

Si vis pacem, para bellum (If you want peace, prepare for war). – Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, Epitoma rei militaris 4th Century AD

The United States has been at peace for the last 70-odd years. Yes, it has been involved in foreign conflicts since the end of World War II from the Korea War through the ill-named War on Terror. Yet during that time actual US soil has not been touched by war, except possibly by the terrorism of 9-11. The last year there was a real existential threat to US soil was in 1942, including a brief occupation of minor bits of what later became Alaska.

Quote of the Day: War

 

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.” – Mark Twain

It is true, isn’t it? Two years ago, how many of you had heard of Kherson or Melitopol? Back then I thought It was Nikoliav, not Mykolaiv. Before October 7, who knew where Wadi as-Salqua was?

Quote of the Day: Pro-Free Speech

 

Any online community that is explicitly pro-free speech will inevitably become right-leaning. This is because in the free market of ideas right-leaning ideas win. Which is why we see these left-wing tech companies censoring. No one is buying their progressive, globalist [REDACTED] anymore, so it must be force-fed down the throats of users and dissent must be stamped out with the iron fist of censorship.” — Gab CEO Andrew Torba

If you think about it, it makes sense. Ricochet is an example. We have had progressives and liberals join Ricochet to convert the heathen conservatives t0 their political bent instead staying and becoming right-leaning. Because the center-right arguments convinced them. In a free marketplace of ideas, the better arguments win.

Quote of the Day: Son of a Son of a Sailor

 

Jimmy Buffett passed away on September 1 from an aggressive form of skin cancer. I was not a huge fan; I only knew his big hits. But at the time of his passing, I decided I owed the man a deep dive into his life and music. I think The Guardian captured his obituary well.

Jimmy Buffett, who has died aged 76, was an American singer-songwriter whose country-tinged soft rock celebrated the laid-back culture of the Florida Keys on the Caribbean coast of the US. Sometimes known as the “tropical troubadour”, his songs often featured the voices of characters who appreciated the aimless pleasures of beach life: smoking weed, drinking rum and eating boiled shrimps, messing around in boats and generally watching the world go by.

Quote of the Day: Silencing the Opposition

 

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” – Harry S. Truman

There is not much I can add to that. Harry S. pretty much nailed it.  Other than to note, he was a Democrat, which shows how much the Democrats have gone down the path of Fascism since 1972. (Yes, the big shift started after McGovern’s loss,  when the socialist wing of the Democrats captured the party machinery and  chased out first the anti-Communists and eventually everyone to the right of Henry Wallace.)

Quote of the Day: Miracles

 

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ― Albert Einstein

Is he right?  I do not know. I tend to fall in the second camp. To me, everything about life is to some extent miraculous, even the everyday pleasures. Waking up in the morning seems like a miracle. (It always has, even when I was a child, but somehow it seems even more so at 68.) There is a new day ahead. The smell and taste of the first cup of coffee in the morning. (Add a bit of heavy cream and I hear the angels sing.) The beginning of a fresh day at work with new challenges to overcome – or on weekends projects to start or finish. There is a gorgeous blue October sky outside. It all seems so remarkable, so special.

Quote of the Day: Nash on Sensible Fish

 

Oh, things are frequently what they seem,
And this is wisdom’s crown:
Only the game fish swims upstream,
But the sensible fish swims down.
— Ogden Nash

Don’t ask me what it means, but it is your Quotation of the Day. What does it mean? Any answers?

Quote of the Day: Lies

 

“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants; it doesn’t care about our governments our ideologies or our religions. It will lie in wait for all time.” – Professor Lagasov, Chernobyl

We live in an age of lies. “The border is secure.” “The economy is strong.” “No one is above the law.” These are three of the most common lies repeated by our current Administration and their lap-dog press. There are many others. Put your own favorite Administration lie in the comments

Quote of the Day: A Conversation with a 911 Operator

 

Sometimes the quote of the day comes to you. This is a recording of the 911 call requesting an ambulance to assist the pilot who bailed out of the F-35 last week. I have to say the dispatcher’s determination to stay on script is amazing. It does remind me of the waitress in the “toast scene” in Five Easy Pieces.

Quote of the Day: Home Defense Edition

 

I don’t own a gun, but I keep a bag of baseballs near our bed. If someone breaks in they better be wearing a batting helmet because I am going to throw at their head.  – Randy Johnson, Major League Baseball pitcher

Considering Johnson threw a 90mph fastball during his major league career, I’d consider that a credible defense strategy. He is supposed to have said this while he was with the Seattle Mariners in the 1990s, but even today, at age 60, I’ll bet he still has enough heat left to strike out a home invader or two. I will also bet this home defense strategy served him well during stints in gun-averse New York and San Francisco. Someone might get in trouble for being in possession of a handgun in those cities, but deny a MLB pitcher possession of hardballs? It would get laughed out of court.

Quote of the Day: Doomerism Nonsense

 

I’m so weary of black pilled doomerism:

Everything sucks. This is the worst it has ever been. Nothing matters. Nothing you do matters. Defeat is inevitable. Failure is inevitable. Everything used to be better. Nothing ever improves. Things only get worse. We can only lose. Winning is impossible.”

Quote of the Day: Politics and Alarmism

 

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” — H. L. Mencken

Can you say global climate change, boys and girls? Or Covid 19? I knew you could. Both are overblown political crises intended to keep people scared and isolated. As this century-old quote from H. L. Menken shows, it is not a new tactic. It is the whole aim of politics. To convince you the devil is in the chimney and only government intervention can exorcise it.

Quote of the Day: Hello, Baby!

 

I was sitting here not getting much writing done, spending more time harassing the cats than pecking away at the keys, when I thought I should do something more productive. And it is my day to put up a quotation. I started hunting for a good quotation. Often, I start by looking at the list of events for a date in Wikipedia. Anyone important or quotable have a birthday? Anyone quotable die today? Nothing there was striking my fancy. But I did note that it was the 161st anniversary of the Battle of Ox Hill. Maybe I could quote one of the commanders?

Now, you may not be familiar with the Battle of Ox Hill. It probably happened before you were born, unless you’re a vampire like Elon Musk (allegedly). Or it may be because you know it by a different name. It’s a funny thing about the Late Unpleasantness, but depending on when and where you grew up, there were different names for everything that happened then, including the name of the war itself. My eldest aunt was born in 1918. When she went to school in Georgia, that war was taught to her as The War of Northern Aggression. By the time my mother went to school twenty-one years later, the teachers had mitigated it all the way down to the War between the States. If you’re a Yankee, bless your heart, you probably know that war as the Civil War. And, maybe you know that battle as the Battle of Chantilly.

Quote of the Day: Menaces to Civilization

 

“There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by governments.” – Ludwig von Mises

We saw examples of the effects of government by incompetent, corrupt, or vile men illustrated over the last few weeks.