Tag: Quote of the Day

Member Post

RushBabe49
RushBabe49
510
 

These are excerpts from Mr. Baker’s Op-ed in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. The unhinged reaction from the left to Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal last week is easily dismissed as a glimpse into the rancid minds and rabid hearts of the ideological brigands of modern progressivism. Preview Open
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Quote of the Day: Facts

Seawriter
Seawriter
149611
 

“Facts don’t care about your feelings.” – Ben Shapiro

I have used this once before, but if ever there was a quote that summed up this week this is it. We have seen it in the lefty reactions to the Rittenhouse verdict. It is a giant cry of “Don’t confuse me with facts. My feelings tell me he is guilty.”

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Quote of the Day: William Grant Still’s Comment on His Second Symphony

RushBabe49
RushBabe49
87
 

For those who are not familiar with him, William Grant Still was a 20th century American composer who happened to be Black. His first symphony was entitled “Afro-American Symphony,” and I played it more than once while in the Everett (Washington) Symphony under our Black conductor, Paul-Elliott Cobbs. Sometime in the 1990s, the orchestra gifted him with the composer’s score of the symphony. We received standing ovations in 2006, when we played the “Afro-American Symphony” in Carnegie Hall.

Still’s second symphony was composed in 1936-37, and it bears his subtitle “Song of a New Race.” The composer saw his G minor second symphony as representing

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Quote of the Day: Truth and Fiction

Seawriter
Seawriter
910443
 

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” — Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, Mark Twain

Ain’t it the truth. All you have to do is look at the news today. If in 1960 someone had written a science fiction novel about the 2020s with even half the things that are going on today his editors would have laughed at the draft when they encountered it on the slush pile. The world would lock down for a respiratory virus with a 1% fatality rate? Get outta here!  That will never happen. The FBI would be colluding with a major political party and the New York Times to subvert justice? That’s wacko conspiracy theory territory. Big Brother would not come from the government but rather from public sector technology companies? That idea’s kinda out there, isn’t it?

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Quote of the Day: Political Conversations

Seawriter
Seawriter
69
 

“You can’t hold political conversations with people that are calling you evil.” – Ben Shapiro

We saw this in the run-up to the November 2 elections. Oppose CRT in the classroom? “Racist! Evil,” cry the Democrats. Oppose vaccine mandates? “Racism! Only evil people oppose vaccine mandates,” cry the Democrats (despite the fact the most vaccine-hesitant groups are minorities). Think daughters should be protected from predatory males who will dress up in women’s clothing to gain access to them?” “Racist! Homophobia! You are EEEEVIL,” cry the Democrats (again despite the fact the rapist was white and very obviously heterosexual, since he was going after members of the opposite sex – wolf in sheep’s clothing anyone?).

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Member Post

Seawriter
Seawriter
46166
 

There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud. – Milton Friedman Many companies today neglect this […]
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Quote of the Day: Capitalism and Socialism

Seawriter
Seawriter
6517
 

“Under capitalism, the rich grow powerful. Under socialism, the powerful grow rich — and everyone else grows poor.” – Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit)

Why is socialism growing more powerful in the United States? Because it directly benefits the gentry class: those running the country and those supporting them. This includes not just the political elite, but also the upper-middle-class, credentialed workers who work white-collar jobs – management and technology. The folks who can work remotely and get all their wants and needs delivered to their door.

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Quote of the Day: Problems

Seawriter
Seawriter
79565
 

 “A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” – Albert Einstein

I remembered this quote as a result of the current supply chain problem we are experiencing.  We have a problem: we cannot get containers unloaded from ships fast enough, so goods are piling up – in ships, on wharves, in assembly yards. No doubt the problem will get solved, eventually, by clever people. Yet there is the issue of why the problem arose in the first place. Enough container ships awaiting unloading to spell out “Let’s Go Brandon” did not appear off the California coast overnight. The overflow has been building for months. It simply became bad enough to become noticeable this month.

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Quote of the Day: Distrust of Government

Seawriter
Seawriter
1213583
 

“Distrust of government isn’t baseless cynicism. It’s realism.” – Ben Shapiro

We have seen the truth of this aphorism made clear many times over the past year. Lawlessness on the part of the national government is virtually institutionalized. The latest example occurred earlier this week as the Justice Department declared parents protesting the institution of Critical Racism Race Theory being taught to their children as “domestic terrorists.” It is a clear attempt to criminalize political dissent, a process that began with the treatment of the January 6 protestors.

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Quote of the Day: Courage

Seawriter
Seawriter
612509
 

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

Churchill is right on both counts. It takes courage to stand up and speak, especially when your words go counter to today’s conventional and delivered wisdom. That goes double, or maybe triple in today’s cancel culture, when speaking the truth could cost you your job and your fortune, and turn you into an outcast.  There is too little of that going on today, although there is beginning to be more of it.

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Quote of the Day: California Elections

Seawriter
Seawriter
189609
 

California continually elects the kind of people who want to change the world but can’t even change a tire. – Bryan Preston

And they did it again this Tuesday, retaining rather than recalling Gavin Newsom. What do I take from that? That California is doomed. The four horsemen of socialism, environmentalism, tribalism, and wokeness will continue riding over California ravaging the productive and rewarding the rent-seekers and takers. They are going to have to hit bottom before sanity returns.

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Quote of the Day: Plans

Seawriter
Seawriter
3212562
 

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” ― Woody Allen

I am working on a book. (I know, I always am.) It is due in mid-October. The week before last, everything came together. I wrote 19,000 words in seven days. What makes that more remarkable was I did that on top of working 40 hours at a day job. Good stuff, too.  I still had the captions and the plate dialog to write, plus the instructions to the artist and map makers and a few other things, but with the main body of the text done, I was actually ahead of schedule. I could get it done on time. Maybe early.

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Quote of the Day: Never Yield to Force

Seawriter
Seawriter
1112
 

“Never give in. Never, never, never, never! Never yield in any way, great or small…Never yield to force and the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” – Winston Churchill

My grandparents came from Greece. They have a saying there: “It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” It is the way Greeks live. They fought the Turks for nearly 400 years before gaining independence.

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Quote of the Day: Solutions

Seawriter
Seawriter
108
 

There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs. – Thomas Sowell

There is no better illustration of this piece of Sowell food than the events of August. Joe Biden claimed he has solved the problem of America’s endless war in Afghanistan, through a precipitous pullout. This is only sort-of, kind-of true. The US’s war in Afghanistan is over. We are not there. However, war in Afghanistan continues, albeit between different groups of Afghans.  And it certainly continues for the thousands of US citizens stuck in Afghanistan.

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Quote of the Day: Force

Seawriter
Seawriter
78
 

“Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.” – H. Beam Piper, A Slave Is a Slave

H. B. Piper* was a science-fiction writer of the 1940s through 1960s. He wrote these words in 1960, for a story first published in 1961. It was his response to Asimov’s more famous “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent,” explaining why this is so.

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QotD: Courage, Liberty, and Happiness

Seawriter
Seawriter
77492
 

Those who won our independence . . . believed liberty to be the secret of happiness, and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that, without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile; that, with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. – Justice Louis Brandeis

If any single quote summarizes the cause of our present unhappiness, it is this one. Without liberty, one cannot be happy. Without courage, one cannot be free. Today far too many lack the courage required for liberty. They lack the courage to speak freely, to take the consequences of defying absurd edicts and to disregard specious arguments made by so-called experts. They fear to go their own way and defy the mob. It is easier to go along, to not make waves.

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Quote of the Day: James Madison on Factions

RushBabe49
RushBabe49
57
 

In my readings for the Hillsdale Constitution 101 online course, I came across this passage in Federalist 10.  Was this guy ahead of his time, or what?  Clairvoyant?

A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it, in the same proportion as such a malady to taint a particular county or district than an entire State.

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Quote of the Day: A Question from My Son

Seawriter
Seawriter
33201158
 

“Hey dad, dumb question: if you were to recommend a single book discussing race in America, specifically something to counter the current identity politics, what would it be?” – Ben

I’m cheating today. It’s my turn to do a quote of the day, but I am feeling down at the news of Boss Mongo’s death and cannot think of something appropriate. But the show must go on. Moreover, my youngest (who is an adult), Ben, texted me the question quoted above. It is a really good question, and what dad cannot be flattered at being asked for this kind of advice from an adult child?

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