Maggie's FarmWe are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for. |
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Saturday, July 17. 2010QQQMoney is just a type of information, a pattern that, once digitized, becomes subject to persistent programmatic hacking by the mathematically skilled. Kelly, at Wired Thursday, July 15. 2010QQQIn this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love. Mother Teresa Thursday, July 8. 2010QQQEveryone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone. Frederic Bastiat Friday, June 25. 2010Who said this?"The Liberals, with their emphasis on collectivism and conformity, and their willingness to use compulsion to achieve their ends, are actually suggesting a course of action which thoughtful men have rejected throughout history. The reason man must be treated as an individual is because he has an individual immortal soul. Thus, his freedom comes from God -- as do all of his rights. In the scheme of things, government's only proper role is in the protection of man's God-given freedoms and rights." [All emphases again are -----'s own.] Answer below the fold - Continue reading "Who said this?"
Posted by The Barrister
in Politics, Quotidian Quotable Quote (QQQ)
at
09:48
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Wednesday, June 23. 2010QQQLord Acton, arguing against the 1870 promulgation of the concept of Papal Infallibility: I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it. Monday, June 21. 2010Futbol QQQSome people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that. Billy Shankly, quoted in a post about Soccer at American Thinker. My view is that soccer is good fun to play, but watching pros play is like watching paint dry. Thursday, June 17. 2010QQQ“I pretty much have my bad inclination [‘yetzer hara’] under control; it’s my good inclination [‘yetzer hatov’] that always gets me into trouble.” Rabbi Wolfe Kelman (h/t, Vanderleun). I suppose that's the Yiddish version of "No good deed goes unpunished." Sunday, June 13. 2010QQQs- Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you. - What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. Both from Flannery O'Connor Monday, June 7. 2010QQQ"We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey." Stephen Covey (h/t Retriever) Thursday, May 27. 2010Political QQQ du JourIt's an oldie - The old farmer is late serving breakfast to the animals. Pig says to chicken "So, what will we have for breakfast?" Chicken replies "I suggest eggs and bacon." Wednesday, May 19. 2010QQQ"There's no such thing as a single lie." Via Wizbang's A Tangled Web. It's not just that one lie leads to another; it's that liars tend to lie. It's part of who they are. See People of the Lie, a book about which Amazon quotes:
Thursday, May 13. 2010QQQ"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." Frederic Bastiat Wednesday, May 12. 2010QQQKnowledge grows by not only doubting your beliefs and believing your doubts, but by doubting your doubts and believing your beliefs. We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. The fashion of the age has identified mental sharpness with a pose, not with genuine intellectual method and character. Today it is the skeptics who are the social conformists, though - because of powerful intellectual propaganda - they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright. Dallas Willard Tuesday, May 11. 2010QQQThe New Deal was a genuine revolution, whose deepest purpose was not simply reform within existing traditions, but a basic change in the social, and, above all, the power relationships within the nation. It was not a revolution by violence. It was a revolution by bookkeeping and lawmaking. In so far as it was successful, the power of politics had replaced the power of business. This is the basic power shift of all the revolutions of our time. This shift was the revolution. Whittaker Chambers (h/t, Dr. Bob) Tuesday, May 4. 2010QQQThe champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Ludwig von Mises, 1944, via Am Thinker Thursday, April 22. 2010QQQ"Is democratic behavior that which democracies like to engage in, or is it behavior that will preserve a democracy?" Aristotle. Discussed at Reb Friday, April 16. 2010QQQNow, the pursuit of power is a zero-sum game: you acquire power only by taking it away from someone else. The pursuit of money, however, is not a zero-sum game, which is why it is a much more innocent human activity. It is possible to make a lot of money without inflicting economic injury on anyone. Making money may be more sordid than appropriating power—at least it has traditionally been thought to be so—but, as Adam Smith and others pointed out, it is also a far more civil activity. Irving Kristol, as quoted in Chicago Boyz' Paying Higher Taxes Can Be Very Profitable. How many times have we said the same thing here at Maggie's? The pursuit of power is what is sordid and sick, but everybody has to make an honest living.
Posted by Bird Dog
in Politics, Quotidian Quotable Quote (QQQ)
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10:15
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Thursday, April 15. 2010QQQLife, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. Frederic Bastiat Wednesday, April 14. 2010QQQ about the Anglo-SaxonsStolen from Chicago Boyz:
F.A. Hayek, Road to Serfdom. Friday, April 9. 2010QQQAnyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all life really means. Robert Louis Stevenson Thursday, April 8. 2010QQQBe not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, c.1420 Monday, April 5. 2010A QQQ on AmericansShamefully stolen from Samiz. It's about the Americans the Left has never met, and does not know:
Friday, April 2. 2010QQQ on self-esteem and self-respect"Self-respect requires fortitude, one of the cardinal virtues; self-esteem encourages emotional incontinence that, while not actually itself a cardinal sin, is certainly a vice, and a very unattractive one. Self-respect and self-esteem are as different as depth and shallowness." Ted Dalrymple, via Dr. Sanity's BAD ROMANCE Wednesday, March 31. 2010QQQSome day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.
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