Monday, March 29. 2010
How much of what shapes our lives is luck and serendipity? Most of us have met our spouse by chance, and many even have their jobs or even their careers by stumbling onto something.
On Maggie's Farm, we like to view life optimistically as an endless conveyor belt of opportunities, but with few of them passing by more than once. Thus do we necessarily accumulate regrets over time.
But what is luck made of? What is Fate made of? In part (and only in part), it is made of these ingredients:
"Character is destiny." - Sigmund Freud
"Chance favors the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur
"You make your own luck." - Ernest Hemingway
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -Thomas Jefferson
"I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often." - Brian Tracy
"Suit up, show up, and shut up." - AA aphorism, and the closely related Woody Allen quote: "Eighty percent of success is showing up."
This topic came to mind as I reflected on our corny but deeply true QQQs on persistence. Persistence tends to work because it works on a statistical basis. If a fellow hits on enough gals in the pub, he'll eventually get lucky.
Of course, knowing when to fold 'em is part of wisdom too. Sometimes sunny optimism is plain stupid.
Saturday, March 27. 2010
I don't want you to bail out my mistakes, America, and I don't want to bail out yours. Take your lumps! It's the free market; prices have to find their real level. I'm underwater in my stocks, and nobody cares. It will come out OK in the end.
Paraphrased from Larry Kudlow, on the radio this morning re government support of artificially high housing prices.
Wednesday, March 24. 2010
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."
John F. Kennedy, via Media Mythbusters
Monday, March 22. 2010
Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.
GK Chesterton (h/t, Dr. Bob). Indeed. We alluded to that topic in our Two Americas on Saturday.
Friday, March 19. 2010
"Naivete can get you killed."
A patient, this week.
Indeed, experience is the best teacher. If one avoids experience, one learns nothing. I once had a middleweight patient who sparred twice with Gerry Cooney. The first time, Gerry went easy on him. When he went back to Cooney's gym in Jersey six months later, he told him to give him his best shots. Gerry promptly knocked him out unintentionally, just testing him. Concussion. The old guy can still throw a left hook. Was highly apologetic at the hospital. They have been best of friends ever since. Boxing is one of the Manly Arts.
Gerry Cooney is one of the good guys.
Ed: George Bellows' Stag at Sharkey's (thanks, dear readers). Bellows chose a career in painting over a career in pro baseball, following his heart for better or worse:
Thursday, March 18. 2010
When I was in high school, our Headmaster never praised intelligence in his homilies on God and life in daily Chapel, but he did praise what he called "stick-to-it-iveness" and "going the extra mile" all the time. I thought "banal nostrums" at the time, but now I know better -
In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins - not through strength, but through persistence.
Buddha
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Calvin Coolidge
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Thomas Edison
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas Edison
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
W.C. Fields
Tuesday, March 16. 2010
Nullius in verba
Motto of the Royal Society.
Friday, March 12. 2010
To those for whom the intellect alone has force, such a witness has little or no force. It bewilders and exasperates them. It challenges them to suppose that there is something greater about man than his ability to add and subtract. It submits that that something is the soul. Plain men understood the witness easily. It speaks directly to their condition. For it is peculiarly the Christian witness. They still hear it, whenever it truly reaches their ears, the ring of those glad tidings that once stirred mankind with an immense hope. For it frees them from the trap of irreversible Fate at the point at which it whispers to them that each soul is individually responsible to God, that it has only to assert that responsibility, and out of man’s weakness will come strength, out of his corruption incorruption, out of his evil good, and out of what is false invulnerable truth.
Thursday, March 11. 2010
It takes a high school drop-out to fix what a college grad breaks.
Motto of the flight line crew, h/t, reader
Wednesday, March 10. 2010
"I suspect that nationalism became unfashionable not because of Germany, but because it interfered with the spread of communism."
AVI. Germany was sort-of racially imperialistic, not nationalistic in the usual sense. Like Jihad, had they a modern army. We here at Maggie's prefer nationalism, federalism, and localism. Whatever is closest to the real people who pay the tax bills. No "New World Order," thank you. We fear centralism because we know those statist folks are crafty but aren't wise, and that they have their own interests in mind. Our Florentine hero Niccolo understood all that very well.
"There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime."
Sign over Squadron Ops Desk at Davis-Montham AFB, AZ. Lots more here.
Tuesday, March 9. 2010
Alas, the man's name does a disservice to the brilliant Florentine Renaissance political scientist and student of human nature that he was.
However, I did not know that he wrote comedy on the side. Another Renaissance Man, as it were.
I like his face: shrewd and discerning, but ready to laugh.
"Princes and governments are far more dangerous than the other elements within society.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli
"It's not that some people need more sleep than others, it's that some people sleep faster than others."
Peter DeVries
Monday, March 8. 2010
It's a classic, often misquoted as Wimpy saying "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." However, that may have been from a different Popeye episode.
It's Here. I love it.
(This was clearly before credit cards were widespread.)
Saturday, March 6. 2010
I've been a kid, and I've been an adult. Adult's better.
Robert Parker, quoted at Wash. Rebel
Thursday, March 4. 2010
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.
H.L. Mencken
Wednesday, March 3. 2010
Apparatchiks who pretend to be revolutionaries — that’s an awful lot of the press these days.
Prof. Reynolds, here.
Thursday, February 25. 2010
There’s nothing like Lent for reflecting on the sins of other people.
A sarcastic Mead, linked here. Oscar Wilde could have said that.
Wednesday, February 24. 2010
We wish all you kids a hard life: living hard, studying hard, working hard, playing hard, loving hard, giving hard, praying hard, worshipping hard, and loving God hard so you can have the life in abundance through Christ which he offers us.
Tuesday, February 23. 2010
Re humanitarians,
"They are compassionate to it (humanity) doubtless, as one may be compassionate to the most revolting animal. But their dislike of it appears to be general and fundamental."
G K Chesterton "Humanitarian Hate," 1908, from AVI's Chesterton, Conrad, and HG Wells
Monday, February 22. 2010
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
Friday, February 19. 2010
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Oscar Wilde
Is this what they thought when they pulled the Obama lever?
Whenever I have to choose between two evils, I always like to try the one I haven't tried before.
- Mae West
Thursday, February 18. 2010
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
Tuesday, February 16. 2010
...when liberal wring their hands because the U.S. seems to be ungovernable, we conservatives chuckle. That's not a bug, liberals; that's a feature.
From Chantrill at Am Thinker
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