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The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty; and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.
Intellectuals are drawn to the Left, politically, despite evidence, because it gives them a bigger role to play
All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
Nothing will serve you better than a strong work ethic. Nothing. And it’s something that you can’t teach. You have to be thrown into it, where you’re going to sink or swim. It’s amazing how self correcting and how clarifying a good, hard, shitty job can be.
Article: Esquire May 2012
Throughout my lifetime, politicians and pundits have constantly moaned about terrifying problems facing America… The prophets of doom have overlooked the all-important factor that is certain: Human potential is far from exhausted, and the American system for unleashing that potential – a system that has worked wonders for over two centuries despite frequent interruptions for recessions and even a Civil War – remains alive and effective.
I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion’s) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once.
Book: Orthodoxy
All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
You matter because you are you, and you matter to the last moment of your life.
Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.
Friendship, the Father tells her, “is just like a vessel that you fill at the fountain. If you take it out of the fountain to drink, the vessel is soon empty. But if you hold your vessel in the fountain (the heart of Christ) while you drink, it will not get empty. Indeed it will always be full.”
Book: Catherine of Siena - Vision Through a Distant Eye
Catherine’s (St. Catherine of Siena) spirituality: The dynamic of knowledge of God and knowledge of self. (Her usual summary term for it is simply “self-knowledge,” but she always implies by this, the knowledge of God within ourselves and of ourselves within God.)
Book: Catherine of Siena - Vision Through a Distant Eye
If you are not found to be a lover of truth, you will never get to know the truth. St. Catherine of Siena
Book: Catherine of Siena - Vision Through a Distant Eye
No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Book: Autobiography
It took me too long to realize
That I don’t take good pictures
Cuz I have the kind of beauty
That moves
That I don’t take good pictures
Cuz I have the kind of beauty
That moves
Happy, friendly people that may not be the best athletes are more fun than arrogant “experts”.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference.
I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
When the government fears its people, you have freedom, and when people fear its government, you have tyranny.
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.
There are no coincidences. Just lack of perspective.
Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
Throw your heart out in front of you and then run ahead to catch it.
In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are “The Advertisers” and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.
The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and somthing else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that.
Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler. An unknown sage - whose name is self. In your body he dwells. There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom.
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man.
…it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world.
Sometimes I feel Iike I’m seeing it all at once and it’s too much.
My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst.
And then I remember to relax…
and stop trying to hold on to it.
And then it flows through me like rain,
and I can’t feel anything but gratitude…
for every single moment…
of my stupid little life…
Sometimes I feel Iike I’m seeing it all at once and it’s too much.
My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst.
And then I remember to relax…
and stop trying to hold on to it.
And then it flows through me like rain,
and I can’t feel anything but gratitude…
for every single moment…
of my stupid little life…
Movie: American Beauty
Behold, I stand at your door and knock; open the door and I will come to you.
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at anytime.
Everyone knows the same truth; what makes us different is how we choose to distort it.
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