“All the demons I know are in middle management,” Martin said.
—Robert Kroese, Codex Babylon
I instantly thought of The Screwtape Letters.
Tag: quote
Oswald Chambers said, “A fanatic is one who entrenches himself in invincible ignorance.”
That’s certainly true of a lot of people on social media, and our larger nation.
Beer, well respected and rightly consumed, can be a gift of God. It is one of his mysteries, which it was his delight to conceal and the glory of kings to search out. And men enjoy it to mark their days and celebrate their moments and stand with their brothers in the face of what life brings.
ABC News, if it cares one whit about its reputation, should ban Stephanopoulos from doing any 2016 campaign coverage. It’s bad enough that he was once a Clinton White House staffer. But everyone went along with the charade that his political days were behind him and that he just wanted to be an objective reporter. That charade ends today.
The Smartest Things Ever Said About Facebook
To commemorate the demise of my Facebook account, and the myriad of questions people usually have about why, here’s some of my favorite quotes on Facebook:
“Facebook seems like a terrific way to stay in touch with people who don’t have the sense to quit dicking around on Facebook.” – Merlin…
I really want to spend less time on Facebook. I really need to cull the people I’m following (not necessarily whom I’m friends with; see what I did there?) so as to tidy up the timeline. At least I’m still mostly reactive to Facebook. My posting of any original content has dropped dramatically, especially since I severed the auto-posting tether from Twitter.
Unfortunately, there are people I truly care about scattered about the land, and Facebook remains, for all its ills and evils, the only place to interact with some of them.
There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
—James Madison, letter to James Monroe, 1786
The United States is a nation of laws, not men.
The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. … It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.
–Ronald Reagan, whose 101st birthday is today.
[A] wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.
—Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801
And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.
—Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781
I have lived, sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?
—Benjamin Franklin, Motion for Prayers in the Constitutional Convention, 1787