Random Thoughts On The Passing Scene - Part 5
General Quips, Axioms, Sayings, and Mantras I like (profound and otherwise)
Collected over many years, attribution for the title goes to amazing Thomas Sowell based on his once regular column of the same title. Read all of those first and perhaps a second time before mine. I have to note that Art Carden beat me to this.
[Disclaimer that these might be partially or wholly, but completely unintentionally, stolen.]
If you’re not embarrassed looking back at your first attempts at something, you haven’t yet gotten good at it.
A group in all types (class, category, alliance, nation-state, et al.) is but a conceptual fiction made for the sake of convenience. Ultimately a group is simply a collection individuals.
Don’t make it a competition only when you’re winning. Equally don’t do so only when you’re losing.
Quit caring what other people think about your decisions--they don't have the knowledge or the basis to judge what you're doing. Evaluate it based on what you were trying to achieve, what you reasonably should have known going in, and how you went about pursing it.
My children often help remind me how old I am, and often it is by reminding me how old I want to be.
Winkler’s corollary to Hanlon’s Razor: things that at first glance seem stupid are likely intentional for subtle and important reasons, and things that at first glance seem malevolent are most likely unintentional mistakes.
When I was young, I wanted the world, but all I truly possessed was my youth. Now that I am older, I generally have all that I want save one thing – – youth.
…I called for a precise, surgical strike. You carpet bombed the entire village. If you want to call that success, so be it. I might quibble.
The best part of walking uphill is you have a lower and lower chance of drowning. The best part of walking downhill is it is easier. Beware you don’t too willingly accept the risk of ruination for the benefit of ease.
Monocausal thinking is sloppy. The world is always more complex than we want to admit. It is convenient to build models that assume straight lines and single causes, but convenient does not imply accurate or even useful. Singular-goal thinking on the other hand is dangerous. The world is more complex yet again. It is seductive to want to align every interest behind a single objective, but this is the road to tyranny and destruction.