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Ponderous Apophthegms
Apophthegms, like epigrams, should be pithy; you have not
stumbled across the website of the next Oscar Wilde.
Presented in order of increasing clunkiness.
Hope and change keep the cycle circular.
Don't know lies between true and
false, separating caution from folly.
If we believe in kings and princes then justice and
fairness are a family quarrel, but if we believe that men in
their millions are equals then justice and fairness are
quantities beyound the measure of the untrained mind and an
economist must be a mathematician before he can become a
sage.
The quest for fake sincerity dances men along the edge of madness.
The world is beset by disparate evils that fight among
themselves and the man who is single-minded in rejecting one
ends up embracing another.
Sound public advice is only heeded by the small minority for
whom it is wrong.
Engineering teaches morality: when we lie, cheat, or steal,
the dam bursts, the bridge collapses, the ship sinks and the
plane crashes.
Engineering teaches a demanding moral code in which only the
competent can be truly good.
The race is to the swift and the battle to the strong but
the odds are never so short as the bookmaker offers and when
the sea take the unsinkable ship with no lifeboats
everybody drowns.
Theologians arguing about God is like polar bears fighting
over a penguin.
The world gets by, by folk copying each other, which
is not at all similar to most folk copying a few sages.
If Alice copies Bob, and Bob copies Carol, and Carol copies Alice,
who should David copy?
Victimhood is a misfortune, not a career.
Know freedom by its curse: you must refrain from things permitted.
When thoughts spin round in your head, like the wheels on
a bicycle, don't apply the breaks, just stop peddling.
Provided only that it gives occasion for conspicuous
consumption and the attendent spurious hope of social
advancement, no social convention of action or dress is too
absurd to gain universal approbation.
Modern man is so committed to empirical knowledge, that
he sets the standard for evidence higher than either side in his
disputes can attain, thus suffering his disputes to be settled
by philosophical arguments as to which party must be crushed
under the burden of proof.
Testimony is evidence for the circumstances that give rise
to such testimony; other considerations guide us concerning
the relationship, if any, of those circumstances to the content
of the testimony.