Tuesday 1 October 2019

Quotations

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"Unfortunately science is only splendid when it is science. When science becomes religion it becomes superstition." G. K. Chesterton

“I am persuaded that feminism is not at the root of political correctness. The actual source is much nastier and dares not speak its name, which is simply hatred for old people. The question of domination between men and women is relatively secondary—important but still secondary—compared to what I tried to capture in this novel, which is that we are now trapped in a world of kids. Old kids. The disappearance of patrimonial transmission means that an old guy today is just a useless ruin. The thing we value most of all is youth, which means that life automatically becomes depressing, because life consists, on the whole, of getting old.” Michel Houellebecq


"Of what is significant in one’s own existence one is hardly aware, and it certainly should not bother the other fellow. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?" Albert Einstein



“She was his kind of loser, and he loved her.” John le Carré


"Idealism had ended up with a bullet in the stomach at the foot of the stairs; the idealist had been caught out in treachery and murder. Rowe didn't believe they had had to blackmail him much. They had only to appeal to his virtues, his intellectual pride, his abstract love of humanity. One can't love humanity. One can only love people." Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear

"Universities aren’t engines of social mobility; they’re left-wing madrassas." Toby Young

"University is not to educate but to inculcate mental conformity and destroy intellectual diversity. Obedience and silo thinking are its way. This stops people fully growing up creating a strange limbo between late adolescence and adulthood which often lasts a lifetime." CCawley@HardLineDemocat

“Why,” I said, “the father habitually tries to resemble the child and is afraid of his sons, and the son likens himself to the father and feels no awe or fear of his parents, so that he may be forsooth a free man. And the resident alien feels himself equal to the citizen and the citizen to him, and the foreigner likewise.” “Yes, these things do happen,” he said. “They do,” said I, “and such other trifles as these. The teacher in such case fears and fawns upon the pupils, and the pupils pay no heed to the teacher or to their overseers either. And in general the young ape their elders and vie with them in speech and action, while the old, accommodating themselves to the young, are full of pleasantry and graciousness, imitating the young for fear they may be thought disagreeable and authoritative.” Plato, warning against democracy, in the Republic Book 8, 562a-3b

12 comments:

  1. More people have died installing solar panels and falling off roofs than have died from nuclear power problems anywhere in the world for the past few decades.

    Scott Adams
    A Message for Children About Climate Change
    Posted September 23, 2019
    https://www.scottadamssays.com/2019/09/23/a-message-for-children-about-climate-change/


    Lenin “in general” loved people but . . . his love looked far ahead, through the mists of hatred.

    Maxim Gorky
    https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/10/leninthink

    Many Trump supporters cheered his election not because of his pugnacity (about time), or his policies (also about time), but because when you hate the china shop, you love the bull.

    Political Realignment Is Coming to America
    American Greatness by Edward Ring

    '...Boris should be now in Brussels squeezing Michel Barnier's thigh.'
    Matt cartoon, Oct 1
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/30/matt-cartoons-october-2019/

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  2. Very good indeed, especially the third, which is much like the reason Neagu Djuvara gave me for wanting Mr Trump to win.

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  3. Et au fond, ce que les brexiteurs ont proposés au peuple britannique qui était un très bon mot d'ordre : reprendre le contrôle de nos vies, de notre nation. C’est ce que nous devons savoir penser et agir dans une nation ouverte. Reprendre le contrôle. Fini le temps où on expliquait à nos concitoyens la délocalisation, c'est l'ordre des choses, c'est une bonne chose pour vous. Les emplois vont en Pologne ou en Chine, au Vietnam et vous allez retrouver le … on n'arrive plus à expliquer cette histoire. Et donc, nous devons trouver les moyens de peser dans la mondialisation mais aussi de repenser cet ordre international.

    EMMANUEL MACRON
    DISCOURS DU PRÉSIDENT DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE À LA CONFÉRENCE DES AMBASSADEURS ET DES AMBASSADRICES DE 2019
    27 AOÛT 2019

    https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2019/08/27/discours-du-president-de-la-republique-a-la-conference-des-ambassadeurs-1

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  4. I was asked by Gordon Brown to chair a review into the rule that state papers should be kept secret for 30 years (we reduced it to 20 — a small but significant victory for people’s right to know). As part of our deliberations, my committee sought the views of the then leader of the opposition, whom we saw in a private Commons room. Clearly somewhat rattled, Cameron suddenly blurted out: ‘I know what this is all about — it’s Brown trying to expose my drug-taking.’ There was a stunned silence and the subject was changed. I can only presume that Call Me Dave was worried what some old security vetting might reveal.
    How fascinating the effect guilt has on the mind and tongue.

    Paul Dacre on the British media, courts and David Cameron’s ‘drug taking’
    Spectator USA by Paul Dacre

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    Replies
    1. Paul Dacre

      October 3, 2019

      1:31 PM

      https://spectator.us/paul-dacre-regret-enemies-people/

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    2. ...today's issue?
      I guess so... Feedly grabbed it for me 14 hours ago from the US edition. Still free...

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    3. I read it then and 'enemies of the people' was an excellent headline. What is Feedly? I sound like an English high court judge back in the 1970s before they became trendy and up to date, I know.

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    4. Feedly is the best free RSS reader available:

      https://apps.apple.com/us/app/feedly-smart-news-reader/id396069556

      Delete
  5. Supreme Court President Lady Hale has long been a bête noire of the Mail which, in my 26 years as editor, campaigned unremittingly for marriage — a subject on which the Baroness, who spent nine years on the Law Commission, seems to have held decidedly sour views, including her declaration that ‘logically we have already reached the point at which we should be considering whether the legal institution of marriage continues to serve any useful purpose’. So it was that the Commission set out to establish that marriage was no different from other living arrangements. Co-habitees should enjoy the same rights as married couples. No-fault divorces were recommended. An institution which for centuries had been regarded as a spiritual melding of selves was transmogrified into a self-centered business transaction. Unsurprisingly, this mishmash of moral relativism resulted in a soaring divorce rate with children being treated as just more disposable items in a throwaway society. Whether any of this should be laid at the door of Lady Hale, I judge not. I do know, however, that there is a mountain of evidence that children brought up by two parents in an enduring relationship lead happier, more successful lives than those brought up in ‘alternative living arrangements’. As for the Baroness — I learn she has just been given a cushy number at the Oxford college run by the ex-editor of the left-wing Remainer Guardian who, oh yes, is a prominent supporter of Gina Miller. Oh piccolo mondo!

    Paul Dacre

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    Replies
    1. I didn't read the article, it seems. I just saw 1st paragraph. I love this and badly miss him. He lives in the suburbs, retired recently and was replaced by an upper class Remainer.

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    2. After stepping aside as Editor, after 26 years, Paul Dacre was appointed Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers in 2018.

      https://www.dmgmedia.co.uk/about/dmg-media-leadership/

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