We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.
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Unbounded morality ultimately becomes counterproductive even in terms of the same moral principles being sought. The law of diminishing returns read more
Unbounded morality ultimately becomes counterproductive even in terms of the same moral principles being sought. The law of diminishing returns applies to morality.
The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive.
The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive.
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it read more
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.
The theory of evolution must be considered as a scientific theory, as theory, that is, proposed to explain or systemize read more
The theory of evolution must be considered as a scientific theory, as theory, that is, proposed to explain or systemize a set of facts, and that no one has any claim to be considered as a serious rival to Darwin in the "discovery" of this theory who did not conduct his evolutionary studies upon a reasonably wide basis of facts. To have ideas, apercus, is not enough, and it is the overevalutation of such clever but uncontrolled guesses which is apt to produce the ludicrous fallacy of combination, in which fragments of the final theory are collected from widely scattered sources and are combined in such a way as to impugn the originality of him who was the first to see how such a synthesis was possible.
Curiosity killed the cat, but for awhile I was a suspect.
Curiosity killed the cat, but for awhile I was a suspect.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
But now being lifted into high society,
And having pick'd up several odds and ends
Of free read more
But now being lifted into high society,
And having pick'd up several odds and ends
Of free thoughts in his travels for variety,
He deem'd, being in a lone isle, among friends,
That without any danger of a riot, he
Might for long lying make himself amends;
And singing as he sung in his warm youth,
Agree to a short armistice with truth.
Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must recognize that the advance and even the preservation of civilization read more
Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must recognize that the advance and even the preservation of civilization are dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen.
A man that would expect to train lobsters to fly in a year is called a lunatic; but a man read more
A man that would expect to train lobsters to fly in a year is called a lunatic; but a man that thinks men can be turned into angels by an election is a reformer and remains at large.
