Month: April 2010

An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses —
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon —
Rationalists would wear sombreros.

I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.

To live without duties is obscene.

Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

of Elbert Hubbard who died in the sinking of the Lusitania.

I can not say specifically where your father and Mrs. Hubbard were when the torpedoes hit, but I can tell you just what happened after that. They emerged from their room, which was on the port side of the vessel, and came on to the boat-deck.

Neither appeared perturbed in the least. Your father and Mrs. Hubbard linked arms — the fashion in which they always walked the deck — and stood apparently wondering what to do. I passed him with a baby which I was taking to a lifeboat when he said, “Well, Jack, they have got us. They are a damn sight worse than I ever thought they were.”

They did not move very far away from where they originally stood. As I moved to the other side of the ship, in preparation for a jump when the right moment came, I called to him, “What are you going to do?” and he just shook his head, while Mrs. Hubbard smiled and said, “There does not seem to be anything to do.”

The expression seemed to produce action on the part of your father, for then he did one of the most dramatic things I ever saw done. He simply turned with Mrs. Hubbard and entered a room on the top deck, the door of which was open, and closed it behind him.
It was apparent that his idea was that they should die together, and not risk being parted on going into the water.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

The fly sat upon the axel-tree of the chariot-wheel and said, What a dust do I raise!

Election Haiku

Change vs. more of the same
The economy, stupid
Don’t forget health care.

The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

Conquering the world on horseback is easy; it is dismounting and governing that is hard.

John Major: “What is the situation like in Russia”

Boris Yeltsin: “Good”

John Major: “Could you expand on that”

Boris Yeltsin: “Not Good”

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slave of some defunct economist.