Thursday, January 15, 2015

Random Thoughts Part 3

Facts, like living things, have a value in and of themselves and demand respect. People who use them for their own ends and dismiss them when they are no longer of use will likely treat people in the same manner.

They say it is not the destination but the journey. And yet we struggle through traffic to wait in lines at the airport, only to go through demeaning searches and then be shoved into undersized seats. We have compromised too much, and so are unable to enjoy whatever destination it is we seek.

This is the sum total of the knowledge I have obtained in my thirty years of work experience: The ranting of an idiot, overheard by an intern and reported to his superior, will always spell trouble for the honest worker.

Only the very stupid are ever certain of anything.

Most animals sleep in a hole in the ground or hanging from a tree. Man alone has made for himself an elaborate resting place. And yet he is the only one to have developed the alarm clock to rouse himself from it, the only species to spend sixteen or more hours of each day away from it.

In the same way that youth is wasted on the young, retirement is wasted on the old. We should not grow old but young, to gradually increase into a naïve idealism rather than calcify into cynicism and disillusionment, to end our lives in the womb rather than the tomb. Our eyesight slowly growing keener, our skin becoming more sensitive, our appetite increasing as we rush to feel experience, keen in the knowledge that we truly must seize the day.

The world belongs to those with a single idea who are able to repeat it unendingly. You may charitably call them single-minded, but they are more often simple minded.

Where does alienation most manifest itself in our society? Whenever science, government, or business develops a really bad idea and we just shrug and say: “That is progress. It is unavoidable.”

Man has always sought to be a part of something larger and so has tried to change himself in order to fit that larger thing. What he seldom realizes is that he is a part of all that is merely by being uncompromisingly himself.

It takes a brave man to go to war, but it takes a nation of cowards to send him.

We tend to want to remake the world in our own image which why it is best to seek our own happiness. The best gift we can give others is to be happy.

The big events of our youth have profound influences on the rest of our lives. Similarly, the earliest events of our history (e.g. Troy or the American Revolution) play a major role in our society.

We build elaborate theories on a single narrow idea, like a pyramid balanced on a tin can.

In a sick society, no institution is untouched. No psychiatrist can diagnose the disease without being disbarred, no politician can point to the truth without being shouted down or gunned down. The poet, musician, filmmaker, or artist who attempts to define the problem will be ignored, left without a source of income or a way to have his work reach the masses.

Science is the process of obscuring the marvelous with explanations.

The mind can no more understand the heart than science can ever understand nature.

Stupid is never quiet. It is never modest, nor patient.

It is a fine distinction between permitting and promoting.

There is a third choice besides being busy and killing time, something profound.

No one has ever been paid to speak the truth. True, some people who speak the truth can wrangle out a living by doing so amusingly, but the real money is to be found in making lies sound good.

If you’re looking for the road to success, you only have to look behind the stack of excuses.

A child needs a parent or role model to believe in him, but to become a man he must learn to believe in himself.


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