Sounds about right......................

 

     In those two days, I pushed out more than ten boxes of books, but within a few months, my shelves are packed again.  Even though I resolved to buy only books I need, the problem is that when I'm shopping online, every book looks like something I need.

-Hwang Bo-Reum,  Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books

The fundamental question..............

 National security, which this conference is largely about, is not merely series of technical questions – how much we spend on defense or where, how we deploy it, these are important questions.  They are.  But they are not the fundamental one.  The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions.  Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation.  Armies fight for a way of life.  And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.

-Marco Rubio, from this speech

thanks Kurt

the presence of the unforethinkable.....

 

Contingency, or the "presence of the unforethinkable," is at the heart of earthly reality, according to philosopher Albert Borgman.  Contingency doesn't make life random or meaningless, he says, adding that in ancient times contingency meant something like consummation.  Rather, it attests to the "unsurpassable eloquence" of a reality that often asks us to confront what we cannot control or even understand.  A face-to-face meeting, which demands a mutual reading of body language, emotion, and soul, is harder to fathom, and less predictable than a virtual encounter.  But by losing the will to face one another, we are turning away from the messy, unpredictable, and real in life.

-Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age

illusions...............

 

The greatest menace to progress is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.

-Daniel Boorstin, Cleopatra's Nose

Let it go...............

 

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

-William James, The Principles of Psychology