annoying.....................

 An annoying malady, to think yourself so wise that you persuade yourself that no one can believe the contrary!

-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book One, Chapter 56

Uh-oh.......................

 thanks Kurt

Wisdom.....................

"And if I claim to be a wise man, it surely means that I don't know"

-Kerry Livgren and Kansas from this beauty

Two wise men.......................

.............................................................and their ageless lessons:

One, the importance of being a lifelong learner.  Two, keep my life simple.  Three, closely guard my character and reputation.  Four, not take life too seriously and stay happy always.  These are apart from the hundreds of lessons I have learned from these two wise men on how to be sensible with my money.

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I have............................

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One more bit from.....................

................................................Hanson about Trump:

Key is his emperor-has-no-clothes instinct that what is normal and customary in Washington was long ago neither sane nor necessary. And so far, his candidacy has not only redefined American politics but also recalibrated the nature of insight itself — leaving the wise to privately wonder whether they were ever all that wise after all.

On the importance of recognizing false choices....

A Sebastian Mallaby or David Brooks will ask: who would you rather have in charge? An expert, or a random guy in a bar?

If that indeed is the choice, then give me the expert. But I want an option that says “None of the above.” Or, to put it another way, I want an expert with so much humility that the expert does not try to mess with orders that emerge naturally. Unfortunately, we live in a society in which “humble expert” has become an oxymoron.

-as excerpted from this Arnold Kling post

P.S.:  The comments to the post are worth reading too.

But...............................

"We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we can't be wise with other men's wisdom."

-Michel de Montaigne

Wisdom.................................

...................................................found here.   As it often is.

Twainisms.......................................

Here of late, a number of Mark Twain witticisms have crossed my path.  The man was a virtual quote machine. The problem with posting one or two or twelve is...how do you choose?  Then the thought arose...bet you could make a blog just out of Twain's sayings.  Turns out you can.  Like here and here and probably seventeen other places.  Anyway, enjoy a few Twain quotes:

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed."

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society”

"Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world — and never will."

"It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest.  But nothing can do that."

“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”

"The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey."

Wisdom..............................................

larger version is here

Wisdom..............................

"Perhaps before people start learning, they need to unlearn things they believe, that just ain’t so."
-Scott Sumner from here

"Drink decent tea and coffee.  Do the simple pleasures properly."
-Nicholas Bate from here

"The 'fierce urgency of now' has replaced the orderly review of decisions.  This is a trend to resist."
-Kurt Harden from here

"The crafting of a handwritten word can possess a deliberation which is missing when that same word is spoken or typed."
-Michael Wade from here

"I want to risk hitting my head on the ceiling of my talent."
-Quentin Tarantino from here

"You want to learn the thing, you have to do the thing. The only mistake is in not doing."
-Jeff Kopito from here

"You will be the same person in five years that you are today except for the books you read and the people you associate with."
-Ray Visotski from here

"Everybody boogie"
-Doug Fine from here

No, let's use amendments.............

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Speaking of genies.............

Choices..................

"Only the most foolish of mice would hide in the cat's ear.  But only the wisest of cats would think to look there."
-Scott Love

Ambrose Bierce would be proud..........

James Geary brings us wisdom and aphorisms by Peter Siviglia. 
Full story is here.  A small sampling is here:

Responsibility: the rejection of excuses.

Truth: the most powerful and disarming of weapons. To believe that you can deceive without detection is self-deception. To admit error is to treat acid with a base.

The two certainties in life: Death and Taxes. Well, it’s time to add a third: Mistakes. Work, therefore, must be checked, rechecked, and checked again. Even then, some mistakes, like pests, will persist; but by then, those that remain, hopefully, will be harmless.

Luck: Luck begins and ends when the sperm hits the egg. It is a word for losers and for those few who are both successful and modest. Therefore, take an extended vacation from “if only”, “might have”, “could have”, “would have”, and their colleagues.

Three people never to trust: cowards, the greedy, and the desperate.

All along the watchtower......the motley mixture

48.   Plato has a fine saying, that he who would discourse of man should survey, as from some high watchtower, the things of earth; its assemblies for peace or war, its husbandry, matings, and partings, births and deaths, noisy law courts, lonely wastes, alien peoples of every kind, feasting, mourning, bargaining - observing all the motley mixture, and the harmonious order that is wrought out of contrariety.

Marcus Aurelius
Meditations, Book Seven

Smarter...................