Quotes and Links

Maimonides

Repentance means that the sinner forsake his sins, cast them out of his mind, and resolve in his heart to sin no more.

Mencius

"Let men decide firmly what they will not do, and they will be free to do vigorously what they ought to do."

[Mengzi Meng-tse] (c.371 - c.288 B.C.) Chinese Confucian philosopher

China USA clash?

I hope not.

Leszek Kolakowski

There has never been, and there will never be, an institutional means of making people brothers. Fraternity under compulsion is the most malignant idea devised in modern times; it is a perfect path to totalitarian tyranny. Socialism in this sense is tantamount to a kingdom of lies.

(*Heed this: Obama*)

Sholem Asch

"The best security for old age: respect your children."

Jewish Saying

"Freedom means being able to give to others."

Andrew Klavan

Washington, D.C. and Hollywood are two cities suffering from the same condition: they've not only become completely alienated from the people they're meant to serve, they're bizarrely blind to the fact of that alienation. Like deranged narcissists in a hall of mirrors, both our lawmakers and our culture-makers blow kisses at their own reflections, see a million kisses coming back their way, and think, "Oh, look, they love me—love me!"


(*I like this guy's initials and his way of thinking.*)

David Warren

More wisdom from this atypical Canadian:

....many things that seem plausible are untrue; and even where arguably true, a plain fact often masks a paradox.


I attended a funeral earlier this week for the mother of an old friend. That friend, and his wife, are by current standards very unusual people. They kept their aging parents at home; they attended personally to their needs, as well as to the needs of adopted children, despite very busy professional lives. They are so old-fashioned that they do not even boast about what they had and have been doing -- out of a love that is non-negotiable.

Somewhere in the course of the social revolution that has been effected since the 1960s, the category of non-negotiable love has been misplaced.

Carry an idea notebook

The link directs you to some practical advice -- I do a variation of this.