PeterEliasMD

It’s impossible to learn from one’s mistakes while denying or hiding them.

It’s easy to take people for granted. 

Titus Lucretius Carus (Lucretius) was born about 1 Century BC. His six part poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) is 7400 lines of hexameter in the style of Virgil and Ovid mirroring Homer. His is hardly a household name, but when his work was (re)discovered and (re)published in 1417 by Poggio the Florentine it had major impact on the course of the Renaissance.

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." 

André Gide (1869-1951)

“Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups.”

(Nietzsche) 

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."

John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006)

Moderation (or centrism in the political world) is best defined as a slavish devotion to the status quo.

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

(George Orwell)

Problems worthy

of attack

Prove their worth

by hitting back. 

(Problems by Piet Hein) 

Simplification may be necessary when we try to cram complex or messy truths into comprehensible prose or usable tools, but the underlying dishonesty and inevitable distortions should be noted rather than denied, lest we begin to mistake the symbol for the thing.

Isn’t a hen just an egg’s way to make another egg?

Vision is not enough…

The German philosopher Hegel said, “We learn from history that we don’t learn from history.” 

Life must be understood backward….

“The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”

(Dr Martin Luther King) 

First they ignore you.

Good questions can give good answers. It is important to understand the implications of the questions we ask, so we know how to act on the answer.

If you are silent in the face of evil, or acquiesce to what you know is wrong…

Gloria Steinem said: “The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.”

You can never make the same mistake twice.

Becoming a good person seems like an obvious goal, a no-brainer. Despite that, not many of us really try. And fewer succeed. What's the problem? Dennis Prager discusses this in his 10/4/2011 Rosh Hashanah sermon. I'll list the 13 bullet points, but the full text is well worth reading.

Those who say it cannot be done…

Beginning at least as early as the pre-Socratic era around 6 centuries BCE, it was assumed that the earth (and therefore humanity) stood at the center of the universe. It was all about us - and only about us.