Growing Old Ain't For Sissies

NUMBER 201
SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT—3

"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."
George Bernard Shaw

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
Plato

"When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything."
G. K. Chesterton


"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."
Aesop

"Under every stone lurks a politician."
Aristophanes

Like artificial sweeteners, thinking about politics often leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. Here is a quotation and a picture to sweeten up your meditations.


"You have touched me, and I burn for your peace."
Confessions of St. Augustine
(Augustine would say this is God, prompting man to remember things he has never learned but has in his memory as part of the image of God not destroyed in the fall. I would agree pointing out that it is an example of Romans 1.18-20)

Number 200
Some Things To Think About

Theodore Dalrymple is British Doctor, writer and social critic who has worked in the poorest areas of four continents and most recently practiced in a British inner city hospital and prison. He is a caring person who has observed fallen man up close, while trying to help.

Here are some observations from his latest book of essays, "Our Culture, What’s Left Of It, The Mandarins and the Masses"

"…emotion untutored by thought results in nearly contentless blather, in which—ironically enough—genuine emotion itself cannot be adequately expressed."

"Human motives are rarely pure and never simple."


"There is no contest between Confucius and Coca-Cola."


"Men commit evil within the scope available to them."


++++

Here is a bonus political thought quoted without attribution on a Bill Bennet radio broadcast:

"If today’s media had been covering the revolutionary war, we would have lost."

#199 Some Things To Think About

I am fresh out of something original to say these days so I have been going back over a list of things I have made note of in a file called Maxims, Epigrams, Baloney & Assorted Other Stuff.

It being Spring in Kentucky, I will probably include something growing to calm the spirit while the mind is meditating.

This might also be a good time to remind you all that I will be happy to take your name off my list if you should ask. I don’t often hear from many of you but I will keep sending stuff until you tell me to knock it off.

Modern psychology has replaced the soul with the self.
Theodore Dalrymple
(5)

If today’s media had been covering the revolutionary war, we would have lost.
Un-attributed, on Bill Bennett’s radio program
(4)

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
Edmund Burke
(3)


True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time.
A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
(2)

God is over all things; under all things; outside all; within but not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised up; below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath, sustaining; wholly within, filling.
Hildebert of Lavardin
(1)