Quote of the Day

Today's quote on rationality is from Oscar Wilde:

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

That sounds about right to me. Human beings like to think themselves rational and others irrational, but close scrutiny would certainly show otherwise.

Dealing with what we own

One of today's quotes on my iGoogle homepage really struck home with me this morning. It is particularly appropriate considering how I have been spending most of my summer vacation so far. The quote is from John Ruskin and it says:

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

For the past month and a half I've been trying to cull through all the accumulated junk in our shed and in the children's rooms to try to make room for my eldest son to return home after a year of dorm life. It is amazing to me how much stuff a family of 5 can accumulate and hold onto over time. As I look through the piles and piles of old toys (many never really played with beyond the opening at Christmas and some never even opened!) I begin to realize the opportunity cost associated with so much stuff. And I being to look at possession in something of a different light. Do you say to yourself "I might as well keep it," or "It's a good price, I might as well buy it" or should you say, "What am I ever going to do with this?" or "Where am I going to put this?" I find myself realizing that we do become wearied and weighed down by our possessions. Sometimes I think it is true that less is more.

Quote of the day & I love it

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
-- Bertrand Russell

I haven't been able to find any yet either. And I'm more convinced than ever that even those who consider themselves the most rational are in fact just as irrational as the rest of us.

Quote of the day

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” - Dr. Seuss

And yes, that is directly related to my previous post. I try to remind myself of that fact often these days. It seems to help quite a bit. :)

I must be a rare person

I came across a quote today, from Dick Cavett of all people, that really struck a chord with me.

It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.

If Dick is right in his assessment, then I guess I am a truly rare person. And I say that because I almost always want to hear what people assume I don't want to hear. Partially it has something to do with my masochistic tendencies, but mostly it is just because I hate not knowing the truth.

A little levity

One of the quotes on my google homepage today is a quote from Dick Cavett:

If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.

It's just a silly quote, but it reminds me of something someone said to me many long years ago when I was a teenager. I forget the girl's name now as she was only a casual acquaintance, but I swear she was absolutely serious when she said this. She told me that she knew that she would never be able to have children. When I asked her why, she said "It runs in my family, but it skips a generation." Hum. . .let's just think about that one for a minute. And she wasn't even blond!

Maybe that explains it

As a teacher I often wonder how it is that what I say can be so totally misunderstood or misinterpreted. Maybe this quote explains it.

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
-Bertrand Russell

It would explain a lot, that's for sure.

Quote of the day

This quote doesn't come from one of those massive quotation database site, but from another blogger, Matthew at Like Cooking a Small Fish. The quote comes from his post that explains the name of the blog.

The story of the 20th century might well be that despite our self-conception as rational beings, most “rational” plans for ordering society produced undesirable results, whereas stable political and economic outcomes were generally obtained naturally and democratically, without constant top-down control.

The quote originally caught my attention because it uses the word "rational", but I really think he makes an excellent point about the importance of democracy and the limitations of rational action. Maybe in a democracy, the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts.

h/t: Poliblog

Quote of the day

Via the Quotations Page - A quote from Will Rogers

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.
Will Rogers, Illiterate Digest (1924), "Breaking into the Writing Game"
US humorist & showman (1879 - 1935)

Yep, I can't argue with that too much. . .

Quote of the Day

And, unfortunately, the story of my life, or at least it seems so at times.

From The Quotations Page

I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman (attributed)

I liked this one as well:

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
George Bernard Shaw

It sorta defines, in a nut shell, how I feel about patriotism.

Words from the wise

On my Google homepage I import the quotes of the day. I really liked two of them from today. They are definitely things I should try to remember.

The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.
Joe Ancis

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

Very wise words.

Quote of the day

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
- Lord Acton