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random quotes ... to amuse, inspire, enrage:
We believe most of what we believe about the world because others have told us to. Reliance upon the authority of experts, and upon the testimony of ordinary people, is the stuff of which worldviews are made. In fact, the more educated we become, the more our beliefs come to us at second hand. A person who believes only those propositions for which he can provide full sensory or theoretical justification will know almost nothing about the world; that is, if he is not swiftly killed by his own ignorance. How do you know that falling from a great height is hazardous to your health? Unless you have witnessed someone die in this way, you have adopted this belief on the authority of others. This is not a problem. Life is too short, and the world too complex, for any of us to go it alone in epistemological terms. We are ever reliant on the intelligence and accuracy, if not the kindness, of strangers.
This does not suggest, however, that all forms of authority are valid; nor does it suggest that even the best authorities will always prove reliable. There are good arguments and bad ones, precise observations and imprecise ones; and each of us has to be the final judge of whether or not it is reasonable to adopt a given belief about the world.
I’ve never known quite what it means to love one’s country. A moral failing apparently. The land? The individuals who live there? The history? The government?
I really, really love the land in North America — the contours, the mountains, the trees. Agricultural products native to the americas include bell [...]
From a Bush press conference last week:
Q: Mr. President, I wanted to return to the question of torture. What we’ve learned from these memos this week is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Pentagon lawyers have essentially worked out a way that U.S. officials can torture detainees without running afoul of the [...]
Today, I saw on salon.com a blurb about
New Hampshire Is for Lovers
The Jumper: When the aging ex-president leapt from a plane this time, he would prove — hands down and forever, time eternal — which party was more badass and steel-balled
By Dave Eggers
Haha, I chuckled. A funny joke about the machismo [...]
frankly i’m sick & tired of hearing all about reagan. he was charming & likable (to the rich & the conservative). he destroyed the soviet union (which was on a rapid slide to self-destruction). etc. anyway i am just irritated half to death by the reagan worship that is everywhere. it’s [...]
A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
– James Madison, from a letter [...]
