Reasonable grounds

Here is a quote from page 23 of a book written in 1959.
Finally, the crisis has a moral aspect. Can we ground our values in knowledge or are we left with individual, arbitrary faiths? If we cannot find reasonable grounds for our faith in man, then the faith backed by the most fanatical massing of [...]

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Regicide

I read somewhere that it is quite possible to kill someone by simply wishing it – as long as you feed him a lot of poison. How can someone unfamiliar with the world not conclude that wishing, or its combination with poison, is not the primary cause of death? There is no difference in its [...]

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A complete reading of a sentence

I’ve never read Kant completely. I fear, no, I’m sure I’ll die before I do, and although some might have already done so (not died, but the other thing), once someone finds that lost manuscript, their completlytiety is lost.
So, all I have to do is wait. I hardly think much can be learned from a simple scrap [...]

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Speeches and sundays

Two quotes on speeches and sundays:
As [Grover] Cleveland began to speak in a strong, penetrating voice, the first thing observed was that he had neither manuscript nor notes. “My God, what a man!” exclaimed Senator John J. Ingalls of Kansas. “What a gambler!”
James Bryce, British author and the most observant of foreign visitors, wrote that [...]

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The good thief

I think this is a great phrase: he’s a good thief. There is something excellent about the ambivalence of it all. Whatever interpretation stems from the listener’s preconceptions. Someone who just read the Bible, “well, would you look at that. A good thief after all.” Someone who just watched Ocean’s Eleven, “man, that guy knows what he’s doing.”
Is it [...]

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