I’ve forgotten this for a few weeks now…
You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.
– Flannery O’Connor
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It is true that a thousand days cannot prove you to be right, but one day can prove you to be wrong.
– N. Taleb
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Suppose we have only dreamed or made up all those things- trees and grass and sun and moon and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in this case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.
– Lewis
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Christianity is a sword which separates and sets free. No other philosophy makes God actually rejoice in the separation of the universe into living souls. But according to orthodox Christianity this separation between God and man is sacred, because this is eternal. That a man may love God it is necessary that there should be not only a God to be loved, but a man to love him. All those vague theosophical minds for whom the universe is an immense melting-pot are exactly the minds which shrink instinctively from that earthquake saying of our Gospels, which declare that the Son of God came not with peace but with a sundering sword. The saying rings entirely true even considered as what it obviously is; the statement that any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic fraternity as a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed. Yet there is another and yet more awful truth behind the obvious meaning of this utterance of our Lord. According to Himself, the Son was a sword separating brother and brother that they should for an aeon hate each other. But the Father also was a sword, which in the black beginning separated brother and brother, so that they should love each other at last…
– Chesterton
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The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid
– Chesterton
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Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.
– Wiesel
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While pretrial presumptions of innocence are allowed to be thrown out the window, the government reminds us that during trial, one is still innocent until proven guilty. Strangely enough, this too is also not always true. In certain states when a defendant in a criminal case asserts the insanity defense, the burden of proof as to his insanity rests with the defendant. Given that insanity means that you are legally, if not factually innocent – because you could not have had the mens rea required by the law to commit the crime – then forcing the defendant to prove his own insanity (and therefore his own innocence) is a direct violation of the presumption of innocence, which is supposed to permeate our entire justice system.
– Napolitano
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Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
– Sowell
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Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: if it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
– Reagan