The Rogue Scholar

Books: Proof of Magic

Quote of Note

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."  ~Ray Bradbury

Quote of Note

"I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries."

---Carl Sagan

Quote of Note

O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it…

-- Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"

Wisdom From Carnegie

"Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community."

-- Andrew Carnegie

More On the Subject of McCain's Presidential Qualifications

"If you desire to be poor, oppressed, and eventually vaporized in a nuclear war, vote Republican."

---Paul Craig Roberts

(The full article is here.)

On the Subject of John McCain's Qualifications for the Presidency

"I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."

---Gen. Wesley Clark

Read the whole conversation here.

The Correctness Party

An excellent description of life in my house growing up, by Garrison Keillor of Salon magazine:

A college graduate just sent me an e-mail asking about a band that "one" a contest, wishing she had been "their" to see it. Misspelling drives me nuts. You young people learned spelling by the Close Enough method. As long as we know what you mean, you think it's OK. And nobody corrects you. And you go along on your merry way, and the dark clouds of Error build up in the rain forest and the ground shakes.

People accuse us liberals of permissiveness -- no no no no no. We liberals are oppressive, not permissive, working day and night to take your guns away and make you apply for a permit every time you spit. In my heart, I belong to the Correctness Party, the party of good spellers, of people who pay attention to details. The Current Occupant is not one of us. He is not a man who puts pen to paper with any confidence. Intellectually he has been a charity case all his life. He is one of those men who are lucky that their fathers were born before they were.

Read the whole article here.

It's Been a Rough Few Weeks . . . Can You Tell?

"The only kinds of fights worth having are those you're going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing -- for the sheer fun and joy of it -- to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it."

---I. F. Stone

Wisdom from Old Sam Clemens

"Americans too often teach their children to despise those who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place - the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan."

-- Mark Twain