Good one!

Douglas Adams was a genius.  I know they are from different times and places, but he reminds me of Samuel Clemens in some ways.

Speaking of... Here are a few from Mark Twain on Courage:

QuoteCourage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word.

QuoteIt is curious--curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.

Not really a quote but an exchange from Reddit, has really struck a cord with me on the dangers of not executing a plan perfectly.

"If coal turns to diamonds through pressure, could we dump a bunch of coal on the ocean floor to turn them into diamonds faster?"

"Nope, it's nowhere near enough pressure. The pressure at the bottom of the mariana trench is nearly 16,000 psi. The pressure required to make diamonds the natural way? 750,000 psi.
You'd have wet coal."

Amos Tversky: "The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed."

Michael Lewis: "You waste years by not being able to waste hours."

Both quoted here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/opinion/youre-too-busy-you-need-a-shultz-hour.html

Those are both really great quotes,  I bet it is at least part of the reason why people seem to do their most creative work when they are young -- the time of their lives when they typically have the least amount of responsibility.

Yeah, great article. I could pull a quote from the author himself that hits home for me:

"I have confused the availability of new information with the importance of it. If you spend all your time collecting new information, you won't leave enough time to make sense of it."

"To be clear, Jesus is not so concerned about a 6-figure income - when used for blessing the poor. But he's very concerned about a 6-figure lifestyle - in a world where children starve."

-- http://www.craiggreenfield.com/blog/prosperitygospel

The only money you ever have is the money you spend.

Quote from: buckworks on July 14, 2017, 02:09:12 AM
http://www.craiggreenfield.com/blog/prosperitygospel

That's a good essay, regardless of belief. I was just discussing with a friend yesterday the secular, New Agey equivalent, which comes in the form of "This is where the universe wants me to be right now" or "The universe always provides what you need" or "I believe everything always works out for the best."

I always find myself saying "So you believe it's for the best that 17,000 children to die of malnutrition every day?"

I'll always remember a scene from the movie "Oh God" where John Denver's character asked God why he permitted [list of bad things, including children starving].

God, played by George Burns, looked back at him and asked, "Why do YOU let it happen?"[/list]

Quote from: buckworks on July 17, 2017, 03:20:04 PM
God, played by George Burns, looked back at him and asked, "Why do YOU let it happen?"[/list]

Of course, as you know, the "theodicy" problem is much more complicated than that. If you believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God who stands outside of time, the the problem of evil in the world is a fundamental theological problem with various mostly unsatisfying answers from Augustine to Platinga in the Christian tradition. Some Christian theologians (Karl Barth, for example) believe that it is impossible to establish the idea of the goodness of God and some believe it is actual blasphemous and counterproductive to think about the role of God in evil in the world. In the Jewish tradition, the Holocaust provoked a major rethinking of the problem of theodicy and many reject it entirely. I really don't think anyone in the Judeo-Christian tradition has a satisfying reconciliation of the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, good god and the presence of evil in the world (which is why some theologians just say it is blasphemous to try to explain it).

"It's an Earth food. They are called Swedish meatballs. It's a strange thing, but every sentient race has its own version of these Swedish meatballs! I suspect it's one of those great universal mysteries which will either never be explained, or which would drive you mad if you ever learned the truth." - G'Kar, Babylon 5

"The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty."  --unknown Hungarian

timely