Too many lawyers…

“If you look at the figures, where does the top of the class in college go to? It goes into law. They don’t go into teaching. Now I love the law, there is nothing I would rather do but it doesn’t produce anything.”

—Justice Antonin Scalia, 2008

In support of historic preservation

From historian D.C. Watt:

“To destroy the relics of the past is, even in small things, a kind of amputation, a self-mutilation not so much of limbs as of the memory and imagination.”

(Quoted in Alan Kramer’s Dynamic of Destruction, Oxford, 2007, p. 2)

We have gifts that differ…

Romans
Chapter 12

3

For by the grace given to me I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than one ought to think, but to think soberly, each according to the measure of faith that God has apportioned.

4

For as in one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function,

5

so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another.

6

Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us exercise them: if prophecy, in proportion to the faith;

7

if ministry, in ministering; if one is a teacher, in teaching…

A call for the media to start issuing a thesaurus

Great Yahoo report on the problems of word use today….

Choosing from among 2,000 submissions, the public relations department at Michigan‘s Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie targeted 19 affronts to the English language in its well-known jab at the worlds of media, sports, advertising and politics.

The ugliest thing

Here is an interesting quote I came across for the first time today:

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.  The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.  The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” 

This is a quote from John Stuart Mill, 19th century English philosopher, writer, and advocate for women’s rights among other learned achievements.  I wonder if Americans would, if polled, agree or disagree with Mill’s sentiments about war as stated here.  Can most Americans name something they would in fact really die for?  Somehow I doubt it.

[J.S.Mill]

To struggle nobly with misfortunes…

“It must be remembered, besides the gratification which results from a consciousness of having done our duty faithfully, that to struggle nobly with misfortunes, to combat difficulties with intrepidity, and finally to surmount the obstacles which opposed us, are stronger proofs of merit, and give a fairer title to reputation, than the brightest scenes of tranquility, or the sunshine of prosperity could ever have afforded.”

George Washington to Benjamin Harrison, March 10, 1782

Great Quotes

“It is with reformers in politics, as it is with those of religion, they despise knowledge that results from the experience of others and value themselves upon the powers of invention.”

–North Carolina House of Commons, 1779