“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. Find out ( Read more... )

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity.
- John Muir

What's distinctive about Sanders is not (or not simply) that he's an ideological purist who refuses to think pragmatically but that he just doesn't know or care very much about the details of how the world works, how to affect concrete change, and what the possible unintended consequences of major changes is likely to be. He'd rather rally the ( Read more... )

Action and reaction, ebb and flow,

trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living.

Out of our over-confidence, fear;

out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope.

And out of hope, progress.

~ Bruce Fairchild Barton

There is no poverty so great
as that of the prosperous,
no wrechedness so dismal
as affluence.
Wealth is poison.
There is no misery to compare
with that which exists
where technology has been
a total success.
--Thomas Merton, Catholic monk

There is a great deal of difference ( Read more... )

Without deviation from the norm,
progress is not possible.
-Frank Zappa

If you want to build a ship,
don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the wood and give orders.
Instead, teach them to yearn
for the vast and endless sea.
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Science is not sick. It never has been. Science is how we can reveal the secrets of the universe. It is a slow, iterative, arduous process. It makes mistakes but it is self-correcting. That doesn’t mean that the mistakes don’t sometimes stick around for centuries. Sometimes it takes new technologies, discoveries, or theories (all of which are of ( Read more... )