Normal

Normal is the average of deviance.

-- Rita Mae Brown (1944 -), prolific American writer who became famous with her first novel Rubyfruit Jungle, Venus Envy (1993)

Pretend Always

Pretend to be good always and even God will be fooled.

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922 - 2007), American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

We'll Make It

When things get bad enough, then something happens to correct the course.  And it's for that reason that I speak about evolution as an error-making and an error-correcting process.  And if we can be ever so much better -- ever so much slightly better -- at error correcting than at error making, then we'll make it.

-- Jonas Salk (1914 - 1995), medical researcher and author, inventor of the Salk vaccine against Polio, and the founder of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, "Man Evolving" interview with Richard D. Heffner on The Open Mind (11 May 1985)

Given Reins To Passion

Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.

-- David Hume (1711 - 1776), Scottish philosopher, in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), § 9.13 : Conclusion, Pt. 1

Solve It Aright

We have a given problem to solve.  If we undertake the solution, there is, of course, always danger that we may not solve it aright; but to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it aright.

-- Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (1858 - 1919), American statesman, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1910)

RIP John Lewis

But as a group, and I know as one person, we were determined to see the end of segregation and racial discrimination in places of public accommodation.  So I lost my sense of fear.  You know, no one would like to be beaten.  No one would like to go to jail.  Jail is not a pleasant place.  No one liked to suffer pain, but for the common good we were committed.

-- John Robert Lewis (21 February 1940 - 17 July 2020), American politician and civil rights leader, interview upon receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Chicago, Illinois, 10 June 2004

Visualizing Alternatives

What we really mean by free will ... is the visualizing of alternatives and making a choice between them....  The central problem of human consciousness depends on this ability to imagine.

-- Jacob Bronowski (1908 - 1974), British mathematician, biologist, and science historian of Polish origin, The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (1978)

Things And Actions

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why, then, should we desire to be deceived?

-- Joseph Butler (1692 - 1752), English bishop, theologian, apologist, and philosopher, Human Nature and Other Sermons: "Sermon VII"; as quoted in Matthew Arnold's St. Paul and Protestantism

Not The Facts

It is not the facts which guide the conduct of men, but their opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong.  We can only make them right by discussion.

-- Sir Norman Angell, born Ralph Norman Angell Lane, (1872 - 1967), British economist, lecturer, writer, Member of Parliament for the Labour Party, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933, as quoted in American Railway Engineering Association : Proceedings of the Annual Convention, Volume 51 (1950), p. 815

Application Of Science

In this complex world, science, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going.  If we blow ourselves up we will do it by misapplication of science; if we manage to keep from blowing ourselves up, it will be through intelligent application of science.

-- Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 - 1988), American science-fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and retired Naval officer, The Pragmatics of Patriotism, address at the U.S. Naval Academy (5 April 1973)

Nevertheless, The Creek Reservation Persists

Congress established a reservation for the Creek Nation.  An 1833 Treaty fixed borders for a "permanent home to the whole Creek Nation of Indians," 7 Stat. 418, and promised that the United States would "grant a patent, in fee simple, to the Creek nation of Indians for the [assigned] land" to continue "so long as they shall exist as a nation, and continue to occupy the country hereby assigned to them," id., at 419.  The patent formally issued in 1852.

Congress has since broken more than a few promises to the Tribe.  Nevertheless, the Creek Reservation persists today.

-- Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority in McGirt v Oklahoma, upholding an 1852 treaty and ruling that about half the land in Oklahoma remains part of Native American Reservations, 9 July 2020

Common Duty

Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding.  We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need.  The "guard[] furnished to this high officer" lies where it always has -- in "the conduct of a court" applying established legal and constitutional principles to individual subpoenas in a manner that preserves both the independence of the Executive and the integrity of the criminal justice system.

-- Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority in Trump v Vance, ruling that a New York district attorney's subpoena of President Trump's financial records is valid, 9 July 2020

The Truthful Man

The truthful man is usually a liar.

-- Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833 - 1896), Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, armaments manufacturer, and inventor of dynamite.  In his last will, he used his enormous fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes, "Aphorisms by Alfred Nobel",  Nobelprize.org, Nobel Media AB 2020

Most Valuable Trait

Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.

-- Euripides (c. 480 BC-406 BC), Greek playwright, The Complete Greek Tragedies: Euripides II: Helen. Hecuba. Andromache. The Trojan women. Ion. Rhesus. The suppliant women by David Grene, Richmond Alexander Lattimore (eds.), Modern Library, 1963, p. 73

Born As Many

Every man is born as many men, and dies as a single one.

-- Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976), German philosopher, quoted in Journey Through Dread: A Study of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre by Arland Ussher (1955)

Unbeatable Determination

America was not built on fear.  America was built on courage, on imagination, and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

-- Harry S. Truman (1884 - 1972), 33rd President of the United States (1945-53), Special Message to the Congress: The President's First Economic Report (1947)

Fragile Beings

Numbers are fragile beings which, being tortured, end up admitting all we want them to say.

[Original: Les chiffres sont des êtres fragiles qui, à force d'être torturés, finissent par avouer tout ce qu'on veut leur faire dire.]

-- Alfred Sauvy (1898 - 1990), demographer, anthropologist, and historian of the French economy; he coined the term Third World ("Tiers Monde") in reference to countries that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War

Half-Life On Software

Basically, a lot of the problems that computing has had in the last 25 years comes from systems where the designers were trying to fix some short-term thing and didn't think about whether the idea would scale if it were adopted.  There should be a half-life on software so old software just melts away over 10 or 15 years.

-- Alan Curtis Kay (17 May 1940 -), American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design, ACM Queue - A Conversation with Alan Kay, Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005

A New Symbol

This is not a political moment to me but a solemn occasion to lead our Mississippi family to come together and move on.  A flag is a symbol of our past, our present and our future.  For those reasons, we need a new symbol.

-- Mississippi Republican Governor Tate Reeves at a ceremony at which he signed a measure removing the current state flag, the last in the nation to bear the battle emblem of the Confederacy, 30 June 2020

Like Cases Alike

Stare decisis instructs us to treat like cases alike.  The result in this case is controlled by our decision four years ago invalidating a nearly identical Texas law.  The Louisiana law burdens women seeking previability abortions to the same extent as the Texas law, according to factual findings that are not clearly erroneous.  For that reason, I concur in the judgment of the Court that the Louisiana law is unconstitutional.

-- Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, concurring in a 5-4 judgement against strict abortion limitations in Louisana, 29 June 2020