Category Archives: Pith

Erasmus opens In Praise of Folly with a letter to Thomas More, author of Utopia. They became good friends when Erasmus stayed in England. He gave More this bit of praise:

“[S]uch is the excellence of your judgment that it was ever contrary to that of the people’s.”

Indeed.

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Posted in Books, Great Thinkers, Pith

Tagged desiderius erasmus, erasmus, erasmus quotes, in praise of folly, praise of folly, thomas more, utopia

Polls Are Useful

Posted on April 26, 2011 | Comments Off

A USA Today/Gallup poll finds that:

[O]nly 38% of Americans say Obama definitely was born in the USA, and 18% say he probably was. Fifteen percent say he probably was born in another country, and 9% say he definitely was born elsewhere.

Republicans are inclined to say the president was born abroad by 43%-35%.

What makes this poll useful? As Oscar Wilde once explained, “By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

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Posted in Pith, Political Animals

Tagged Birthers, conspiracy theories, gallup, oscar wilde, polls, usa today

“A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.”

Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country, p. 133

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Posted in Books, Pith

The Wisdom of Philosophers

Posted on January 11, 2011 | Comments Off

“There is nothing so absurd which has not sometimes been asserted by some philosophers.”

-Cicero, De Divinatione, ii, 58.

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Posted in Great Thinkers, Philosophy, Pith

Tagged cicero, cicero quotes, marcus tullius cicero, pedantry, philosophers, Philosophy

Words for the Wise

Posted on December 26, 2010 | Comments Off

“But he was primarily an artist and therefore knew that in nature the intermediary colors predominate and an absolute white and an absolute black are rarely found.”

–Hendrik WillemVan Loon, describing Desiderius Erasmus‘ The Praise of Folly.

Wise words for Republicans, Democrats, good-government types, anarchists, and all the other ideologies that suffer from too much Certainty.

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Posted in Books, Certainty, Philosophy, Pith

A Bit of Smithian Wisdom

Posted on December 9, 2010 | 1 comment

“[T]he law ought always to trust people with the care of their own interest, as in their local situations they must generally be able to judge better of it than the legislature can do.”

-Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Ch. 5.

This sentence must have had a tremendous influence on Hayek’s thought.

1 Comment

Posted in Economics, Pith

Tagged adam smith, decentralization, Economics, f.a. hayek, federalism, hayek, wealth of nations