Jean Meslier
The majority of men rarely think of God, or, at least, do not occupy themselves much with Him. The idea of God has so little stability, it is so afflicting, that it can not hold the imagination for a long time, except in some sad and melancholy visionists who do not constitute the majority of the inhabitants of this world.
Novelist Walter Mosley is a widely-published author of crime fiction, children’s books, and stories. He did a talk at “Politics and Prose”[Mosley] about his book “Folding the Red Into the Black: Developing a Viable Untopia for the 25th Century”[amazon]
I don’t like the term “common sense” because it’s an oxymoron – what is common is usually not sensible, and what is sensible is seldom common. Mosley dishes out something that is probably uncommon sense.
Back in the 90s I used to suffer from insomnia. I’d get an idea, then be unable to sleep until I had fully hashed it out. Then, I decided to try operant conditioning on myself, to train myself to go to sleep under predetermined circumstances.
Voltaire by Houdon
B: What is natural law? (*)
A: The instinct that gives us a sense of justice.
Some of the servicemen hurt/killed in Yemen during the special forces raid were heroically wounded by their own airplane, a CV-22 Osprey.[fox]
Amy, the perky robo-shill, called me again yesterday. This time I actually listened to the pitch.
Over at Affinity, Caine’s been working on a pair of freethought pants. I approve. But when I read the title, I burst out laughing for no reason that would have made sense to anyone, except the people at a company where I used to work back in 1997…
Étienne de La Boétie
This is not the first time, nor probably the last, that I will take you to visit the words of Étienne De Boétie. In 1549, De Boétie wrote one of the great essays in political philosophy[text] – a self-admittedly meandering piece that pondered the question why people follow dictators.
Jean Meslier
It is asked what motives has an atheist for doing right. He can have the motive of pleasing himself and his fellow-creatures; of living happily and tranquilly; of making himself loved and respected by men, whose existence and whose dispositions are better known than those of a being impossible to understand.
Talleyrand, Napoleon Bonaparte’s chief diplomat, could have taught Trump’s team of motley fools a thing or two thousand. One of his famous observations: “Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake.” Sun Tzu would have nodded.