Category Archives: Quotations Freedom

To be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one’s …

To be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one’s weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral energy most of us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. Robyn Davidson
Tracks

Fallacies take strongest hold not when they are flatly stated, but when …

Fallacies take strongest hold not when they are flatly stated, but when they are buried in euphemism, assumption and implicit analogy, then repeated a thousand times in public discourse. So Wesley Clark refers to:1. ‘share of national income,’which implies a zero-sum game. Tiger Woods has a very high ‘share of national birdies.’ Therefore what exactly? Let’s redistribute some of his birdies to my scorecard?2. ‘the fortunate few.’ He makes no mention of any factor other than good fortune to explain why someone might earn more money than someone else. I used to think Tiger had achieved something great. Wesley Clark knows it was only luck. Barry Milliken
Wall Street Journal, Letters, January 14, 2004