Category: Thought

In art, truth is a means to an end; in science, it is the only end.

William Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), Aphorism 25.

Fight, fight, fight!

Donald John Trump, former president running for a second term, in Butler, Pennsylvania, just after an assassination attempt, surrounded by Secret Service, pumping his right fist into the air, defiantly. These words are interpreted from his lips, the audio being obscure.

I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Trump’s first Truth Social post after the event. The assassination attempt occurred about a quarter after Six O’Clock EDST on July 13, 2024.

I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me. Nothing, zero. No, and I don’t take very seriously the media or the press in this country.…

Jammin’ in New York (1992).

Arrogance in full bloom bears a crop of ruinous folly from which it reaps a harvest all of tears.

Aeschylus, The Persians (472 BC) lines 821 – 822 (tr. Christopher Collard).

Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not — and that’s not hi … — sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world.

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., answering George Stephanopoulos’s question about taking a cognitive test and sharing it with Americans, Primetime Special Tonight, ABC, July 5, 2024.

But when a man
speeds toward his own ruin,
a god gives him help.

Aeschylus, The Persians (472 BC) line 742 (tr. Janet Lembke and C. J. Herington).