Category: Thought

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

Thomas Sowell, “Random Thoughts,” from his Creators Syndicate column.

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

Affurisms. From Josh Billings: His Sayings (1865).

The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.

Thomas Sowell, “Big Lies in Politics” (Townhall, July 31, 2012).

I have said that almost every president of the last 100 years deserved to be impeached, but I never suggested any of these people should be charged and tried in court.

Brion McClanahan, “What’s at Stake in the Trump Immunity Case?” May 8, 2024. 

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

Aristotle, On the Heavens.

Πολλοὶ πολυμαθέες νοῦν οὐκ ἔχουσιν.

Many much-learned men have no intelligence.

Democritus (c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC), pre-Socratic philosopher.

It is wrong to speak of coming into being and passing away, for nothing comes into being or passes away, but all is an aggregation or secretion of pre-existent things: so that all-becoming might more correctly be called becoming-mixed, and all corruption, becoming-separate.

Anaxagoras (c. 500 – c. 428 B.C.), pre-Socratic philosopher.

Man is a universe in little.

Democritus (c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC), pre-Socratic philosopher. Image of the Andromeda galaxy, NASA.

Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.

Aristotle, Posterior Analytics.

ἔστιν ἄρα ἡ ἀρετὴ ἕξις προαιρετική, ἐν μεσότητι οὖσα τῇ πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὡρισμένῃ λόγῳ καὶ ᾧ ἂν ὁ φρόνιμος ὁρίσειεν. μεσότης δὲ δύο κακιῶν, τῆς μὲν καθ᾽ ὑπερβολὴν τῆς δὲ κατ᾽ ἔλλειψιν:

Virtue then is a settled disposition of the mind as regards the choice of actions and feelings, consisting essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us, this being determined by principle, that is, as the prudent man would determine it. And it is a mean state between two vices, one of excess and one of defect.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, translated by Harris Rackham. The illustration of the philosopher is a line engraving by P. Fidanza after Raphael Sanzio.