< home >

Whitaker's Aphorisms

To believe oneself to be great is to be as great a fool as he who believes himself incapable of greatness. - jwhitaker.

A little humility goes a long way. - jwhitaker [a bit of a truism really, but worth reiterating often]

Freedom: the state in which one is determined by forces unseen and unknown. -jwhitaker.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. -- Goethe

What foolish people often call "fighting for our freedom" I call "choosing the lesser opressor." jwhitaker.

Democracy is the political system in which those who know the least about governing [the people] govern and those who know the most write books for one another and squabble at dinner parties. -jwhitaker.

Dialogue between a pair of imaginary Brittish gentlemen:
Old chap: I do say, old boy, that it appears that the Americans have blown up a wedding party in Afghanistan, killing dozens.
Old boy: Oh dear, old chap, it does so pain me to hear of yet more innocent lives lost in all this foolishness.
Old chap: Oh no old boy, when America kills people it's not 'innocent lives lost,' it's 'collateral damage.' -jwhitaker.

"I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil - the fool is too much a fool, or the devil too much of a devil - I don't know which. -Joseph Conrad "Heart of Darkness"

Wisdom from "Skinny Legs and All" by Tom Robbins

On slang: "… imprecise speech is one of the major causes of mental illness in human beings…. The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for the words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion." -pg 72

--------------------------------

Politics and Religious convictions: "…Tin habitually broadcasts electrons, and those superfluous particles create a barrier against acids in the foodstuff that would otherwise corrode the can, slowly weakening it from within, the way political convictions weaken morality and religious convictions weaken the mind." -pg 83

--------------------------------

Working man's mentality: "… He lay the entire morning as if in a stupor, soaking up sun like a wage slave on the first day of a cut-rate Hawaiian vacation." -pg 84

--------------------------------

Killing innocent victims: "If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it." -pg 339

--------------------------------

Cult's and Government: "The amount of structure that people seek always is in direct ratio to the amount of chaos they have inside. -pg 403

--------------------------------

Political Activism: "She understood suddenly … that it was futile to work for political solutions to humanities problems because humanity's problems were not political. Political problems did exist, all right, but they were entirely secondary. The primary problems were philosophical, and until the philosophical problems were solved, the political problems would have to be solved over and over and over again. The phrase 'vicious circle' was coined to describe the ephemeral effectiveness of almost all political activity.
For the ethical, political activism was seductive because it seemed to offer the possibility that one could improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one's perceptions and transforming one's self. For the unconscionable, political reactivism was seductive because it seemed to protect one's holdings and legitimized one's greed. But both sides were gazing through a kerchief of illusion." -pg 460

--------------------------------

"It" - The Truth: "… The government wouldn't take care of it for you, no matter how much you'd paid into Social Security, or how many votes your political action committee may have bought. You couldn't learn it in college, colleges chose largely to ignore it. Churches, conversely, were falling all over themselves to save you the trouble of thinking about it; they would hand you an answer as neat and tidy and definitive as your horoscope in the daily paper - and, unfortunately, just about as useless because it was just about as generic and every bit as speculative. Great books, paintings, and music were helpful, in an inspirational way; nature, even more so. Valuable clues were constantly dropping from the lips of philosophers, spiritual masters, gurus, shamans, gypsy circus girls, and wild-talking tramps in the street. But they were clues only. No self-proclaimed holy man could cut the mustard for you, and the ones who were truly holy would tell you so…" -pg 466

< home >