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Bernard English

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Showing posts with label Quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quotes. Show all posts

Sunday, July 17, 2011

The variety of tastes -- A quote from Ian Robertson

"Americans eat oysters but not snails. The French eat snails but not locusts. The Zulus eat locusts but not fish. The Jews eat fish but not pork. The Hindus eat pork but not beef. The Russians eat beef but not snakes. The Chinese eat snakes but not people. The Jali of New Guinea find people delicious." -- Ian Robertson

Monday, January 31, 2011

How a father may not himself teach his son. [No article]

I can't quite get the Tiger Mom story out of my head. So here's another view of pushing your kids too hard--or pushing them at all. A quote from Mencius found at nothingistic.org:
1. Kung-sun Ch'âu said, 'Why is it that the superior man does not himself teach his son?'
2. Mencius replied, 'The circumstances of the case forbid its being done. The teacher must inculcate what is correct. When he inculcates what is correct, and his lessons are not practised, he follows them up with being angry. When he follows them up with being angry, then, contrary to what should be, he is offended with his son. At the same time, the pupil says, 'My master inculcates on me what is correct, and he himself does not proceed in a correct path." The result of this is, that father and son are offended with each other. When father and son come to be offended with each other, the case is evil.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

A quote from St. Paul

". . . for the children ought not to lay up [save] for the parents, but the parents for the children."      - St. Paul (King James Bible)

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Guys, help women improve their status--get a second, and maybe even a third wife!

"Groups opposing polygyny claim to be opposed to the degradation and exploitation of women. My analysis of efficient, competitive marriage markets indicates, however, that the income of women and the competition of men for wives would be be greater when polygyny is greater if the incidence of polygyny had been determined mainly by the relative marginal contribution of women to output. This view is supported by the fact that bride prices are more common and generally higher in societies with a greater incidence of polygyny." -- FROM A Treatise on the Family by Gary S. Becker. 

Thursday, November 4, 2010

A quote from Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments"

"Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would,. I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousnefs of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion with the fame ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paultry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paultry misfortune to himself would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them ? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it."

Friday, October 1, 2010

"Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins."

John B. S. Haldane. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved October 1, 2010, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnbsha388700.html [no accompanying article]

Sunday, July 11, 2010

A rare tribute to disunity [no accompanying article]

"German writers even thought their homeland superior to any other because, in the absence of political and military unity, militant patriotism was yet unknown to it." -- from G LeFebvre's The French Revolution

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

On governmental oppression By Alexis de Tocqueville FROM his "Democracy in America" (originally published in 1835 in French)

"I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world: our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it, the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it.

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest, — his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellowcitizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not; — he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone ; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness ; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living ?

Thus, it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things ; it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits.
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people."

Sunday, November 15, 2009

The effect of fincancial matters on physical goods

 From the Wheels of Commerce by Fernand Braudel, Volume 2, p. 241, 
"The first ship to arrive in St. Petersburg in 1701, a Dutch vessel, received from Peter the Great the privilege of paying no customs duties for the rest of its physical life -- a concession which had the effect of prolonging the ship's life for almost a century, three or four times the normal span."

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A pretty face is a pretty face

For some reason my students have always told me the exact opposite of this result, quoted in Nature via Nurture by Matt Ridley, p. 263:
"If people from different cultures are asked to judge the beauty of women from photographs of the women's faces, a surprising degree of consensus emerges:  Americans pick the same Chinese faces as Chinese people do; and Chinese pick the same American faces as Americans do."

Thursday, September 3, 2009

One or thirteen nations? -- A Quote

"There is disagreement as to whether the Declaration of Independence declared a single sovereign entity or thirteen independent nation-states. There is evidence that, after independence, at least some of the erstwhile colonies, at least for some time and for some purposes, considered themselves sovereign, independent nations."

FROM Foreign Affairs and the United States Constitution by Louis Henkin, p. 19


Thursday, July 30, 2009

Remedial Classes by Jessica Ellis FROM wiseGeek

"At the college level, remedial classes are sometimes necessary to compensate for different learning standards at preparatory institutions. Not all schools are created equal, and college may throw together students who have entirely different educational backgrounds. In 2004, a study reported that nearly 66% all new students of community colleges in Houston, Texas had to take remedial classes to put them at the level required by the college."

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Punishing jurors for a wrong decision

A description of the punishment of jurors found to have made an erroneous decision in Medieval England. FROM Law and Revolution, by Harold J. Berman (p. 468):
". . . the aggrieved party was given back all that he had lost by reason of the unjust verdict, and the original jurors forfeited their goods, were themselves imprisoned, their wives and children thrust out of doors, their homes razed, their trees extirpated, and their meadows plowed up.”

Sunday, March 15, 2009

A QUOTE on Bookkeeping and Negative Numbers

Quoted FROM Dawn to Decadence, by Jacques Barzun (p. 206-7)
"Double-entry bookkeeping is quasi scientific in two ways: it supplies a test of accuracy and it rests on equations: at the bottom line (now a famous metaphor) the figures must match to the las penny. Further, in the body of the account, the line items are abstractions from common-sense reality. . . . Trade also contributed to mathematics the idea of negative numbers, essential to algebra. The minus quantity appears to have arisen when bales of goods for shipment varied a little in weight. To be fair to buyer and seller alike, they would be marked in chalk plus or minus the standard weight."

Sunday, January 4, 2009

A quote FROM The Jews and Modern Capitalism by Werner Sombart

"Before capitalism could develop the natural man had to be changed out of all recognition, and a rationalistically minded mechanism introduced in his stead. There had to be a transvaluation of all economic values. And what was the result? The homo capitalisticus, who is closely related to the homo Judceus, both belonging to the same species, homines rationalistic! artificiales. And so the rationalization of Jewish life by the Jewish religion, if it did not actually produce the Jewish capacity for capitalism, certainly increased and heightened it."

Friday, November 21, 2008

American Cynicism FROM Federalist, no. 6 (1787) by Alexander Hamilton

Despite America's image as the land of optimism, the country was actually founded by people who were quite pessimistic and cynical in their view of human nature and society. Below is one quote from many a passage that indicates this attitude.
"A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt, that if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests, as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent unconnected sovereignties, situated in the same neighbourhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages."

Sunday, November 16, 2008

A critique of Adam Smith by Friedrich List (1789-1846)

This quote by List is from his The National System of Political Economy. He was one of the driving forces behind the German Zollverein (customs union), which is credited with propelling Germany's economy to world-class levels. 

"ADAM SMITH'S doctrine is, in respect to national and international conditions, merely a continuation of the physiocratic system. Like the latter, it ignores the very nature of nationalities, seeks almost entirely to exclude politics and the power of the State, presupposes the existence of a state of perpetual peace and of universal union, underrates the value of a national manufacturing power, and the means of obtaining it, and demands absolute freedom of trade.

Adam Smith fell into these fundamental errors in exactly the same way as the physiocrats had done before him, namely, by regarding absolute freedom in international trade as an axiom assent to which is demanded by common sense, and by not investigating to the bottom how far history supports this idea. " 

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Two Quotes on Getting Rich

No warning can save a people determined to grow suddenly rich. - Raja

Maybe that's because life is survival of the greediest. - Bernard

Friday, September 19, 2008

A quote about the Vietnamese script

FROM Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
"Quốc Ngữ, a romanized phonetic script originally devised by Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century, and adopted by the authorities [the French] for use in 'Cochin China' as early as the 1860s, was consciously promoted to break the links with China -- and perhaps also with the indigenous past -- by making dynastic records and ancient literatures inaccessible to a new generation of colonized Vietnamese." [p.126, footnotes omitted]

Monday, September 15, 2008

A quote about juries By Alexis De Tocqueville (1805-1859)

This quote is from De Tocqueville's Democracy in America. It struck me since Taiwan does not use a jury system.
"The jury, and more especially the jury in civil cases, serves to communicate the spirit of the judges to the minds of all the citizens; and this spirit, with the habits which attend it, is the soundest preparation for free institutions. It imbues all classes with a respect for the thing judged, and with the notion of right. . . .It teaches men to practice equity, every man learns to judge his neighbor as he would himself be judged . . .The jury teaches every man not to recoil before the responsibility of his own actions, and impresses him with that manly confidence without which political virtue cannot exist . . . .

It may be regarded as a gratuitous public school ever open, in which every juror learns to exercise his rights, enters into daily communication with the most learned and enlightened members of the upper classes, and becomes practically acquainted with the laws of his country, which are brought within the reach of his capacity by the efforts of the bar, the advice of the judge, and even by the passions of the parties. I think that the practical intelligence and political good sense of the Americans are mainly attributable to the long use which they have made of the jury in civil causes. I do not know whether the jury is useful to those who are in litigation; but I am certain it is highly beneficial to those who decide the litigation; and I look upon it as one of the most efficacious means for the education of the people which society can employ."
Never having served on a jury, I'm not sure how much educational value the system has. But I'm convinced of the value of jury nullification and jury review which allow juries to ignore unjust and unconstitutional laws respectively.

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