Renaissance

The intellectual life of the later 17th and 18th centuries gave rise to the preeminence of natural law over dogmatism, of science over superstition, of modernity over antiquity, of progress over tradition, of urbanity over rusticity. Locke, Newton, and later, Voltaire and Rousseau applied human reason to fundamental questions regardless of the dictates of established authority.

Trafalgar

On October 21, 1805, defeat of the combined fleets of France and Spain by Horatio Nelsonbegan a century of British naval supremacy.

The Power of Ideas

In the 1850s an unknown refugee scholar drudged through endless reading in the British Museum, preparing his treatise. Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" was to become the base of an ideological wall that split Europe into East and West.

Peggy Noonan

"In most everyone's family there was a grandma who used to sit quietly in the corner and say nothing. Then someone would ask her opinion just to be polite, and she'd say something so wise, so commonsensical, it stopped everyone in their tracks. And you realized that she was smart, that she'd lived a life and seen things."

Peggy Noonan

"In most everyone's family there was a grandma who used to sit quietly in the corner and say nothing. Then someone would ask her opinion just to be polite, and she'd say something so wise, so commonsensical, it stopped everyone in their tracks. And you realized that she was smart, that she'd lived a life and seen things."

Opposing Views

Father Fessio describes Pope Benedict's position on Islam in this way: "He's saying that if your view of God is that he's so transcendent that he transcends all human categories, including rationality, well then you can justify the irrational, including violence, to spread religion, including terrorism. You can't dialogue with us because you won't accept reason as a basis. Because the God you are obeying is above reason."

Florence

This independent city-state was crown of the Italian Renaissance. Artisans prospered from the 14th century on, particularly under the patronage of the Medici family. Monuments of art and architecture included masterworks by Fra Angelico, Brunelleschi, and Michelangelo. While the plastic arts most often had Christian content, their forms were drawn from the rediscovered ideals of beauty and proportion from classical Greece.

Mathematician's Pickup Line

"I wish I were your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves."

Erma Bombeck

"Thanksgiving dinners take 18 hours to prepare. They are consumed in 12 minutes. Half-times take 12 minutes. This is not coincidence."

Robyn Arianrhod

Quotes from his book "Einstein's Heroes": "Mathematics is a subllime creation of the human mind, built by countless generations from all parts of the world. It has given us a synthesis of waves and particles, energy and matter, language and reality. And it has changed forever the way we think about reality, and about our place in the universe."

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Osama bin Laden

A statement from this nefarious character broadcast to the American people November 24 2002: "You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Sariah of Allah in its constitution and laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator."

Chess Again

David Shenk, in his book "The Immortal Game", says of chess: "It became a pliable metaphor for abstract ideas and complex systems, and an effective tool through which scientists could better understand the human mind." (I play against the computer - keeps me humble.)

Chess

Benjamin Franklin had this to say in 1786: "It has for numberless ages been the amusement of all the civilized nations of Asia, the Persians, the Indians, and the Chinese. Europe has had it above 1000 years, the Spaniards have spread it over their part of America, and it begins lately to make its apperance in these states."

The Bible

Too often work assigned to committees is not accomplished in a clear and meaningful manner. But, in March 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the English throne looking to create an era of peace and prosperity. A new Bible was central to that enterprise. He appointed a committee of 50 or so middle-age men for that purpose. The result was the King James Bible with language brought with deep intimacy to the ears and minds of the people. Adam Nicolson's quote:
"It had a combination of qualities: an absolute simplicity of vocabulary set in a rhythm of the utmost stateliness and majesty."

Will Rogers

"Nothing you can't spell will ever work."

Harold Henderson

In his book "Let's Kill Dick and Jane" he deals with the question of how to find enough gifted people in the field of education to do vital work that does not pay especially well and that has none of the glamour as that of success in the private sector. A quote: Education culture "can assume a veneer of progressivism or traditionalism as the times dictate, but its routines lie deeper than ideology."

Will Rogers

"When the Oakies left Oklahoma and moved to California, it raised the I.Q. of both states."

Bernard Lewis

"In 1940 we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues. In our island we knew we would prevail, that the Americans would be drawn into the fight. It is different today. We don't know who we are, we don't know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy."

Anonymous

A healthy attitude is contagious, but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.

Perspective

More than one million young men fell dead or wounded in 1916's Battle of the Somme during World War I.

Will Durant

This eminent historian's self-effacing comment about historians: "The historian always oversimplifies, and hastily selects a manageable minority of facts and faces out of a crowd of souls and events whose multitudinous complexity he can never quite embrace or comprehend."

Durant Again

"History smiles at all attempts to force its flow into theoretical patterns or logical grooves; it plays havoc with our generalizations, breaks all our rules; history is baroque. Perhaps, within these limits, we can learn enough from history to bear reality patiently, and to respect one another's delusions."

Trends

I have noted recently that sales of and subscriptions to major newspapers in the country are declining rapidly - not surprising since, by means of cable and satellite, events as they happen can be brought right into our living rooms. (I witnessed the airplane strike the second WTC tower.) And for those of us with computers, sources of information are endless.