conventional-wisdom

And that's just the beginning. More and more, conventional wisdom says that the responsible thing is to make the unemployed suffer. And while the benefits from inflicting pain are an illusion, the pain itself will be all too real.

The shortcomings of economics are not original error but uncorrected obsolescence. The obsolescence has occurred because what is convenient has become sacrosanct. Anyone who attacks such ideas must seem to be a trifle self-confident and even aggressive. The man who makes his entry by leaning against an infirm door gets an unjustified reputation for violence. Something is to be attributed to the poor state of the door.

No one ever made more trouble than gentle Jesus meek and mild.

The usefulness of a man or woman of God relies on the ability to remain distinct.

We need to be making disciples telling people about Jesus & move them beyond conversation into a heart relationship with Him in the fullness

One paper boasted that its subscription and advertising numbers proved that America did not need the social change it rival paper advocated.

It has always been dangerous to institutionalize hope, and we no longer live in a society in which we will be allowed to institutionalize memory.

That he survived, and indeed returned to government, was one of man's occasional triumphs over medicine.

It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and at the same time, that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts, and follow the flock, because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown difficult truths. It is for help in overcoming our meekness that we can turn to the philosopher.

When critics surrender to the prevailing orthodoxy, the author says they adopt the rhetoric of an occupied country, "one that expects no liberation from liberation.

It was easier to come to maturity when there were more well-defined philosophical options.

A good therapy helps you develop a sense of irony about your life so that when you start to repeat old and unhelpful patterns, something within you says, "There you go again; let's call this to a halt. You can do something different." Often the first step toward doing something different is developing the capacity to not act, to stay still and reflect.

When your efforts run in the face of conventional wisdom and accepted mastery, persistence can look like madness. If you succeed in the end, this extreme originality reformulates into a new level of mastery, sometimes even genius; if you fail in the end, you remain a madman in the eyes of others, and maybe even yourself. When you are in the midst of the journey_there__ really no way of knowing which one you are._ (p.129)

In every southerner, beneath the veneer of clichés lies a much deeper motherlode of cliché. But even cliché is overlaid with enormous power when a child is involved.

The author says his young son, adopted from South Korea, occasionally burps and says thank you but otherwise is doing all right.

What is carved on rocks were away in time. What is told from mouth to mouth will live forever.

Conclusions that philosophers first establish by way of torturous reasoning have a way, over time, of leaking into shared knowledge.

I find myself constantly taking apart be taken-for-granted.