Here are 34 favorite sayings from Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking and founder of Guideposts. //

19 of 34 I’ll tell you a secret: The way to handle the little things is to bring God into them, for nothing is so small that it is beneath His notice.
—Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

First, one (mis)attributed to Solzhenitsyn:

They are lying. We know they are lying. They know we know they are lying. Yet, they are still lying.

Next, one (correctly) attributed to Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels):

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

Zman makes the interesting and controversial point that endemic lying is an inevitable feature of democracy:

In a world where the standard is public opinion, winning public opinion is what matters most. In fact, it must count for more than the truth, as the public often accepts as true things that turn out to be false. If the goal is to win the crowd, then playing to their deeply held misconceptions is just as good, if not better, than disabusing them of those misconceptions.
…
Like the Athenians, we have embraced the democratic spirit to the point where factual reality is just one tool in the toolkit of persuasion that may or may not be used by the successful. The modern sophist is untethered from the truth, both spiritually and emotionally, because the only thing that matters is tricking some portion of the public.

Whether or not his thesis is correct, the trajectory is accurately delineated and the West appears to have arrived at the endpoint he describes.

On October 11, 1798, John Adams wrote to the Massachusetts Militia that

Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

But are we still a moral and religious people? In “The Real American Founding: A Conversation,” professors of politics David Azerrad and Thomas West help us answer that question.

In the fifth lecture of that course, titled “Morality and Virtue,” professors Azerrad and West discuss the fact that government always legislates morality, but what that morality consists of depends on the beliefs of those who make the laws. The nature of the legislative power is to tell people what they can and cannot do, what is right and wrong.

In the Founders’ understanding, they believed that government ought to support true morality and virtue. That is, morality and virtue grounded in the laws of nature and of nature’s God, from which they derived man’s natural rights and duties.

The Founders also believed that the laws of nature and of nature’s God, along with the natural rights and duties derived from them, were in accord with their Christian beliefs. Government therefore ought not to be hostile to Christianity, but rather should support it with laws that are friendly to it and encourage its flourishing among the citizenry.

What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man … the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with political rights.

-- Winston Churchill
On the Boer War, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900).

Apt analogies are among the most formidable weapons of the rhetorician.

-- Winston Churchill
The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill (1984)

I have derived continued benefit from criticism at all periods of my life and I do not remember any time when I was ever short of it.

-- Winston Churchill
in House of Commons 27 November 1914

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

-- Winston Churchill
The Second World War (ed. 1952)

Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

-- Winston Churchill
Speech given at Harrow School, Harrow, England, October 29, 1941. Quoted in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, 2008, p. 23 ISBN 1586486381

Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime Ministers have never yet been invested.

-- Winston Churchill

“Then you admit confirming not denying you ever said that?"
"NO! ... I mean Yes! WHAT?"
I’ll put 'maybe.' ~ Bloom County

You’ve probably heard someone use the phrase, “We can neither confirm nor deny.” This non-specific saying, known as the “Glomar response,” has a fascinating history behind it, and it originated to answer questions about a dicey CIA operation.

In the late 1960s, the United States and the Soviets were engaged in a dangerous political game, and they were using their nuclear submarines to play. In 1968, the Soviets lost K-129, one of their nuclear submarines, northwest of Hawaii in the Pacific. It sank to the bottom of the ocean under unknown circumstances.

The US knew the Soviet sub had sunk with nuclear missiles on board and knew that it would hold a treasure-trove of intelligence information if they could get to it. The CIA eventually located the vessel three miles beneath the sea and began to come up with plans to get to the submarine.

Because of the depth where the submarine sat, it was decided that the best course of action would be to retrieve it by lifting it from the ocean floor. The CIA ran through several different scenarios before they ultimately settled on using a claw-like device to lift the submarine from the seafloor and raise it into a ship’s hull. The problem was the operation had to be done entirely in secret. //

Things came to a head when the Los Angeles Times was set to publish a story about the operation. The CIA tried to stop it but was unsuccessful, and a request for disclosure about the project was made by the LA Times. The CIA had to find a way to respond.

The task of coming up with an appropriate response fell to an attorney at the CIA named Walt Logan, the Associate General Counsel. Logan was bound by law to tell the truth, but he also had to adhere to the CIA’s policies and not reveal any secrets or intelligence sources that could be detrimental to national security.

He came up with a response to the request that was neither untruthful nor did it compromise national secrets. It became known as the “Glomar response.” In it, Logan said about the existence of the secret operation and the request for disclosure, “We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the information requested but, hypothetically, if such data were to exist, the subject matter would be classified, and could not be disclosed.”

The response by the CIA stood after being challenged, and the Freedom of Information request was declined. A precedent was then set for any government organization to use the “Glomar response” as they saw fit when there was a Freedom of Information request. The courts have so far supported the response by governmental agencies, but only if they provide enough information to justify using it.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
-- Gail Godwin

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
-- Terry Pratchett

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

-- Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963), Vedanta for the Western World, 1945  

In philosophy, Occam's razor (also spelled Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; Latin: novacula Occami) is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony (Latin: lex parsimoniae). Attributed to William of Ockham, a 14th-century English philosopher and theologian, it is frequently cited as Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, which translates as "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" ,[1][2] although Occam never used these exact words. Popularly, the principle is sometimes paraphrased as "The simplest explanation is usually the best one." [3]

This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction and both theories have equal explanatory power one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions[4] and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. Similarly, in science, Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models rather than as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models.[5][6]

Newton's flaming laser sword (also known as Alder's razor) is a philosophical razor devised by Alder and discussed in an essay in the May/June 2004 issue of Philosophy Now.[6] The principle, which addresses the differing views of scientists and philosophers on epistemology and knowledge, was summarized by Alder as follows:[6][jargon]

In its weakest form it says that we should not dispute propositions unless they can be shown by precise logic and/or mathematics to have observable consequences. In its strongest form it demands a list of observable consequences and a formal demonstration that they are indeed consequences of the proposition claimed.

The razor is humorously named after Isaac Newton, as it is inspired by Newtonian thought and is called a "flaming laser sword", because it is "much sharper and more dangerous than Occam's Razor".[6]

Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states:[1]

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

It is a philosophical razor that suggests a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for human behavior. It is probably named after Robert J. Hanlon, who submitted the statement to Murphy's Law Book Two (1980).[1] Similar statements have been recorded since at least the 18th century. //

Another variation appears in The Wheels of Chance (1896) by H.G. Wells:

There is very little deliberate wickedness in the world. The stupidity of our selfishness gives much the same results indeed, but in the ethical laboratory it shows a different nature. //

Douglas W. Hubbard quoted Hanlon's razor and added

a clumsier but more accurate corollary ...: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system."

1,790. Skepticism; Truth
"Hume, and other sceptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expence. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow that will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull."
Boswell: Life of Johnson

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill
English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873)