“Liberals have a new wish every time their latest wish is granted. Conservatives should make them spell out their principles and ideals. Instead of doing this, conservatives allow liberals to pursue incremental goals without revealing their ultimate destination. So, thanks to the negligence of their opponents, liberals control the terms of every debate by always demanding 'more' while never defining 'enough.' The predictable result is that they always get more, and it's never enough.” ShouldEnoughPoliticsWishGoalTermResultsPrinciplesIdealsUltimateDebatePursueThanksGrantedOpponentsDestinationSpellsRevealingDefiningPredictableNegligence Author:Joseph Sobran
“I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness.” IfsHumansLittlesSoulEndsMightCareGrowsResultsConsciousnessProgressRevolutionMessagesRegardPropertyFollowingSeedsTinyStatementsCosmicPredictableKrishnaMantrasPedestalEnd ResultsHaresSmashingTwigsPenetrationAfterthoughtFortuitousHare Krishna Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“In 302, the Roman emperor Diocletian commanded "there should be cheapness," declaring, "Unprincipled greed appears wherever our armies ... march. ... Our law shall fix a measure and a limit to this greed." The predictable result of Diocletian's food price controls were black markets, hunger and food confiscation by his soldiers. Despite the disastrous history of price controls, politicians never manage to resist tampering with prices -- that's not a flattering observation of their learning abilities.” ShouldLawBlackAbilityResultsPoliticianLimitsArmyGreedSoldierHungerDespiteManageObservationMarchPredictableEmperorFlatteringDeclaringCheapnessRoman Emperor Author:Walter E. Williams
“You can hit a nail on the head, or cause a machine to do so, and get a fairly predictable result. Hit a dog on the head, and it will either dodge, bite back, or die, but it will never again react in the same way. We can predict only those things we set up to be predictable, not what we encounter in the real world of living and reactive processes.” WorldWayRealDiesCausesProcessResultsDogMachinesEncountersReal WorldBitesNailsPredictableDodge Author:Bill Mollison
“Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again.” IfsHumansLittlesEndsGrowsResultsProgressSeedsTinyCosmicPredictableEnd ResultsTwigsPenetrationAfterthoughtFortuitous Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“Parents ought, through their own behavior and the values by which they live, to provide direction for their children. But they need to rid themselves of the idea that there are surefire methods which, when well applied, will produce certain predictable results. Whatever we do with and for our children ought to flow from our understanding of and our feelings for the particular situation and the relation we wish to exist between us and our child.” NeedsWellsChildrenIdeasFeelingsCertainValuesWishParentUnderstandingResultsSituationProduceParticularOughtBehaviorFlowRelationOur ChildrenMethodPredictable Author:Bruno Bettelheim