Here are more excerpts from my notebook. As I wrote in the post with the first collection of these sayings, some have appeared elsewhere in turn-stone, and others are likely fodder for future topics. All are original with me, although they certainly reflect ideas I have gotten elsewhere
• It is important to have respect for our ignorance because there is always much more that we don’t know than that we do.
• Relaxing is an illusory break from living. We live; we don’t stop living to relax.
• To justify their work and perhaps to assuage their conscience, many people use the defense of Adolf Eichmann at his trial, that they are just doing their job. They are not guilty of Eichmann’s banality of evil but rather a banality of disassociation and collaboration.
• Sapere aude is Latin for dare to know. Another way of phrasing it is dare to think for yourself.
• We give much attention to our traditional holidays, not realizing that every day is a holy-day because we are resurrected every morning into a new day of possibility.
• We are each of us an endangered species.
• We cannot hear that still small voice within us—of conscience, of possibility, of serenity—due to the incessant roar of the “Economy,” the whir of its machinery, and the mind-numbing hum of its distractions.
• We suffer from and are addicted to an overwhelming complexity of life. We suffer an embarrassment of distractions leaving us no time to think.
• A sense of humor is armor against the vagaries of fate.
• It is increasingly common in our society to thank soldiers and veterans for their service. In addition, though, we should thank teachers, social workers, volunteers with the homeless, and so on—those whose work is the mortar that holds our lives together.
• Contemplation is necessary; otherwise we live in the tyranny of the moment and are subject to the emotion of the immediate.
• Many people suffer from the fallacy of dichotomous thinking, seeing issues solely in black and white terms, e.g., right and wrong, liberal and conservative, and so on. In reality, though, almost every issue involves gradations of gray, nuances that help us avoid objectifying those with whom we disagree.
• Our complex society resembles a yellowjacket nest in autumn, at maximum activity right before it dies.
• The sustainability movement is like promoting litter control on a road through a strip mine.
• Economic activity is directly proportional to the degradation of the natural world. The more we buy and the more we engage in distractions and superficialities, the more damage we do to the flora, fauna, and landscape of the earth—and to ourselves.
• Peace and prosperity of our generation rests on the injustices done by and done to earlier generations.
• We cannot escape the theater of current events.
• As I age, I accept that wearing out is inevitable, but I am going to do my best not to rust out.