Suits

Astral Unravelling

The Fig Of Knowledge

Zoophilia

State Of Origin

… your 50,000-greats-grandfather was Homo erectus.
 — Richard Dawkins

The Thought Occurs

Waste Management

Academic Anagram

D'Accord

Surface Tension

We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces.
 — Oscar Wilde

It is only the superficial qualities that last.
 — Oscar Wilde

Cartesian Self-Doubt

Cogito virgo sum.

Cartesian Self-Delusion

Cogito ergot sum.

O Tempora! O Mores!

What people believe prevails over the truth.

 — Sophocles

Whistle-Blowing

Nobody likes the man who brings bad news.
 — Sophocles

Free Speech

Analytical Thought

Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so the spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.

— Peter Medawar

Meteorological Anagram

Culinary Anagram

The Companionship Of The Herd

A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.
 — Nicholas Boileau

Resistance Is Useful

I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. 

I shall conquer untruth by truth. 

And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.

 — Mahatma Gandhi

Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est La Même Chose

This here's the wattle -
the emblem of our land.
You can stick it in a bottle
or you can hold it in your hand.
Amen!
 — Monty Python 'Bruces' (1970)

Oi Oi Oi

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
 — Samuel Johnson

Education > Training

'I think he was a silly little man,' said Councillor Tompkins. 'Worthless, in fact; no use to Society at all.'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Atkins, who was nobody of importance, just a schoolmaster. 'I am not so sure: it depends on what you mean by use.'

'No practical or economic use,' said Tompkins. 'I dare say he could have been made into a serviceable cog of some sort, if you schoolmasters knew your business. But you don't, and so we get useless people of his sort.'

— JRR Tolkien 'Leaf By Niggle'

Intentionality

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
 — Oscar Wilde

Troublesome

There are no fools so troublesome as those that have wit.

 — Benjamin Franklin

There are no fools so troublesome as those that have a little wit.

 — Sherlock Holmes quoting 'the old French philosopher'

The Ability To Deny The Truth

Natural selection favours the forces of psychological denial [if] the individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers.

 — Garrett Hardin 'The Tragedy Of The Commons'

The Age Of Endarkenment

What's happened, of course, is that the age of enlightenment has been dimmed, shall we say, the age of reason and evidence which caused the flowering of science. When you have 40% of the American population believing in homeopathy or intelligent design, or anything, and thinking that anything goes, that any opinion has equal weight to any other…we had a profound change in attitudes in countries like the US and of course there's quite a lot of it here, and I'm sure there's plenty of it in Australia as well.

So the age of enlightenment, if not dead, is greatly dimmed. And if you have that, then you really are in trouble, and I remember when I was still the high steward of Cambridge sitting on a little committee with the then vice-chancellor Alison Richard, looking at the salaries of the non-clinical professors. That was the final port of call. They really re-did all the salaries there. And I noticed in the top category there were very few non-scientists, and so as a scientist I felt I should speak up on behalf of my non-scientist friends and I asked why there were so few. And Alison Richard said, 'Well, I'm afraid arts and humanities people have drunk too deeply of the well of this attitude and we have to wait for a generation to pass before we can get them up to speed again.'

 — Bridget Ogilvie

Mass Debating On Email Lists

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
 — John Steinbeck

http://thoughts-that-cross-my-mind.blogspot.com/

The Right-In-Exile

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
 — HL Mencken

One More Mystery Explained

I have it; it's a moron convention.

 — Cat

Cavity Waves

Vacuity propagates faster than the speed of light.