Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) on Iraq:
“In my judgment, the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved. Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term.”
More on the subject:
Profiles on timing (and Episode 3088 (06/28/2007) for some more info)
“I am very, very impressed with Regent University, when I consider that it was founded just a short while ago. The number of graduates that you have and the amount of influence that you have is really, really terrific.”
Rudy Giuliani to Pat Robertson at Robertson’s barely accredited, non-competitive, tier 4, “college”.
I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.
From Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
Civilised man was nearly always able to become master of his environment temporarily. His chief troubles came from his delusions that his temporary mastership was permanent. He thought of himself as “master of the world,” while failing to understand fully the laws of nature.
Man, whether civilised or savage, is a child of nature — he is not the master of nature. He must conform his actions to certain natural laws if he is to maintain his dominance over his environment. When he tries to circumvent the laws of nature, he usually destroys the natural environment that sustains him. And when his environment deteriorates rapidly, his civilisation declines.
Topsoil and Civilization
“In the excitement over the unfolding of his scientific and technical powers, modern man has built a system of production that ravishes nature and a type of society that mutilates man. If only there were more and more wealth, everything else, it is thought, would fall into place. Money is considered to be all-powerful; if it could not actually buy non-material values, such as justice, harmony, beauty, or even health, it could circumvent the need for them or compensate for their loss. The development of production and the acquisition of wealth have thus become the highest goals of the modern world in relation to which all other goals, no matter how much lip-service may still be paid to them, have come to take second place. The highest goals require no justification; all secondary goals have finally to justify themselves in terms of the service their attainment renders to the attainment of the highest.”
E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful
