"If at any moment, you are unable to name a great man who is, or has recently been, having an influence on your conduct, you will be passing the verdict: ORDINARY on the quality of your own thought and existence. Conversely, give me the public utterances of this or that politician or so-called leader, and I shall be able to tell you whether he is haunted by some irresistible souvenir of greatness or merely moved by the interests in the air. America does not realize how much she owes to the fact that Lincoln is still a living presence on the Capitol Hill, unavoidable even if it is not sought." p. 121
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Thinking-Erne ... ing+dimnet
President Obama has written about Abraham Lincoln. And according to Professor Kloppenberg in his book, Reading Obama, of his predecessors, Obama admires Lincoln the most. p. 244
Thus, this question:
How does Obama's conduct in office compare to the ethical quality of Lincoln's words and deeds?
One measure that I can recommend is William Miller's book, Lincoln's Virtues. http://www.amazon.com/Lincolns-Virtues- ... d_add_1_dp
I'll have to retrieve my copy to reread during Obama's remaining years in office.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_dimnet
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Obama-Ame ... 086&sr=8-1
The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet
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marjoramblues
- Posts: 636
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Re: The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet
The Art of Thinking - sounds good.
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Bill Wiltrack
- Posts: 5468
- Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:52 pm
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- Contact:
Re: The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet
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Re: The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet
On insincerity:
"The imitation of exterior qualities is detrimental to real creativeness, and, as Herbart says, ultimately becomes injurious to character. Acted, spoken, or written insincerity is per se destructive of personality and comes to negative results. The more we try to seem what we are not, the smaller our chance becomes of fully being what we really can grow to be," p. 191
Elsewhere I have argued that the activity of politics, like the pursuit of power, tends to corrupt the practitioner. viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3371 Consider also http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/abso ... utely.html
In a representative democracy, the politician who seeks an elective office will craft the public image that the politician believes will yield him or her an electoral victory. However, the person that the voter sees and hears during the campaign before the election is often not the person that the people get in office thereafter.
A false aspect of the false public image that Barack Obama projected before his Presidential election in 2008 was that he was "a professor of constitutional law" at the University of Chicago. I'm ashamed to say that I voted for Obama in 2008 primarily because of that false representation.
I subsequently learned that Obama only taught a course on law in the law school. He was just an adjunct lecturer. He was not a tenured full-time teacher on the law school's faculty. Unlike virtually all tenured professors of law, neither during nor after his attendance in the Harvard law school did Obama ever publish an article in a law review.
Thus, it is false to claim that Obama was a "professor of constitutional law."
Recently, an authentic professor of constitutional law, Elizabeth Price Foley was interviewed on BookTV. When the interviewer mention that Obama was also a "professor of constitutional law," she didainfully replied that the word "professor" normally applies only to a published tenured teacher of law. She labeled Obama as just a lecturer.
http://booktv.org/Program/13457/2012+Lo ... squot.aspx
http://elizabethpricefoley.com./
"The imitation of exterior qualities is detrimental to real creativeness, and, as Herbart says, ultimately becomes injurious to character. Acted, spoken, or written insincerity is per se destructive of personality and comes to negative results. The more we try to seem what we are not, the smaller our chance becomes of fully being what we really can grow to be," p. 191
Elsewhere I have argued that the activity of politics, like the pursuit of power, tends to corrupt the practitioner. viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3371 Consider also http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/abso ... utely.html
In a representative democracy, the politician who seeks an elective office will craft the public image that the politician believes will yield him or her an electoral victory. However, the person that the voter sees and hears during the campaign before the election is often not the person that the people get in office thereafter.
A false aspect of the false public image that Barack Obama projected before his Presidential election in 2008 was that he was "a professor of constitutional law" at the University of Chicago. I'm ashamed to say that I voted for Obama in 2008 primarily because of that false representation.
I subsequently learned that Obama only taught a course on law in the law school. He was just an adjunct lecturer. He was not a tenured full-time teacher on the law school's faculty. Unlike virtually all tenured professors of law, neither during nor after his attendance in the Harvard law school did Obama ever publish an article in a law review.
Thus, it is false to claim that Obama was a "professor of constitutional law."
Recently, an authentic professor of constitutional law, Elizabeth Price Foley was interviewed on BookTV. When the interviewer mention that Obama was also a "professor of constitutional law," she didainfully replied that the word "professor" normally applies only to a published tenured teacher of law. She labeled Obama as just a lecturer.
http://booktv.org/Program/13457/2012+Lo ... squot.aspx
http://elizabethpricefoley.com./
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Bill Wiltrack
- Posts: 5468
- Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:52 pm
- Location: Cleveland, Ohio, USA
- Contact:
Re: The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet
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What are you trying to say within the scope of this thread?
You seem to be all over the place.
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Is there a thesis that you are forming or supporting or are you just washing your weasel?
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What are you trying to say within the scope of this thread?
You seem to be all over the place.
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Is there a thesis that you are forming or supporting or are you just washing your weasel?
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Re: The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet
I present a quotation from the book I'm reading which I think expresses a truth or truths. Then I mention a current state of affairs which I think illustrates or applies to the quotation. The reader may then comment or not. Understanding requires that the reader carefully study the concepts contained in the quotation.Bill Wiltrack wrote:.
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What are you trying to say within the scope of this thread?
You seem to be all over the place.
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Is there a thesis that you are forming or supporting or are you just washing your weasel?
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You should analyze the above quotation by reflecting upon the following concepts: imitation, creativeness, character, insincerity, personality, and potential.
I suppose this method may be to difficult for some readers.
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reasonvemotion
- Posts: 1813
- Joined: Tue May 15, 2012 1:22 am
Re: The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet
I can name a woman......"If at any moment, you are unable to name a great man who is, or has recently been, having an influence on your conduct, you will be passing the verdict: ORDINARY on the quality of your own thought and existence.
“I believe that there are people who think as I do, who have thought as I do, who will think as I do. There are those who will live, unconscious of me, but continuing my attitude, so to speak, as I continue, unknowingly, the similar attitude of those before me. I could write and write. All it takes is a motion of the hand in response to a brain impulse, trained from childhood to record in our own American brand of hieroglyphics the translations of external stimuli. How much of my brain is wilfully my own? How much is not a rubber stamp of what I have read and heard and lived? Sure, I make a sort of synthesis of what I come across, but that is all that differentiates me from another person? - - - That I have banged into and assimilated various things? That my environment and a chance combination of genes got me where I am?”
― Sylvia Plath
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Bill Wiltrack
- Posts: 5468
- Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:52 pm
- Location: Cleveland, Ohio, USA
- Contact:
Re: The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet
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Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
The original poster has been washing their weasel - a lot.
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.....................................Perhaps you should cut-back a bit...ya know,...until you can say what YOU mean.
Have you ever read The Art of Cutting Back by Ernest Daily?
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Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
The original poster has been washing their weasel - a lot.
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.....................................Perhaps you should cut-back a bit...ya know,...until you can say what YOU mean.
Have you ever read The Art of Cutting Back by Ernest Daily?
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