Notes on Quotes

Observant readers of these blogs may have noticed that I have a slight penchant for sharing interesting quotations. It is a predisposition that long predates blogging. In fact, I have many old journals loaded with gleanings from my reading. I have, occasionally, committed the more interesting ones to memory, squeezing them in amongst the poetry, Gettysburg Address, the first half of the Declaration of Independence, and all the Shakespeare that can be crammed into my thick Irish skull.

When I started putting quotes in here, it was only a matter of time before I decided to use a few from memory, and was faced with the very real problem of finding out if memory truly served. Whenever I've quoted the Bard I've easily looked up the needed lines to check proper phrasing and punctuation (who can ever remember that? ) Trying to find quotes from different writers, however, aint always so easy.Three times now, having failed to find the needed passages on the internet, I've re-read the novels in order to confirm the quotes. It wasn't the chore you might be thinking, as the novels were by Steinbeck, R.L.Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle. And, no, the Doyle was not a Sherlock Holmes, but one of his lesser known historical novels, Micah Clarke. It was that experience that occasions this piece.

Here's the quotation as I remembered it:

     Beware the zealot, for he will not only fight for his own right of worship, wherein he hath justice. He will also presume upon the consciences of others, thereby falling into the very error against which he fights.

Nice, huh? As relevant today as in the nineteenth century, when it was written. Also, not quite on the mark. Here is the actual quote:

     For the zealot is a man who not only defends his own right of worship, wherein he hath justice, but wishes to impose upon the consciences of others, by which he falls into the very error against which he fights.

Ok. Conan Doyle gives it a bit more poetry, perhaps, but the meaning is the same in both versions. I seem to have edited it down to its essence. Or, at least, I'd like to think so. My memory also tricked me in the setting of the story. I had remembered it as taking place during the English Civil War- Oliver Cromwell, and all that, you know. It turns out that I was close there as well. Micah Clarke is the story of the Duke of Monmouth's Rebellion which happened about a generation later.

A mind can be a minefield if you're not careful. As for me, it was no great effort to re-read those books. Re-discovering great writing is nearly as joyful as discovering it in the first place. I wish all of you happy hunting.

Fooling Themselves- Again

Eric Cantor lost his primary in a surprise upset to his Tea- Bagger challenger. This came as a surprise to Cantor- and his pollster, who had predicted Cantor in the lead by over 30 points.

The biggest surprise, however, is that Cantor's pollster is the same idiot who projected that Mitt Romney would win key battleground states and the presidency in 2012. He was wrong then, too.

Self delusion is nothing new, people. Shakespeare wrote of the rebels in Henry IV Part II that they embraced "smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs." Wishful thinking and informational cherry-picking, in other words. So- nothing new.

Here is the difference. If someone lied to me, or was an unreliable source, I would never go back. Conservatives are so well trained, that when they are fed shit, they say "Thank you, sir, may I have another."

That is the only explanation for their rejection of facts and evidence in every realm of knowledge and experience.

Republicans were once a real political party.