In Plato’s Apology, Socrates defends himself against his accusers, and it is in that work that he utters the oft-repeated expression, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I haven’t done a study, but I would guess that a very high percentage of tweets echo some variation of this thought, continuing our seemingly universal drive to find that perfect aphorism, a phrase that captures the essence of a good life: Words to live by.
Does tweeting wisdom indicate a desire to be like Socrates? Do we attempt to enshrine ourselves on Twitter and to enter the Pantheon of respect? I don’t know, but I think I might be guilty of thinking I have some wisdom to impart. So, in case you never saw one of my tweets, I’m providing a sample list here:
Worth repeating: What we anticipate is rarely a problem.
This is not your practice life.
Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean there’s nothing in it worth your effort to understand.
It’s important to remember that we are all interrelated.
Human variability doesn’t negate a common humanity.
No personality is a singular entity.
Make your destiny an expanding perspective.
Without you the universe would be a different place and have different destiny
Daily you build the edifice of your life.
If you can, exude peace rather than impose it.
No wall is stronger than one built by self-knowledge, integrity, and belief in one’s own worth.
All humans experience hurt. Consider that when you think you see greener grass.
Consider that grass on your side of the fence might appear to be “greener grass” from another’s perspective.
Enviable grass on the other side of the fence represents constant hard work. Envy effort, not result.
It’s important to see the substance and not the appearance of others.
Only our pride makes us think we are multidimensional, but our intellectual opponents are one-dimensional.
In crossing life’s barriers, we change, but we also change the barriers.
Following a beaten path? Do some intellectual off-roading today.
As authors of our lives, we always have the potential to revise.
Let no one choreograph your dance of life.
Our life-pendulums swing between being a part of to being apart from.
Dry the tears of those in pain.
Variance is a principle in the lab of life.
Every stress provides an opportunity to experiment in the lab of life.
For the purposeful, a heart well-tried by trouble powers the drive to succeed.
Cherish mystery in relationships; you can never objectify why they work.
During the blackness of grief we continue to absorb light. In time, color will return.
There is a way to eliminate hate: Just don’t think it.
What we do, we own.
Resilience is a chief characteristic of successful people.
Negative behaviors are litter on an otherwise clean and beautiful beach. Keep your beach clean.
Ability is important, but persistence gets the job done.
Change “Have a great day” to “Make your day great.”
Those who bicker are like fan blades. Relative positions don’t change even during the fastest spin.
To make progress in a canoe of disagreement, people must face the same direction when they paddle.
Ideological perspectives tinged with emotions foil rational discussions.
In a frenetic cacophonous world, make soothing sounds the earworm to which your pulse dances.
If you want a more peaceful world, be judicious whenever you decide to hit “Forward” or “Retweet.”
Your ideological adversaries are not disembodied avatars on social media, but rather real people.
All issues aren’t issues for all. New Golden Rule: See others’ issues as you want them to see yours.
We hybridize ourselves as we adapt to the changing nature of place.
What will you do today to consecrate a place by work nobly advanced?
How sure are you, really?
We’re always sure until we discover that we aren’t.
How confident are you that you can interpret minds and motivations correctly?
We fail to assess the personal meaning of others’ “strange” behaviors while we accept our own.
Breaking free from the inertia of culture is a matter of mind.
New ideas lie at the limiting boundaries of what we believe.
Individuality protects us from mob mentality.
Provide support for those teetering on emotional imbalance.
Eliminating ennui doesn’t have to involve unnecessary risk.
Like medicines, every choice comes with side effects.
Within any society, individual drives drive individuals.
Chill out. Your life isn’t as complex as you lead yourself to believe.
Beware lest you believe mere wish or will can alter unalterable realities.
Like toddlers rejecting a spoonful of medicine, adults refuse to open up for alternative reasoning.
Knowledge of natural phenomena and processes is a key to a safer and more secure life.
Our predispositions can turn hallucinations into harmful realities.
How fast you can recover from insult defines your character.
Does your “moral field” shift just as Earth’s magnetic field shifts? Check your moral compass.
Do you find it strange that anarchists organize?
Replace ADD with Distraction Deficit Order (DDO).
We memorialize what we deem significant in a particular place and time.
In spite of our biological cosmopolitanism, we often remain in ideological parochialism.
Is there an innate penchant to destroy or to build beyond necessity?
Rather than fear them, consider our differences as manifestations of cosmic complexity.
Why is inexactitude a virtue in defense of our ideas but a vice in others’ defense of theirs?
Affinity for a group doesn’t provide an ethical reason for defending its wrongs.
With regard to opportunity, saying “Yes” offers no guarantee, but saying “No” guarantees failure.
Looking for a Loch Ness monster or an ancient alien? No belief turns speculation into fact.
To understand yourself, analyze the forces that shaped you.
Don’t mistake shadow for substance.
As word alchemists, do we seek to turn “base metal” into “gold” or “gold” to “base metal”?
In comparingour “fails” to the “fails” of others, we usually don’t see an equivalence.
Pride causes us to mistake knowledge for wisdom.
Try making commitments without caveats.
Experience doesn’t guarantee the validity of truths to which you obstinately cling.
Be careful not to conflate attribute and person in your effort to simplify others.
In the morning ask, “What is it that I don’t want to ‘leave out’?” to avoid a night of regret.
Complexities make long-term weather forecasts chancy at best, human forecasts even more so.
Ask yourself whether in following, you are relinquishing leading.
Cultural simplification inhibits individual diversity.
Ask yourself how (and why) you conform to your culture’s conventions.
Alternative truths aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
Scapegoating is the first refuge of a frightened mind.
We overlook or common value when we deem others to be less significant.
Directly or indirectly, we set in motion more than we can possibly foresee.
Predicting actions caused by human faults is more complex than predicting seismic events along geologic faults.
Most of the architecture of our lives is an agglomeration of lean-tos.
What to be called Homo sapiens sapiens? Earn the designation.
A gas guage indicating empty isn’t necessarily precise. Keep going to discover the next station.
Youth never comprehends the passage to age through experience.
Regret and pride vie for control of the past. Anxiety and eagerness vie for control of the future.
Does your reliance on clock and calendar hint at a need to connect in a disparate society?
Try applying the same accuracy to the measurement of your life that your apply to the lives of others.
Satisfying your ego will never be as gratifying as feeding your soul.
We economize explanations by economizing assumptions. Scientifically, that’s good; socially, bad.
Do the Haves and the Have Nots engender feelings of envy or compassion?
Angry in the “heat of the moment”? Remember that “important” is a relative qualification.
Stubborn adherence to idea is akin to wearing klompen. Yes, you can kick hard, but you hurt your foot.
Character inertia resists the forces of peer pressure and mob-think.
If it comes first in a series, a 40-watt bulb can outshine a 60-watt bulb. Be the first bulb.
Seems silly to say, but every moment you are a creator of a future universe. Create wisely.
With every decision, you are writing the narrative of your life.
The prize goes to the first who can define “normal human” to everyone’s satisfaction.
In labeling others, we ignore their complexity and reveal our simplicity.
Seek to understand the medium through which you obtain information before you judge on its basis.
“A watched pot never boils.” So, you, dominated in composition by H2O, should resist any rapid emotional boiling.
Reasons for strong emotions are like bubbles: They are only seemingly substantial.
Do we argue with reflections of ourselves just as birds attack their own images in windows?
We have a better chance of reaching the belligerent when we approach from below.
When core ideas lack plasticity, ideologues can’t bend.
Are you the analog for your analyses of other people?
Every future produces perspectives that are not available in the present.
Have social media made our time an Age of Exacerbation?
What we know depends on how we know. Change the how, change the understanding.
Because evil’s easy, good’s a struggle.
Reject what stirs the inner brain to frenzy; accept what stirs the outer brain to reason.
You really don’t know who you are until you are.
Don’t stay locked in a tradition that predisposes you to a limited interpretation of the world.
The first step toward self-knowledge is identification of assumptions.
Regrettable past moments are ash. If you dwell on those moments, you make an ash of yourself.
Before you get huffy about being misunderstood, remember how many times you didn’t understand.
Considering your most ordinary behaviors and thoughts sets you on a path to self-awareness.
A consensus doesn’t make a speculation into an absolute.
Anyone can speak wise words, but only the self-disciplined can actually live wisely.
Like the rock cycle, a human cycle has remixed the materials of our species. There is no pure race.
Before you take the “measure” of another, understand both your measuring units and what you intend to measure.
Our deductions about the lives of others often reveal traces of our own lives.
Every year is 1984. PC is the foundation of every society, but it doesn’t have to govern your thought.
The garbage we produce and the energy we consume indicate our personal eco-friendliness.
See dignity in those who overcome hardship and exhibit resilience in the face of personal adversity.
You are a civil engineer making for the next generation a straight road through life’s wilderness.
Have you discovered how to be self-reliant in the midst of seven billion people?
Identify the purposes of your actions; then identify their consequences.
We are all reductionists when we observe the lives of others.
Knowledge and belief are muses that guide us. Which one prevails when you depict the world?
Regardless of your level of regret, you cannot unsay what you now regret saying.
If the behavioral and physical artifacts of your past where in a museum, would you visit?
Does your argument with another rely more on its consistency than on its truth?
In nostalgic longing, we fail to realize that we are one reason that things are different today.
Are you providing wisdom the next generation needs to avoid the problems your generation now encounters?
The dual nature of presumption: It tells you, “You can”; it tells you “You can’t.” What’s it telling you today?
Afraid that what he might see would upset his beliefs, Libri refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. Don’t be like Libri.
Worry turns nonevents into events.
Think of society, politics, and religion as fields or fluids of varying resistance.
In our Age of Distraction, we face a challenge to be both self-aware and other-aware.
Want to slow down today? Take an imaginary walk with a turtle.
Regardless of the odds against you, bet on yourself, and then persistently and creatively succeed.
Incivility has manifested itself in every generation.
True wisdom lies in anticipation, not in hindsight.
Make lives, not stones, the monuments to your life.
It’s the nature of humans to alter Nature. Everyone alters the planet.
Pundit shows mimic 18thcentury broadsheets: Same number of words, little news.
Before you let envy control you, recognize the talents and strengths of others.
It’s hard to measure a proton in the simplest element; yet, we seem sure in measuring people.
Juvenal said long ago, “No one ever reached the climax of vice in a one step.”
Bothered by stories of questionable veracity. Today the past is apparently malleable because people keep revising it.
Peace follows understanding.
The immediate consequences of our actions are apparent; the long-term consequences, not so much.
Those who extend ancestral animosities into the present jeopardize their children over quarrels of thee dead.
We judge our past by our present. Too bad we can’t judge our present by our future.
When “bad” things happen, we often ascribe choice to others, but fate to ourselves.
A diet of junk www won’t change us physically, but it will change us philosophically and culturally.
As mountains rise, they undergo simultaneous erosion of their older and weaker rocks. In rising, shed your older and weaker characteristics.
What rubric serves as the basis for your assessment of your life?
Every trough in the wave train of your live is accompanied by crests.
Staring at 24/7 punditry is like looking at the sun; it blinds rather than enlightens.
Group elitism is an obstacle to the free exchange of ideas.
By analyzing, we understand; by synthesizing, we invent.
“Peace to men of good will” or “peace and good will toward men”? Your choice of version defines you.
Is your search for identity framed by a single philosophy or an amalgam?
What metaphors do you employ to make your identity appear to be continuous?
Compromise is a superconductor of ideas that works when cooler emotional temperatures prevail.
Do you harbor unconditional trust in an ideology while harboring skepticism for an opposing one?
Two simple principles: Research for you conclude; think before you judge.
Are we driven to propose causes for every effect and to invent apparatus to detect those causes?
Social and political beliefs mimic mouse glue traps.
Inference is often a manifestation of self-satisfying confirmation.
Hidden variables manifest themselves when you least expect them; that is, when you are sure.
What allegorical characters would play roles in your life’s story?
In seeking an easy life, we sometimes make life harder for others.
Does your moral philosophy rest on irrefutable knowledge?
Don’t mistake your model of reality for reality itself.
There’s no better way to assess our humanity that by examining our empathy.
Social media have made the world a neighborhood of backyard fences for exchanging gossip.
Like astronauts in free fall thinking they move in a straight line in curved space, we can’t see the path of our lives curved by obsession—or addiction.
Its ability to recognize what it doesn’t know separates the human brain from all other brains.
Every generation generates an anti-conformity that becomes a conformity that generates an anti-conformity that generates a…
Recognize that members of groups with which you share a worldview can hold differing and contradictory ideas.
Discover the cultural models that influence your behaviors.
Thought that passes through a bottleneck of panic or ignorance emerges as narrow ideology.
Advocates for utopian societies can learn from the tale of Eden: A single rule was too much to follow.
Emulate those with greater talent rather than envy them.
You can escape inertial everydayness by thinking, reading, and exploring.
If you consider yourself to be multidimensional, what makes you think others are one-dimensional?
Inevitable rifting occurs in both continents and political parties.
Are alcohol, drugs, socialism, politics, and political correctness the anodynes of the 2000s?
Ever changed your worldview? Was the transition a smooth slide or a series of steps?
Mentally map the world as it is and not as you imagine it to be.
Be selective when you emulate; choose on the basis of real, and not imagined heroism.
Decide on the basis of reason and not impulse.
We imagine most of the troubles we believe we suffer. The possible isn’t always the probable.
Before you decide in hubris that you are an original thinker, study the influences of your past.
In an Age of Selfies and egoism, many ironically want a more powerful and intrusive government.
True love does not equate to need.
Many of political arguments are tiresomely ad hominemand ad populum.
Grey hair can cover a head filled with folly as easily as it covers one filled with sagacity.
Mental maps are shaded with attitude and emotion.
In your search for identity, start with a look at your mental maps.
Which do you prefer? A cacophony of pessimistic naysayers or a polyphonic fugue of optimists?
Just brush the teeth you want to keep.
Feeling intimidated? Remember that in the amusement park of life, all ride the Wheel of Fortune.
In a busy world in which the number of clicks prevents further investigation, we adopt myths.
Sometimes differing explanations are reiterations in neologism and new imagery.
Are personal identities as numerous fractions between two whole numbers.
Today might be the rest of your life. Act accordingly.
Before you complain about weather forecasts, review the accuracy of your past life-forecasts.
The natures of Nature and humanity require each of us to stay alert and inventive.
A diet of facts doesn’t necessarily equate to a diet of wisdom.
Emotionally, are you like a controlled fireplace fire or bonfire, or like an uncontrolled forest fire or smoldering log?
Can morality be universal like the concepts of math?
Called a name by someone? Not to worry. Your complexity belies simple labels.
Complacency endangers all perspectives.
Regardless of its dangers, Earth is a great planet on which to live. Aren’t you glad you chose to live here?
Reading, thinking, and challenging prevent an arthritis of the mind.
Do you agree with Socrates that knowledge is the root of virtue? Or do you think opinion is?
For a quick psychological profile, ask what you love.
How has what you love changed you?
Until you fully understand the context of your own or another’s life, you act in the midst of unknowns.
Run the beautiful experiment of your life with the least distraction.
Beware thinking that the only significant reality is the one your Ego appears to impose on the world.
Think creatively by associating process and matter in untried ways.
Which category defines you: Mild, riled, or wild?
Hearts deadened by exposure to tragedy can be revived.
Your brain is like an older neighborhood: It appears the same, but its occupant-ideas have changed over the years.
Be cautious that your classification scheme for humanity isn’t inflexible.
With regard to our past, we’re like train engines that drag the cars behind us toward our future.
On massless insult affects people more than trillions of subatomic particles that daily pierce them.
In a universe of matter lumped together, expect lumps: you live in a vegetable soup universe, not in a clear broth cosmos.
PC Noahs save a limited number of ideas on their philosophical arks without considering that variants ensure survivability.
Does tweeting wisdom indicate a desire to be like Socrates? Do we attempt to enshrine ourselves on Twitter and to enter the Pantheon of respect? I don’t know, but I think I might be guilty of thinking I have some wisdom to impart. So, in case you never saw one of my tweets, I’m providing a sample list here:
Worth repeating: What we anticipate is rarely a problem.
This is not your practice life.
Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean there’s nothing in it worth your effort to understand.
It’s important to remember that we are all interrelated.
Human variability doesn’t negate a common humanity.
No personality is a singular entity.
Make your destiny an expanding perspective.
Without you the universe would be a different place and have different destiny
Daily you build the edifice of your life.
If you can, exude peace rather than impose it.
No wall is stronger than one built by self-knowledge, integrity, and belief in one’s own worth.
All humans experience hurt. Consider that when you think you see greener grass.
Consider that grass on your side of the fence might appear to be “greener grass” from another’s perspective.
Enviable grass on the other side of the fence represents constant hard work. Envy effort, not result.
It’s important to see the substance and not the appearance of others.
Only our pride makes us think we are multidimensional, but our intellectual opponents are one-dimensional.
In crossing life’s barriers, we change, but we also change the barriers.
Following a beaten path? Do some intellectual off-roading today.
As authors of our lives, we always have the potential to revise.
Let no one choreograph your dance of life.
Our life-pendulums swing between being a part of to being apart from.
Dry the tears of those in pain.
Variance is a principle in the lab of life.
Every stress provides an opportunity to experiment in the lab of life.
For the purposeful, a heart well-tried by trouble powers the drive to succeed.
Cherish mystery in relationships; you can never objectify why they work.
During the blackness of grief we continue to absorb light. In time, color will return.
There is a way to eliminate hate: Just don’t think it.
What we do, we own.
Resilience is a chief characteristic of successful people.
Negative behaviors are litter on an otherwise clean and beautiful beach. Keep your beach clean.
Ability is important, but persistence gets the job done.
Change “Have a great day” to “Make your day great.”
Those who bicker are like fan blades. Relative positions don’t change even during the fastest spin.
To make progress in a canoe of disagreement, people must face the same direction when they paddle.
Ideological perspectives tinged with emotions foil rational discussions.
In a frenetic cacophonous world, make soothing sounds the earworm to which your pulse dances.
If you want a more peaceful world, be judicious whenever you decide to hit “Forward” or “Retweet.”
Your ideological adversaries are not disembodied avatars on social media, but rather real people.
All issues aren’t issues for all. New Golden Rule: See others’ issues as you want them to see yours.
We hybridize ourselves as we adapt to the changing nature of place.
What will you do today to consecrate a place by work nobly advanced?
How sure are you, really?
We’re always sure until we discover that we aren’t.
How confident are you that you can interpret minds and motivations correctly?
We fail to assess the personal meaning of others’ “strange” behaviors while we accept our own.
Breaking free from the inertia of culture is a matter of mind.
New ideas lie at the limiting boundaries of what we believe.
Individuality protects us from mob mentality.
Provide support for those teetering on emotional imbalance.
Eliminating ennui doesn’t have to involve unnecessary risk.
Like medicines, every choice comes with side effects.
Within any society, individual drives drive individuals.
Chill out. Your life isn’t as complex as you lead yourself to believe.
Beware lest you believe mere wish or will can alter unalterable realities.
Like toddlers rejecting a spoonful of medicine, adults refuse to open up for alternative reasoning.
Knowledge of natural phenomena and processes is a key to a safer and more secure life.
Our predispositions can turn hallucinations into harmful realities.
How fast you can recover from insult defines your character.
Does your “moral field” shift just as Earth’s magnetic field shifts? Check your moral compass.
Do you find it strange that anarchists organize?
Replace ADD with Distraction Deficit Order (DDO).
We memorialize what we deem significant in a particular place and time.
In spite of our biological cosmopolitanism, we often remain in ideological parochialism.
Is there an innate penchant to destroy or to build beyond necessity?
Rather than fear them, consider our differences as manifestations of cosmic complexity.
Why is inexactitude a virtue in defense of our ideas but a vice in others’ defense of theirs?
Affinity for a group doesn’t provide an ethical reason for defending its wrongs.
With regard to opportunity, saying “Yes” offers no guarantee, but saying “No” guarantees failure.
Looking for a Loch Ness monster or an ancient alien? No belief turns speculation into fact.
To understand yourself, analyze the forces that shaped you.
Don’t mistake shadow for substance.
As word alchemists, do we seek to turn “base metal” into “gold” or “gold” to “base metal”?
In comparingour “fails” to the “fails” of others, we usually don’t see an equivalence.
Pride causes us to mistake knowledge for wisdom.
Try making commitments without caveats.
Experience doesn’t guarantee the validity of truths to which you obstinately cling.
Be careful not to conflate attribute and person in your effort to simplify others.
In the morning ask, “What is it that I don’t want to ‘leave out’?” to avoid a night of regret.
Complexities make long-term weather forecasts chancy at best, human forecasts even more so.
Ask yourself whether in following, you are relinquishing leading.
Cultural simplification inhibits individual diversity.
Ask yourself how (and why) you conform to your culture’s conventions.
Alternative truths aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
Scapegoating is the first refuge of a frightened mind.
We overlook or common value when we deem others to be less significant.
Directly or indirectly, we set in motion more than we can possibly foresee.
Predicting actions caused by human faults is more complex than predicting seismic events along geologic faults.
Most of the architecture of our lives is an agglomeration of lean-tos.
What to be called Homo sapiens sapiens? Earn the designation.
A gas guage indicating empty isn’t necessarily precise. Keep going to discover the next station.
Youth never comprehends the passage to age through experience.
Regret and pride vie for control of the past. Anxiety and eagerness vie for control of the future.
Does your reliance on clock and calendar hint at a need to connect in a disparate society?
Try applying the same accuracy to the measurement of your life that your apply to the lives of others.
Satisfying your ego will never be as gratifying as feeding your soul.
We economize explanations by economizing assumptions. Scientifically, that’s good; socially, bad.
Do the Haves and the Have Nots engender feelings of envy or compassion?
Angry in the “heat of the moment”? Remember that “important” is a relative qualification.
Stubborn adherence to idea is akin to wearing klompen. Yes, you can kick hard, but you hurt your foot.
Character inertia resists the forces of peer pressure and mob-think.
If it comes first in a series, a 40-watt bulb can outshine a 60-watt bulb. Be the first bulb.
Seems silly to say, but every moment you are a creator of a future universe. Create wisely.
With every decision, you are writing the narrative of your life.
The prize goes to the first who can define “normal human” to everyone’s satisfaction.
In labeling others, we ignore their complexity and reveal our simplicity.
Seek to understand the medium through which you obtain information before you judge on its basis.
“A watched pot never boils.” So, you, dominated in composition by H2O, should resist any rapid emotional boiling.
Reasons for strong emotions are like bubbles: They are only seemingly substantial.
Do we argue with reflections of ourselves just as birds attack their own images in windows?
We have a better chance of reaching the belligerent when we approach from below.
When core ideas lack plasticity, ideologues can’t bend.
Are you the analog for your analyses of other people?
Every future produces perspectives that are not available in the present.
Have social media made our time an Age of Exacerbation?
What we know depends on how we know. Change the how, change the understanding.
Because evil’s easy, good’s a struggle.
Reject what stirs the inner brain to frenzy; accept what stirs the outer brain to reason.
You really don’t know who you are until you are.
Don’t stay locked in a tradition that predisposes you to a limited interpretation of the world.
The first step toward self-knowledge is identification of assumptions.
Regrettable past moments are ash. If you dwell on those moments, you make an ash of yourself.
Before you get huffy about being misunderstood, remember how many times you didn’t understand.
Considering your most ordinary behaviors and thoughts sets you on a path to self-awareness.
A consensus doesn’t make a speculation into an absolute.
Anyone can speak wise words, but only the self-disciplined can actually live wisely.
Like the rock cycle, a human cycle has remixed the materials of our species. There is no pure race.
Before you take the “measure” of another, understand both your measuring units and what you intend to measure.
Our deductions about the lives of others often reveal traces of our own lives.
Every year is 1984. PC is the foundation of every society, but it doesn’t have to govern your thought.
The garbage we produce and the energy we consume indicate our personal eco-friendliness.
See dignity in those who overcome hardship and exhibit resilience in the face of personal adversity.
You are a civil engineer making for the next generation a straight road through life’s wilderness.
Have you discovered how to be self-reliant in the midst of seven billion people?
Identify the purposes of your actions; then identify their consequences.
We are all reductionists when we observe the lives of others.
Knowledge and belief are muses that guide us. Which one prevails when you depict the world?
Regardless of your level of regret, you cannot unsay what you now regret saying.
If the behavioral and physical artifacts of your past where in a museum, would you visit?
Does your argument with another rely more on its consistency than on its truth?
In nostalgic longing, we fail to realize that we are one reason that things are different today.
Are you providing wisdom the next generation needs to avoid the problems your generation now encounters?
The dual nature of presumption: It tells you, “You can”; it tells you “You can’t.” What’s it telling you today?
Afraid that what he might see would upset his beliefs, Libri refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. Don’t be like Libri.
Worry turns nonevents into events.
Think of society, politics, and religion as fields or fluids of varying resistance.
In our Age of Distraction, we face a challenge to be both self-aware and other-aware.
Want to slow down today? Take an imaginary walk with a turtle.
Regardless of the odds against you, bet on yourself, and then persistently and creatively succeed.
Incivility has manifested itself in every generation.
True wisdom lies in anticipation, not in hindsight.
Make lives, not stones, the monuments to your life.
It’s the nature of humans to alter Nature. Everyone alters the planet.
Pundit shows mimic 18thcentury broadsheets: Same number of words, little news.
Before you let envy control you, recognize the talents and strengths of others.
It’s hard to measure a proton in the simplest element; yet, we seem sure in measuring people.
Juvenal said long ago, “No one ever reached the climax of vice in a one step.”
Bothered by stories of questionable veracity. Today the past is apparently malleable because people keep revising it.
Peace follows understanding.
The immediate consequences of our actions are apparent; the long-term consequences, not so much.
Those who extend ancestral animosities into the present jeopardize their children over quarrels of thee dead.
We judge our past by our present. Too bad we can’t judge our present by our future.
When “bad” things happen, we often ascribe choice to others, but fate to ourselves.
A diet of junk www won’t change us physically, but it will change us philosophically and culturally.
As mountains rise, they undergo simultaneous erosion of their older and weaker rocks. In rising, shed your older and weaker characteristics.
What rubric serves as the basis for your assessment of your life?
Every trough in the wave train of your live is accompanied by crests.
Staring at 24/7 punditry is like looking at the sun; it blinds rather than enlightens.
Group elitism is an obstacle to the free exchange of ideas.
By analyzing, we understand; by synthesizing, we invent.
“Peace to men of good will” or “peace and good will toward men”? Your choice of version defines you.
Is your search for identity framed by a single philosophy or an amalgam?
What metaphors do you employ to make your identity appear to be continuous?
Compromise is a superconductor of ideas that works when cooler emotional temperatures prevail.
Do you harbor unconditional trust in an ideology while harboring skepticism for an opposing one?
Two simple principles: Research for you conclude; think before you judge.
Are we driven to propose causes for every effect and to invent apparatus to detect those causes?
Social and political beliefs mimic mouse glue traps.
Inference is often a manifestation of self-satisfying confirmation.
Hidden variables manifest themselves when you least expect them; that is, when you are sure.
What allegorical characters would play roles in your life’s story?
In seeking an easy life, we sometimes make life harder for others.
Does your moral philosophy rest on irrefutable knowledge?
Don’t mistake your model of reality for reality itself.
There’s no better way to assess our humanity that by examining our empathy.
Social media have made the world a neighborhood of backyard fences for exchanging gossip.
Like astronauts in free fall thinking they move in a straight line in curved space, we can’t see the path of our lives curved by obsession—or addiction.
Its ability to recognize what it doesn’t know separates the human brain from all other brains.
Every generation generates an anti-conformity that becomes a conformity that generates an anti-conformity that generates a…
Recognize that members of groups with which you share a worldview can hold differing and contradictory ideas.
Discover the cultural models that influence your behaviors.
Thought that passes through a bottleneck of panic or ignorance emerges as narrow ideology.
Advocates for utopian societies can learn from the tale of Eden: A single rule was too much to follow.
Emulate those with greater talent rather than envy them.
You can escape inertial everydayness by thinking, reading, and exploring.
If you consider yourself to be multidimensional, what makes you think others are one-dimensional?
Inevitable rifting occurs in both continents and political parties.
Are alcohol, drugs, socialism, politics, and political correctness the anodynes of the 2000s?
Ever changed your worldview? Was the transition a smooth slide or a series of steps?
Mentally map the world as it is and not as you imagine it to be.
Be selective when you emulate; choose on the basis of real, and not imagined heroism.
Decide on the basis of reason and not impulse.
We imagine most of the troubles we believe we suffer. The possible isn’t always the probable.
Before you decide in hubris that you are an original thinker, study the influences of your past.
In an Age of Selfies and egoism, many ironically want a more powerful and intrusive government.
True love does not equate to need.
Many of political arguments are tiresomely ad hominemand ad populum.
Grey hair can cover a head filled with folly as easily as it covers one filled with sagacity.
Mental maps are shaded with attitude and emotion.
In your search for identity, start with a look at your mental maps.
Which do you prefer? A cacophony of pessimistic naysayers or a polyphonic fugue of optimists?
Just brush the teeth you want to keep.
Feeling intimidated? Remember that in the amusement park of life, all ride the Wheel of Fortune.
In a busy world in which the number of clicks prevents further investigation, we adopt myths.
Sometimes differing explanations are reiterations in neologism and new imagery.
Are personal identities as numerous fractions between two whole numbers.
Today might be the rest of your life. Act accordingly.
Before you complain about weather forecasts, review the accuracy of your past life-forecasts.
The natures of Nature and humanity require each of us to stay alert and inventive.
A diet of facts doesn’t necessarily equate to a diet of wisdom.
Emotionally, are you like a controlled fireplace fire or bonfire, or like an uncontrolled forest fire or smoldering log?
Can morality be universal like the concepts of math?
Called a name by someone? Not to worry. Your complexity belies simple labels.
Complacency endangers all perspectives.
Regardless of its dangers, Earth is a great planet on which to live. Aren’t you glad you chose to live here?
Reading, thinking, and challenging prevent an arthritis of the mind.
Do you agree with Socrates that knowledge is the root of virtue? Or do you think opinion is?
For a quick psychological profile, ask what you love.
How has what you love changed you?
Until you fully understand the context of your own or another’s life, you act in the midst of unknowns.
Run the beautiful experiment of your life with the least distraction.
Beware thinking that the only significant reality is the one your Ego appears to impose on the world.
Think creatively by associating process and matter in untried ways.
Which category defines you: Mild, riled, or wild?
Hearts deadened by exposure to tragedy can be revived.
Your brain is like an older neighborhood: It appears the same, but its occupant-ideas have changed over the years.
Be cautious that your classification scheme for humanity isn’t inflexible.
With regard to our past, we’re like train engines that drag the cars behind us toward our future.
On massless insult affects people more than trillions of subatomic particles that daily pierce them.
In a universe of matter lumped together, expect lumps: you live in a vegetable soup universe, not in a clear broth cosmos.
PC Noahs save a limited number of ideas on their philosophical arks without considering that variants ensure survivability.
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