Tony's Garden

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” ― H.L. Mencken 1620 Isabella Leonarda, Italian religious composer. Sonata decima, and Queste ch’a Voi consagro 1633 Sebastian Knupfer, German composer, conductor…

“You’re not going to push ahead when it’s someone else’s mission. It needs to be yours.” ― Peter H. Diamandis 1600 Loreto Vittori, Italian composer and mezzo-soprano singer. Lungi dal mio bel Sole 1694 František Václav Míča, Czech conductor and composer. Bellezza e Decoro, Nel giorno natalizio – 1, and Bellezza e Decoro, Nel giorno…

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress 1622 Jacob Hintze, German composer. Christ lag in Todesbanden 1824 Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer and organist. ‘Locus…

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” ― Ronald Reagan 1568 Adriano Banchieri, Italian organist, composer, poet, and monk. Dialogo, and Fantasia Prima from Fantasie overo canzoni alla Francese a…

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby…

“The world is a sphere. There is no East or West.” ― Ai Weiwei 1529 Taddeo Zuccari, Italian Mannerist painter 1653 Johann Pachelbel, German composer, organist, and teacher. Canon in D Major 1803 Jacobus Abels, Dutch painter 1875 Edgar Rice Burroughs, American writer, best known for his prolific output in the adventure, science fiction, and…

“We need to take a collective deep breath and understand what climate change is and isn’t. It is not like a huge asteroid hurtling toward earth, where we need to stop everything else and mobilize the entire global economy to ward off the end of the world. It is instead a long-term chronic condition like…

“Breakthroughs in information and communications technology are leading to forms of dematerialization unimaginable just a decade ago. Consider smartphones. They require more energy to manufacture and operate than older cell phones. But by obviating the need for separate, physical newspapers, books, magazines, cameras, watches, alarm clocks, GPS systems, maps, letters, calendars, address books, and stereos,…

“In the totalitarian regime the doubting, inquisitive, and imaginative mind has to be suppressed.” ― Joost A.M. Meerloo 1609 Sassoferrato, Italian painter 1632 John Locke,  English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the “father of liberalism” MISCELLANY: CAUGHT RED HANDED? ‘Legal’ concerns halt…

“I think the first thing that has to happen is that public health should apologize. The public health establishment in the United States and the world has failed the public.” ― Jay Bhattacharya 1476 Kanō Motonobu, Japanese painter and calligrapher (Kanō school of painting) 1749  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and statesman. 1829 Albert…