Aphorisms 16

If you think the world a place intended only for our happiness you will find it quite intolerable – CS Lewis

I didn’t go into religion to make me happy; I always knew a bottle of port would do that. – CS Lewis

It seems to me that the ‘extreme’ elements in every church are the nearest to one another; while the ‘liberal’ and ‘broad-minded’ could never be united at all. – CS Lewis

Most political sermons teach us nothing except which newspapers are read in the Rectory. – CS Lewis

Now that contraceptives have removed the uncharitable element in fornication I do not expect people to recognize it as a sin until they have accepted Christianity as a whole. - CS Lewis

'A good police force is one that catches more crooks than it employs.' – Sir Robert Mark

If we cannot lay down our tastes, along with other carnal baggage, at the church door, surely we should at least bring them in to be humbled and, if necessary, modified, not to be indulged? – CS Lewis

Aphorisms 15

Just over a quarter of UK aid goes direct to other governments and little of this ever goes anywhere else.

Development spending is the process by which poor people in rich countries subsidize rich people in poor countries.

Every dollar of aid counted because every dollar got counted. – Bill Gates

Corruption is the lubrication of the Olympic industry and of FIFA too.

“Corruption is our right. Think about everyone else who is engaging in corruption. If we don’t do the same thing, won’t it be to our loss?” – Senior Pakistani Minister

The hope of preferment can be kept going indefinitely, but the bitterness of dismissal is instant, and long-lasting.

Kindness takes but a moment longer.

Capitalism takes flawed human acts and transforms them into good. Socialism turns good intentions into evil consequences.

The wise and virtuous man is at all times willing that his own private interest should be sacrificed to the public interest of his own particular order or society – Adam Smith

Some people spread happiness and light wherever they go: some whenever they go.

Aphorisms 14

God says, “If anyone is in Hell it will be over my dead body.” – Rico Tice

On Norman Vincent Peale Adlai Stevenson’s quipped: I find Paul appealing and Peale appalling.

“The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.” G. K. Chesterton

"Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation." Henry Kissinger

Scepticism is integral to the scientific process, because most claims turn out to be false

“If today you can take a thing like xxxxxxxx and make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and next year you can make it a crime to teach it in the church. At the next session you can ban books and the newspapers. Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy… After a while it is the setting of man against man, creed against creed, until the flying banners and beating drums are marching backwards to the glorious ages of the 16th century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the man who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.” - Clarence Darrow

DNA makes RNA, RNA makes protein, and proteins make us."

Francis Crick (1916-2004)

Nobody makes me; I take full responsibility.

I have always asked stupid questions and never been satisfied with easy answers. When I got to college I found this was called “Philosophy”. Keith Ward.

Aphorsims for this week

Communism, socialism, Keynesianism; so many ‘isms’ have become ‘wasms’.

Doctors become terrorists because death is too easy for them; it no longer hurts.

Blind to one’s own faults; vigilant for those of others.

If a man can’t find something it’s because he hasn’t looked hard enough; if a woman can’t find it, it’s because it isn’t there.

I like the tortoise; in order to get anywhere it has to stick its neck out.

Life is a sexually transmitted condition; universally fatal.

As I get older I learn never to pass by a bathroom – HRH the Duke of Edinburgh.

I have CDO; it’s like OCD but with the letters in alphabetical order. As they should be!

The ground is level at the foot of the cross.

Where can wisdom be found?”…“the deep says ‘it is not in me’; the sea says ‘it is not in me’. It cannot be bought with the finest gold, nor its price be weighed in silver. Job 28 v12 -15

If a penny becomes the apple of your eye it blots out the sun.

The devil has no difficulty in making sin look innocent.

There is no such thing as a little sin; for that to be true there would have to be a little God.

Payment God cannot twice demand
First at my Savior's bleeding hand
And then at mine.