A Quote by Ambrose Bierce
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
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BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on. In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Western civilization is the most successful civilization the world has ever seen. And some of the reasons for that is it's borrowed from other cultures along the way, back to Mosaic law, the Greek age of reason, Roman law and the Roman order of government, and the Republican form of government, by the way that we're guaranteed in our constitution.
If terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.
The widespread distribution of private property ownership is the cornerstone of American liberty. Without it, neither our free enterprise system nor our republican form of government could long endure.
Conservatives came to office to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. But lately we have increased government in order to stay in office. And, soon, if we don't remember why we were elected we will have lost our office along with our principles, and leave a mountain of debt that our children's grandchildren will suffer from long after we have departed this earth. Because, my friends, hypocrisy is the most obvious of sins, and the people will punish it.
The first question that offers itself is, whether the general form and aspect of the government be strictly republican? It is evident that no other form would be reconcileable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the revolution; or with that honourable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.
The widespread distribution of private property ownership is the cornerstone of American liberty. Without it neither our free enterprise system nor our republican form of government could long endure.... The next Republican Administration will...not only protect the cherished human right of property ownership, but will also work to help millions of Americans - particularly those from disadvantaged groups - to share in the ownership of the wealth of their nation.
A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.
Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.
Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.
No form of government matters nearly as much as the spirit and intelligence brought to the administration of any form of government.
Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.
Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.
The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you're worrying about whether you're hopeful, or hopeless, or pessimistic, or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you're showing up, that you're here and that you're finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that. That was what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world.
I'm witnessing the problems that the federal government is passing down in terms of drones, in violation of our civil liberties, spying on our citizens, death panels in the form of the government taking over the health care system and the national debt they're just saddling our grandchildren with.
Our understanding of what constitutes intelligence is utterly relative. If an aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, for example, all of Western civilization would probably flunk. We have a very convenient and self-serving way of defining intelligence. If an animal does something, we call it instinct. If we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence.
Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
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