The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

581. GOOGLE PARENTS “Like meddlesome parents who never let their kids do anything on their own, Google, Facebook, and other makers of personal software end up demeaning and diminishing qualities of character that, at least in the past, have been seen as essential to a full and vigorous life: ingenuity, curiosity, independence, perseverance, daring.”

Excerpt From: Carr, Nicholas. “The Glass Cage: Automation and Us.”

582. DRONES “As currently deployed, missile-carrying drones aren’t all that different from cruise missiles and other weapons. A person still pulls the trigger.

The big change will come when a computer starts pulling the trigger. Fully automated, computer-controlled killing machines—what the military calls lethal autonomous robots, or LARs—are technologically feasible today, and have been for quite some time. Environmental sensors can scan a battlefield with high-definition precision, automatic firing mechanisms are in wide use, and codes to control the shooting of a gun or the launch of a missile aren’t hard to write. To a computer, a decision to fire a weapon isn’t really any different from a decision to trade a stock or direct an email message into a spam folder. An algorithm is an algorithm.

Excerpt From: Carr, Nicholas. “The Glass Cage: Automation and Us.”

583. QUOTED BY REAGAN

“The nation that forgot God has never been allowed to endure.”

— G. Washington

“It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children, but it is our duty to leave liberty to them.”

— John Dickinson, Signer, Declaration of Independence

“If men will not be governed by God, then they must be governed by tyrants.”

— William Penn

584. BOOK BURNINGS “Undesirable books, by contrast, were destroyed. In Eastern Europe, the Nazis burned a staggering 375 archives, 402 museums, 531 institutes, and 957 libraries. It is estimated that Hitler destroyed half of all books in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and fifty-five million tomes in Russia. Libraries in occupied nations that remained open were reorganized to serve the Nazi agenda.”

Excerpt From: Molly Guptill Manning. “When Books Went to War.”

585. RAPPORT “Everyone who was ever a guest of Theodore Roosevelt was astonished at the range and diversity of his knowledge. Whether his visitor was a cowboy or a Rough Rider, a New York politician or a diplomat, Roosevelt knew what to say. And how was it done? The answer was simple. Whenever Roosevelt expected a visitor, he sat up late the night before, reading up on the subject in which he knew his guest was particularly interested.

For Roosevelt knew, as all leaders know, that the royal road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most.”

Excerpt From: Carnegie, Dale. “How To Win Friends & Influence People.”

586. MARRIAGE “In the 1885 case of Murphy v. Ramsey, the US Supreme Court recognized the fundamental importance of the traditional institution of marriage: No legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth, than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.

Excerpt From: Lee, Richard. “In God We Still Trust: A 365-Day Devotional.”

587. WHEN BOOKS BURNED “With the passage of nine years and a formal declaration of war, the book burnings were cast in a new light: a warning of the destruction that would follow. In nine years’ time, cities were destroyed, millions of lives were lost, and devastation had spread across Europe like a plague. As one newspaper remarked, “Hunger, forced labor, imprisonment, concentration camps, unarmed crowds of fleeing citizens slaughtered from the skies, nations murdered without cause”—these “are the spectacles that have succeeded those bonfires of books.”

Excerpt From: Molly Guptill Manning. “When Books Went to War.”

588. YOUR LIFE – F. CHAN https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_x8dsvb_4
589. CALLING “If you are doing a job someone else can do, it is not your calling.”

— Bob Shank

590. NOTHING NEW UNDER SUN “What [Booker T.] Washington tried to help an increasingly secular nation to understand was the spiritual principle of sowing and reaping, that every action plants seeds that bear fruit for generations after. “If you could look about the South and see the shiftless way in which the people are living, you would think the case almost hopeless. I have felt so. If you could see some of those men, you would realize as never before the awful curse of slavery. You would realize that ‘Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.’” The principle applied, he believed, to every aspect of social and political life.”

Excerpt From: Mansfield, Stephen. “Then Darkness Fled.”

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

571. QUALITY OR QUANTITY “Fully 85 percent of your happiness in life will come from happy relationships with other people, especially those closest to you, as well as the members of your family. The critical determinant of the quality of your relationships is the amount of time that you spend face-to-face with the people you love, and who love you in return.”

Rule: It is the quality of time at work that counts and the quantity of time at home that matters.

Excerpt From: Tracy, Brian. “Eat That Frog!.”

572. LEGACY “If you walk away from the truth, the linkage to the gospel may be severed for your descendents. Is there anything in life that is more important than that?”

Excerpt From: Dobson, James. “Your Legacy.”

1577. THE BIBLE “Isn’t it interesting that the Book of Exodus, which was written nearly 3,600 years ago, is still relevant to our lives today? It is because the biblical text was “God-breathed.” It was written by forty authors over a course of 1,500 years, on three continents and in three languages. There has never been another book like the Bible, yet it has been banned in public schools, in most universities, and in the public square.”

Excerpt From: Dobson, James. “Your Legacy.”

573. ATTITUDE  “The last of the human freedoms [is] to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” — Victor Frankl
574. LIFE’S FAST PACE “There is more to life than just increasing its speed.”

–GANDHI

575. ULTIMATE CHOICE “We don’t choose where or when to be born. We don’t choose where or when to die. But we do choose how to live in between.”    –Unknown
576. HABITS “The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably, thought and act.”

–ORISON SWETT MARDEN

577. PRAISE OVER CRITICISM “In the early nineteenth century, a young man in London aspired to be a writer. But everything seemed to be against him. He had never been able to attend school more than four years. His father had been flung in jail because he couldn’t pay his debts, and this young man often knew the pangs of hunger. Finally, he got a job pasting labels on bottles of blacking in a rat-infested warehouse, and he slept at night in a dismal attic room with two other boys—guttersnipes from the slums of London. He had so little confidence in his ability to write that he sneaked out and mailed his first manuscript in the dead of night so nobody would laugh at him. Story after story was refused. Finally the great day came when one was accepted. True, he wasn’t paid a shilling for it, but one editor had praised him. One editor had given him recognition. He was so thrilled that he wandered aimlessly around the streets with tears rolling down his cheeks. The praise, the recognition, that he received through getting one story in print, changed his whole life, for if it hadn’t been for that encouragement, he might have spent his entire life working in rat-infested factories. You may have heard of that boy. His name was Charles Dickens. Use of praise instead of criticism is the basic concept of B. F. Skinner’s teachings. This great contemporary psychologist has shown by experiments with animals and with humans that when criticism is minimized and praise emphasized, the good things people do will be reinforced and the poorer things will atrophy for lack of attention. Excerpt From: Carnegie, Dale. “How To Win Friends & Influence People.”
578. SELF-DISCIPLINE “Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.” — Elbert Hubbard
579. NOW “There’s no time like the present and there’s no present like the time.” –Unknown
580. FAILURE’S TRICK “Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to QUIT. That is exactly what the majority of men do.

Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach.

One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat.”

Excerpt From: Hill, Napoleon. “Think and Grow Rich.”

 

 

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

551. ABE “A close friend of Abe Lincoln, Joshua Speed, published Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, which includes a story from 1864 when he visited Lincoln:

When I knew [Mr. Lincoln], in early life, he was a skeptic. He had tried hard to be a believer, but his reason could not grasp and solve the great problem of redemption as taught. He was very cautious never to give expression to any thought or sentiment that would grate harshly upon a Christian’s ear. For a sincere Christian, he had great respect. . . . But this was a subject we never discussed. The only evidence I have of any change, was in the summer before he was killed. I was invited out to the Soldier’s Home to spend the night. As I entered the room, near night, he was sitting near a window intently reading his Bible. Approaching him I said, “I am glad to see you so profitably engaged.” “Yes,” said he, “I am profitably engaged.” “Well,” said I, “if you have recovered from your skepticism, I am sorry to say that I have not.” Looking me earnestly in the face and placing his hand on my shoulder, he said, “You are wrong, Speed. Take all of this book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier and better man.” Excerpt From: Lee, Richard. “In God We Still Trust: A 365-Day Devotional.”

552. STRENGTH  “The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower

553. PLAN “If everything goes as planned, you don’t have a story.” –Unknown

554. WW II WEAPON “We all know that books burn—yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny of every kind. In this war, we know, books are weapons.

Excerpt From: Molly Guptill Manning. “When Books Went to War.”

555. WARNING “A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished from its edges.” — Benjamin Franklin
556. LEGACY Jonathan Edwards, born in 1703, was perhaps the most brilliant thinker America has ever produced. Even though he and his wife had 11 children, he invested one hour each day into their lives.

Of his known descendants:

– 300 became pastors and missionaries

– 120 became university professors

– 110 became lawyers

– 60 were prominent authors

– 30 were judges

– 13 served as presidents of colleges and universities

– 3 served inThe US Congress

– 1 became Vice President of the United States

557. MENTORS “If you want a year of prosperity, grow grain.

If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees.

If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people.”

—CHINESE PROVERB

558. NEXT GENERATION “Relay races are usually won or lost in the passing of the baton. So it is with the Christian life. When members of one generation are committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and are determined to finish strong, they rarely fumble the baton. But getting the handoff securely in the hands of children can be difficult and risky. That is when Christian commitments between generations can be dropped. It isn’t always the fault of the parents. Some young runners refuse to reach out and grasp the baton. Either way, there is nothing more tragic than failing to transfer the baton to those who come after.”

Excerpt From: Dobson, James. “Your Legacy.”

559.  CLOTHING “Our culture has sacrificed the innocence of our youth on the altar of sexual glorification. It’s no longer about selling clothes; it’s more about selling our souls. We decry the way our wives and daughters are disparaged over their body images and seen as sexual objects, yet promulgate the very lifestyles and clothing lines that lead to the thing we denounce. We have become a schizophrenic society.”

Excerpt From: Battaglia, Joe. “The Politically Incorrect Jesus.”

560. HUMILITY [Booker T.] Washington’s humility was not merely a matter of principle and theological abstraction. It was practical, working itself out in the fabric of his life, in the daily and the mundane of his existence. Once when he was staying in a Des Moines hotel, a woman guest mistook him for a porter and asked him to fetch her a drink of water. Washington was at that moment a leading educator, an internationally renowned author, an adviser to governments, and arguably the most famous black man in the world. But he didn’t hesitate. He immediately went to the hotel’s front desk to ask for the water. He felt no offense because true humility removes the sting of the common.

Excerpt From: Mansfield, Stephen. “Then Darkness Fled.”

 

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

541. POWER OF THE AIRWAVES “Hitler prepared for battle by infiltrating France’s airwaves. Germany hired native-French broadcasters to lure unsuspecting listeners to tune in to amusing radio shows and popular music. Many listeners were oblivious to the propaganda that was subtly included. These radio commentators expressed worry over the German army’s dominance and military strength, and predicted that France could not withstand an attack. The doubt Hitler’s radio programs planted in French minds quickly spread. Edmond Taylor, a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune who lived in France during this period, witnessed Hitler’s intricately choreographed propaganda campaign and how it crumbled France’s resolve. Describing it as a “strategy of terror,” Taylor reported that Germany spent enormous amounts on propaganda and even bribed French newspapers to publish stories that confirmed the rumors of Germany’s superiority. According to Taylor, Germany’s war of ideas planted a sense of dread “in the soul of France that spread like a monstrous cancer, devouring all other emotional faculties [with] an irrational fear [that was] . . . uncontrollable.” So weakened was the confidence of the French that something as innocuous as a test of France’s air-raid-siren system generated ripples of panic; the mere innuendo of invasion somehow reinforced the idea that France would undoubtedly be defeated.

Over 230 million Europeans, once free, fell under Nazi rule.”

Excerpt From: Molly Guptill Manning. “When Books Went to War.”

542. COMPUTER GAMES/SIMULATORS “Artificial renderings of space may provide stimulation to our eyes and to a lesser degree our ears, but they tend to starve our other senses—touch, smell, taste—and greatly restrict the movements of our bodies. A study of rodents, published in Science in 2013, indicated that the brain’s place cells are much less active when animals make their way through computer-generated landscapes than when they navigate the real world. “Half of the neurons just shut up,” reported one of the researchers, UCLA neurophysicist Mayank Mehta. He believes that the drop-off in mental activity likely stems from the lack of “proximal cues”—environmental smells, sounds, and textures that provide clues to location—in digital simulations of space. “A map is not the territory it represents,” the Polish philosopher Alfred Korzybski famously remarked, and a virtual rendering is not the territory it represents either.”

Excerpt From: Carr, Nicholas. “The Glass Cage: Automation and Us.”

543. PRAYER IN SCHOOLS In 1962, the state of New York proposed this prayer for Its schools: “Almighty God we acknowledge our dependence on thee and we beg thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.” The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.

Excerpt From: Reagan, Ronald. “The Notes.”

544. TIME “Alas! There is no casting anchor in the stream of time!”

— Marguerite Gardiner, 1850

545. PLEASE JUST LISTEN “Many persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience.” — Readers Digest

546. GOOD CONVERSATION “If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.

People who talk only of themselves think only of themselves. And “those people who think only of themselves,” Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, longtime president of Columbia University, said, “are hopelessly uneducated. They are not educated,” said Dr. Butler, “no matter how instructed they may be.”

So if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.”

Excerpt From: Carnegie, Dale. “How To Win Friends & Influence People.”

547. GEN. BRADLEY KNEW “General Omar Bradley was one of the main US Army field commanders in North Africa and Europe during World War II. Later, he was the first officer assigned to the post of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1948, he stated this powerful insight, “We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. . . . The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”

Excerpt From: Lee, Richard. “In God We Still Trust: A 365-Day Devotional.”

548. CONTROL YOUR TEMPER “You can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry.” — Bits and Piece

549. PRESIDENTIAL FAITH “No man who enters upon the office to which I have succeeded can fail to recognize how every president of the United States has placed special reliance upon his faith in God. Every president has taken comfort and courage when told . . . that the Lord “will be with thee. He will not fail thee nor forsake thee. Fear not—neither be thou dismayed”. . . Each of our presidents in his own way has placed a special trust in God. Those who were strongest intellectually were also strongest spiritually. . . .” — John F. Kennedy in a February 1961 speech

550. BE THERE “God doesn’t ask for ability, but for availability.”

— Unknown