Tuesday, April 5, 2022

chochmas goyim: Stigler, Friedman, Sowell

"In a world of self-promoting academics, coining buzzwords and aligning themselves on the side of the angels of the moment, George Stigler epitomized a rare integrity as well as a rare intellect. He jumped on no bandwagons, beat no drums for causes, created no personal cult. He did the work of a scholar and a teacher—both superbly—and found that sufficient. If you wanted to learn, and above all if you wanted to learn how to think—how to avoid the vague words, fuzzy thoughts, or maudlin sentiments that cloud over reality—then Stigler was your man." Thomas Sowell

And here is Sowell describing another of his professors at Chicago, Milton Friedman: 

"[He] was one of the very few intellectuals with both genius and common sense. He could express himself at the highest analytical levels to his fellow economists in academic publications and still write popular books . . . that could be understood by people who knew nothing about economics."

(Friedman was of course Jewish, a secular Jew, but you know what I mean.)

What we learn here are some admirable traits to emulate. 

Monday, April 4, 2022

never too late

 It’s never too late to be what you might have been. 

George Elliot

Journalism

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

― George Orwell

Thursday, February 24, 2022

Study grammar

 

A biographer of the Vilna Gaon writes, “For all his vast knowledge of secular wisdom, the Gaon constantly emphasized to his students, that with the exception of Hebrew grammar, they should confine their studies to Torah.”[1]



[1] Betzalel Landau, The Vilna Gaon (Brooklyn, NY: Artscroll, 1995) pp. 156.7

Sunday, February 20, 2022

it impoverishes itself

As long as Orthodoxy maintains stubbornly: “No, we shall concern ourselves only with the study of Talmud and the legal codes, but not with aggadah, not ethics, not Kabbalah, not scientific research, not the knowledge of the world, and not Chassidism,” it impoverishes itself. And against this I shall continue to wage battle.

– Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook