Nature Archives - Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgement to have safely traveled from star to star.

The questions religion can answer are far more important questions to humanity than the questions science can answer.

He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

A great empire contains the amities and animosities of a world within itself.

The compacts which are to embrace thirteen distinct States in a common bond of amity and union, must as necessarily be a compromise of as many dissimilar interests and inclinations. How can perfection spring from such materials?

Trust between people who are not naive is a form of courage, because betrayal is always a possibility, and because this is consciously understood.

We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads. But to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.

It is all a matter of time scale. An event that would be unthinkable in a hundred years may be inevitable in a hundred million.

A government, forever changing and changeable, is, indeed, in a state bordering upon anarchy and confusion.

Names are not arbitrary labels. Names are meanings. We grow into our names, or we fail to grow into them; we live out our names, or we fail to live them out.

The more numerous an assembly may be, of whatever characters composed, the greater is known to be the ascendency of passion over reason.

The West has lost the golden thread that binds us to God, Creation, and each other. Unless we find it again, there is no hope of halting our dissolution.

All economic transactions involve mutual accommodation and each transactor has to make the deal a net benefit to the other transactor, in order to have a deal at all.

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved . . . ; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness.

Here is the thing you must bear in mind: I do not represent public opinion; I represent the public. There is a wide difference between the two, between the real interests of the public, and the public’s opinion of these interests.

Often the most convincing moralists are the very ones who feel the temptation to sin most strongly. . . . Very few, if any, great men or women are pure of heart, but inner torment and even a touch of wickedness can be catalysts to greatness.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.

On the contrary, God foretold hardship upon hardship in this world until the end of time. And you want the Christian to be exempt from these troubles? Precisely because he is a Christian, he is destined to suffer more in this world.

International trade is not a zero-sum contest. Both sides must gain or it would make no sense to continue trading.

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