ecclesiastes on Overconfidence

Conversation would be much improved by the frequent use of three words: I don’t know.

William James, in a famous letter to H. G. Wells in 1906, credited what he called American “moral flabbiness” to “the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success. That—with the squalid cash interpr...

Dear Everybody, We have a serious problem: All of us think we’re good people. But Jesus says we’re not. Sincerely, Brant P. Hansen …PS. IF YOU THINK I’M WRONG—about how we think we’re good people...

“I know” seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression, “I thought I knew.”

All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself

The wonderful word master used to describe the person who is at the top of his or her craft, whatever the profession. It was a title that one could work toward and with some degree of confidence ascri...

We probably got a bit too cocky about how well our lives were going. But after disability showed up in our family, we learned that life is not tame. It’s not here to align with our desires and plans. ...

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

We delude ourselves into believing that if we can just get everything done, if we can only tie up all the loose ends, if we can even once get ahead of the crush, we will prove our worth and establish ...

The search for knowledge can go wrong, not as a result of individual, erroneous judgments or of mistakes creeping in at different points, but because of one single mistake at the beginning… Faith does...

That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred’s soon hit; This hi...

If you wish to improve be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.

Achievement is the alcohol of our time.

Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...

Divine Creator, your ways are above our ways. No matter how hard we try, you will always confound us. Too often we try to reduce you into something we can fully comprehend, or something we can control...

I believe in God and the whole business, but I love women best, music and science next, whiskey next, God fourth, and my fellowman hardly at all.”

There is no better exercise for strengthening the heart than reaching down and lifting people up. Think about it; most of your best friends are those who encourage you. You don’t have many strong rela...

Everything in our society seems to convey the message of “now!” It’s almost as if we’ve entered an era where we have sacrificed the processing of knowledge for the gathering of data.

My thought it is a wanton ranger,  It skips away;  I fear 'twill bring my soul in danger  On Judgment Day...

In their book Friend and Foe, social psychologists Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer cite a study by Emory University scientist Frans de Waal regarding comparison. De Waal trained capuchin monkeys ...

After surveying an incredibly diverse cross section of college students across America, Donna Freitas found “the most pressing social media issues students face: the importance of appearing happy”—and...

Sometimes our successes can be more devastating than our failures. We fight, strain, and struggle in pursuit of something or someone that looks to be good, and after days or months or years, we obtain...

Abraham Lincoln’s sharp wit often surfaced, even in serious moments. At the funeral of a talented but overly vain Army General during the Civil War, Lincoln observed the large crowd that had gathered....

The pioneering work of Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky has been popularized in recent years by the gamut of notable thinkers, including Malcolm Gladwell (Blink) and, in this cas...

Thomas Merton once said, “Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self, This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. A...

If the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the . . . unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar...

Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.

A man named Jack was driving on a dark country road one night when he got a flat tire. He saw a cabin in the woods and began to walk towards it. He told himself that the person who answered the door w...

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, has made more money in a single day than Heller had earned fro...

Many of us, when we know we are going to the dentist in a few days, suddenly start brushing and flossing our neglected teeth and gums, hoping that we will somehow trick the dentist into thinking that ...