“Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love a cow - for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God, when they love Him for their own advantage.”
Meister Eckhart
"What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed people will not know who is responsible, and when the problems get bad enough — as they might do for example with another serious terrorist attack, as they might do with another financial meltdown — some one person will come forward and say: ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’ That is how the Roman republic fell. That is how democracy dies."
David Souter, US Supreme Court Justice, September 17, 2012
"Now one believes every fool
Much practice and fortune telling
Springs forth due to the printers' art
They print all that one brings to them
What one says and sings of scandals
That passes by now without punishment
The world wants to be deceived."
Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff
"The foolish ask nothing better than not to have to understand anything, and they even used to get together and try not to understand, because the last thing of which a person is capable is to be malicious and foolish all by themselves. Without understanding, they form spontaneously into herds, not according to any particular affinities but in obedience to the petty ideology, which swallowed up the whole of their small lives, allotted them by birth or chance. They would far rather kill than have to think."
George Bernanos, Under the Sun of Satan
"Everyone knows that plagues have a way of recurring throughout history, yet somehow we find it hard to believe in the ones that crash down on us out of the sky. There have always been plagues and wars, yet they always take us by surprise. When war breaks out people say it's stupid and won't last long. Stupidity has a knack of getting in the way, which we would see if not wrapped up in ourselves. In this our townsfolk were like everybody else— they did not believe in plagues."
Albert Camus, The Plague
Stocks popped in a continuation of the optimistic rally from Friday — and then flopped into the afternoon.
Gold and silver moved lower.
VIX fell once again.
The Dollar chopped sideways.
There will be a Comex precious metals futures option expiration on the 25th.
It is a tragically ironic aspect of history and human nature that because of their intense obsession, people often become what they hate.
Have a pleasant evening.
