Word: foolishnesses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...these gains have cost us dearly in economic hardship. A market that takes ten years of slow economic collapse to reduce demand in response to a rise in prices cannot be called "free." It would be callous and foolish for us to ignore the gross imperfections in the oil market, and make the US government play OPEC just to make us less vulnerable to the real OPEC...
TRYING to achieve energy independence through artificially high oil prices would be foolish because it wouldn't work. The recent history of the auto industry exemplifies the clumsiness of high prices as a mechanism to promote conservation. Detroit continued to manufacture gas-guzzlers long after gas prices soared, as auto executives balked at the massive investment required to switch to making smaller cars. Higher gas prices made consumers prefer more efficient cars, but the cars weren't available until years after the consumers wanted them, and then only after the government required the car companies to improve the mileage...
...Daley's machine. Elections do not run on compromises, but city governments do. In order to units all of Chicago's ethnic and racial communities, Washington might be tempted to deal with "the boys in city hall." The machine has been wounded by his victory, but Washington would be foolish to believe that loyalties to Byrne or the Daley family will just die away. Indeed, should Washington take this approach, the transition from Byrne and the traditional Irish power base to Washington's newly strong Black support may go smoothly for all concerned...
...rather than possessing consistencies, it is their consistencies that possess them; and they probably are less in control of themselves than more erratic and volatile spirits. To maintain an unshakable view Thus the face of contrary evidence is to maintain a fiction. Thus a consistency need not be specifically "foolish," as Emerson declared, to be diminishing. Any consistency opposed to experience is bound to be foolish in the long run, and to make a liar of its practitioner, however noble his intentions...
...sublime consistency, which, instead of delimiting the truth enhances it - the consistency of an Ella Fitzgerald, Fred Astaire, Alec Guinness or Isaac Stern. But then, life itself has been inconsistent in producing such consistent pleasures. And once in a while, a consistency comes forward that is both sublime and foolish, that of Don Quixote, for instance, who mounted his premise and stayed the course, eventually proving less mad than inspired...