[img]583|left|||no_popup[/img]• The greatest lesson in wisdom, intelligence, and class is the understanding that one doesn't corner the market on any of them.
• Efficient thought requires that we first see life as it is, and only then, as we would have it.
• Intelligence rises to accommodate one's level of curiosity.
• Some of the greatest minds I've ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores.
• Some of the weakest minds I’ve ever known roamed the halls of academia, giving the pursuit of credentials priority over the pursuit of knowledge.
• Before you point your finger at another, you should smell it first.
• The great institutions of learning can only certify that one was present in an environment where knowledge was shared. No institution can confer intelligence, character or common sense. It cannot certify the knowledge shared was absorbed.
*Man's innate thirst for knowledge will someday overwhelm his passionate lust for stupidity.
• Never give anyone else's ability to think priority over your own.
• State's rights: We demand our Constitutional right to lynch whomever we wish.
• Libertarian: I demand my individual right to abridge the rights of whomever I please.
• Tea Party: Liberals are un-American. They are engaged in a socialist plot to protect my family.
• Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think and act like me. It is just that God does.
• We accept that the Bible is the word of God because the Bible says it is. Go figure.
• Question: When we are asked to “have faith,” are we being asked to have faith in God or faith in what man tells us about God?
• Question: Can one believe in God yet have no faith in man?
• Question: If we can only be “saved” through Christ, did God condemn everyone born in non-Christian nations before birth?
• An efficient thinker gives truth priority over ideology while ideologues give ideology priority over truth.
• Question: If God knows all, and he knows before Billy is born that Billy is going to hell, can Billy do anything in life to make God wrong?
• Every experience is a source of knowledge. Having to endure adversity makes one more rather than less.
• One should take great pride in being the product of adversity because your mere survival provides you with unassailable credentials.
• Unfortunately, man is most generously rewarded for his collusion in the conspiracy against mankind.
• God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. Fish, though, have sense enough to adhere to their nature.
• If one can’t find happiness in poverty, wealth will prove to be an ineffective mentor.
• It is always gratifying to win a debate, but losing one is of much more value.
• We’re Black and we’re proud, right up until we escape.
• Question: Why is it that we allow our children to watch murder and mayhem all day long, but if a woman’s breast is revealed we feel women have been irretrievably damaged?
• I love you madly, until you succeed.
• Black people are the product of the same racist environment as white people. Thus, we're just as racist toward other Blacks as any hillbilly.
• Smiley and West: 21st century pretexts for 19th century thinking.
• It is always a delight to take so credit for what many others have done.
• You know you are aging when you've got the hots for the lady in the Depends commercial.
• An epiphany: The triumph of common sense over wishful thinking.
• A personal epiphany: Never publish without running spellcheck.
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet and musician, born in Los Angeles. A columnist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, the Black Star News, a staff writer for Veterans Today, he is a contributing writer to Your Black World, the Huffington Post, ePluribus Media and other online sites and publications. He also is the author of “A Message From the Hood.”
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree.blogspot.com or Ewattree@Gmail.com
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.
