A retired college teacher who has turned to poetry in his old age.
Your boasts may get you claps and clicks among your faithful fans, but out among the decent folk you may not find much love—
By William Alfred3 months ago in Poets
If you are going to accuse others of ignorance, you might want to try being more careful yourself— at least so you don’t clearly indict yourself
There is the truth, and there is bullshit. We have to call out the bullshit whenever and wherever someone tries to sling it.
Free speech, blah, blah, blah. It’s become a tedious slogan. It usually only means, “I don’t want to listen to anything I don’t want
If you are really proud of your own virtue, you don’t need to get applause and approval because virtue—if you really have it—
When your fear of others gets so fierce that you believe you can threaten them without restraint or reasonable suspicion,
By William Alfred4 months ago in Poets
If you need adulation and applause, be careful where you turn to get your fix. A vapid, empty-headed audience responds resoundingly to kindred spirits.
We show our better angels when we are pressed or we show our worse. The test that tells who we are comes when we are called to give to others
When they want their way but don’t want to explain themselves, they try to appeal to order and shout down resisters. But fear and bluster can only go so far
Politicians used to shy away from making unfounded predictions and foolish promises that they could never hope to live down when
Cruelty is cruel even to oneself. The sort of person who harms another cannot love himself, but only acts as though others do not exist.
Socrates used to infuriate certain people who couldn’t stand to discover under questioning that they didn’t have sufficient reason to think
