quotes about compromise


jts

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Ayn Rand:

"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit."

Ayn Rand was not the first person to say something like that.

Dr. Herbert Shelton:

"Truth and error cannot compromise without truth losing and taking all the loss and error receiving all the gain."

Dr. Nichols:

"Truth is always the loser, and fallacy always the gainer by compromises."

Dr. Herbert Shelton:

"Truth is never in either extreme, but always halfway between the two extremes, is the popular but false doctrine. They who hold to it are continually trying to reconcile Yes and No. Ifs and buts and excepts are their delights. They have such great faith in "the judicious mean" that they would scarcely believe an oracle, if it uttered a full-length principle. Were you to inquire of them whether the earth turns on its axis from East to West, or from West to East, you might almost expect the reply--"a little of both," or "not exactly either." It is doubtful whether they would assent to the axiom that the whole is greater than its parts without making some qualifications. They have a passion for compromises. To meet their taste, Truth must always be spiced with a little Error. They cannot conceive of a pure, definite, entire and unlimited law. These are the people who, in discussions such as the present one, are always petitioning for limitations--always wishing to abate, modify and moderate--ever protesting against doctrines being pursued to their ultimate consequences."

Dr. Herbert Shelton:

"All men and all philosophies find their level; for after their kind, things tend to flock together. Ours is an age of compromise, of half measures. We choose the "lesser of two evils" instead of seeking for radical solutions of the problems that confront us. We seek reforms instead of revolutions. We deride and despise the visionary and exalt the practical man. He rules our lives. The poverty of present-day vision is appalling. "

Some quotes that don't have the word "compromise" but are somewhat related to the subject of compromise:

Dr. Herbert Shelton:

"Two systems, antagonistic to each other, cannot both be based on correct principles."

Dr. Herbert Shelton:

"The true radical applies his axe to the root of the great tree of evil; he is a revolutionist, not a reformer. He is a true conservative, not in the sense that he seeks to preserve outmoded institutions and special privileges, but in the sense that he seeks to preserve the integrity of life itself. The radical is the man who would abolish the slave system; the reformer is the man who would eliminate some of its worst features to the end that slavery may be made more bearable. The true radical in the field of health-disease is the man who would abolish the false systems of cure and substitute for them a system of mind-body care based on the laws of life; the medical reformer would abolish the worst evils of the older systems and make them less deadly. He would abandon some of the more destructive drugs, lessen the size of the dose of others, give the drug less often, and otherwise make the evil more tolerable. These reformers seek merely to make old-school medicine feel more comfortable than it now feels."

Dr. Herbert Shelton:

"It is fundamentally false and historically unsupported to assume that any number of petty reforms of an existing institution can result in its transmutation into something radically different. The fact is that the more an institution reforms the more it remains the same. Reforms do not merely spread out a revolution over a longer period of time; they forestall the revolution and preserve the thing that it is sought to get rid of. Revolution is not reform concentrated in a shorter time; rather, it is a basic or radical change that obliterates the old and ushers in the new."

Here is where I got all these quotes, except the one from Ayn Rand:

http://jtstory.onlin...nh_lexicon.html

There are many more.

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Jerry expects us to acquire information about Dr. Shelton by osmosis...

Herbert Macgolfin Shelton (6 October 1895–1 January 1985)[1] was an American alternative medicine advocate, author, pacifist, vegetarian, unlicensed doctor, and supporter of raw foodism and fasting. Shelton was nominated by the American Vegetarian Party to run as its candidate for President of the United States in 1956. He saw himself as the champion of original Natural hygiene ideas from the 1830s.

http://en.wikipedia....bert_M._Shelton

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Jerry expects us to acquire information about Dr. Shelton by osmosis...

No. I expect one of the following:

1. You are not interested.

2. If you are interested, you will look him up.

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Herbert Macgolfin Shelton (6 October 1895–1 January 1985)[1] was an American alternative medicine advocate, author, pacifist, vegetarian, unlicensed doctor, and supporter of raw foodism and fasting. Shelton was nominated by the American Vegetarian Party to run as its candidate for President of the United States in 1956. He saw himself as the champion of original Natural hygiene ideas from the 1830s.

http://en.wikipedia....bert_M._Shelton

Wiki is not always a reliable source of information. For example Shelton was not into alternative medicine. For proof, read his chapter on medicine and hygiene contrasted where he bashes all medicine, not just orthodox.

As for being an unlicensed doctor, he did not practise medicine and denied practising medicine and was opposed to medicine. So what would he want with a license to practise medicine?

He was a poor excuse for a vegetarian considering that he ate clabbered milk and he allowed his patients cottage cheese. He was a poor excuse for a raw fooder considering that he allowed his patients cooked potatoes.

As for "original Natural Hygiene ideas from the 1830s", that is not quite correct. Hygiene, the science of health, goes back thousands of years, at least as far back as the ancient Greeks. The ancient Greek athletes and physicians had some ideas about diet and exercise, at least according to Plato. Shelton, more than any other one person, "fanned the dying embers to fierce flame".

Wiki goes on and mentions his health failing. Most people will see Shelton's personal health failing as proof that his health ideas were no good. That is an unthinking knee-jerk reaction expected from people who disagree with his ideas. In an interview, Shelton attributed his personal health failing to his system of ideas working only too well. He did not practise what he preached. He worked 100+ hours per week, never took vacations, and lived an extremely stressful life with lawsuits and stuff. Also I read somewhere that in his early life his health was frail, which seems almost typical of NH doctors. It is perhaps remarkable that he did live to the age of 89. To better judge Shelton's ideas, look at people who practised them better than Shelton did and look at the spectacular recoveries by his patients.

Another reason for Shelton's health failing perhaps was deficiency of long-chain omega-3. Shelton in his day could not have had modern knowledge of nutrition and in his writings he only touched on nutrition and didn't go into a lot of detail about nutrition. He seemed to think that if you eat a reasonable variety of half ass decent foods and digest them and assimilate the nutrients, you will get the nutrients you need. That is a mistake. With modern knowledge of nutrition, this mistake can be avoided.

This is what Dr. Fuhrman says about Shelton's health failing:

http://www.drfuhrman...Parkinsons.aspx

Shelton did not see himself as a person who knew everything about health. Here is another quote from Shelton.

We have previously pointed out that a series of individuals, perhaps even of ages, are required for the full development and culmination of a great thought. Each individual and each age provides further light and truth, while man labors through indefinite time for the perfection of a science. Each event is the term of a series; the present is the summation of the past, which is still to be added to in the future. It was inescapable that at its origin (or rather, its revival) in the last century, Hygiene should have had many imperfections. It is certainly true that at its present stage of evolution it shall have imperfections still.

Objectivists despise Shelton for obvious reasons.

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Jerry:

You should put this information into Wiki ...

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Jerry:

You should put this information into Wiki ...

I had some experience putting information on wiki. They undid everything I did and threatened to ban me from wiki.

Jerry:

Take this as constructive criticism. It would be wise for you to refrain from subjective value laden syntax. It is a skill that will serve you well and not give the monitors reasons to reject your statements.

It is like writing a fact pattern in a legal brief, or motion, and it does take a lot of self control.

Adam

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I wanna get back to the first quote in the first message in this thread.

Ayn Rand:

"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit."

Take the first sentence:

"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win."

Does that mean we should avoid compromise between food and poison? I doubt that would work. I didn't actually see or do a statistical study on this but I suspect that if you made a graph of foods with one dimension being nutrients and the other dimension being poisons, you would find some correlation.

Spinach has oxalic acid, which is a negative, but I eat spinach anyway. Fish has lots of crap in it but it is seems to be the best way to get certain nutrients that I need, so I eat fish. The veggies with the highest content of minerals and flavonoids seem to also have the highest content of mild poisons, and I eat them. Brazil nuts are extremely high in radium, a poison; also in selenium, a nutrient. I don't give a damn about the radium.

I make a compromise between nutrients and poisons. Given a choice between both or neither I choose both as necessary. I figure if I get the nutrients and the flavonoids, I probably can survive the mild poisons.

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Where is the compromise between arsenic and apples?

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Where is the compromise between arsenic and apples?

That is a compromise I can avoid.

That is not the point, as I have always understood her quote it is not about avoidance. Additionally, what you quoted has to be read in the context of the paragraph it is in....

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube . . .

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Where is the compromise between arsenic and apples?

That is a compromise I can avoid.

That is not the point, as I have always understood her quote it is not about avoidance. Additionally, what you quoted has to be read in the context of the paragraph it is in....

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube . . .

How would you apply that to spinach and salmon and Brazil nuts?

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Where is the compromise between arsenic and apples?

That is a compromise I can avoid.

That is not the point, as I have always understood her quote it is not about avoidance. Additionally, what you quoted has to be read in the context of the paragraph it is in....

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube . . .

How would you apply that to spinach and salmon and Brazil nuts?

Jerry:

That's the point. Ayn's quote does not apply to some artificial "compromise" between spinach, salmon and Brazil nuts. The structural argument in Ayn's quote bears no relation to the decisions you are discussing in choosing between those three (3) foods.

Adam

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Where is the compromise between arsenic and apples?

That is a compromise I can avoid.

That is not the point, as I have always understood her quote it is not about avoidance. Additionally, what you quoted has to be read in the context of the paragraph it is in....

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube . . .

How would you apply that to spinach and salmon and Brazil nuts?

Jerry:

That's the point. Ayn's quote does not apply to some artificial "compromise" between spinach, salmon and Brazil nuts. The structural argument in Ayn's quote bears no relation to the decisions you are discussing in choosing between those three (3) foods.

Adam

You didn't read what I wrote about those foods. I did not mean a choice between 3 foods. I meant each food is itself a compromise between food and a mild poison. Spinach is a compromise between food and a mild poison (oxalic acid). Salmon is a compromise between food and poison. Brazil nuts are a compromise between food and poison (radium).

Ayn Rand says in any compromise between food and poison (my examples qualify), it is only death that can win. But I eat these compromises (each of these foods is a compromise) for my health. If I go to extremes avoiding even mild poisons, then I don't get enough of the nutrients I need. That is why I'm confused by Ayn Rand's example with food and poison. Maybe that was not the best example to make her point. In an ideal world I suppose there would be such a thing as high quality nutrition without poisons.

Ayn Rand is talking about principles, not concretes. In philosophy one should not accept a compromise between capitalism and socialism. In real life the best candidate to vote for probably has a mixture of capitalist and socialist premises. One should not make compromises in principles but compromises might be unavoidable in concrete decisions.

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He was a poor excuse for a vegetarian considering that he ate clabbered milk and he allowed his patients cottage cheese.

Why does this make him "a poor excuse for a vegetarian? "Vegetarian" does not mean one has to be a vegan who eats no animal products at all.

Vegetariansim has quite a few varieties, like e. g. ovo-lacto or lacto.

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Does that mean we should avoid compromise between food and poison? I doubt that would work. I didn't actually see or do a statistical study on this but I suspect that if you made a graph of foods with one dimension being nutrients and the other dimension being poisons, you would find some correlation.

Spinach has oxalic acid, which is a negative, but I eat spinach anyway. Fish has lots of crap in it but it is seems to be the best way to get certain nutrients that I need, so I eat fish. The veggies with the highest content of minerals and flavonoids seem to also have the highest content of mild poisons, and I eat them. Brazil nuts are extremely high in radium, a poison; also in selenium, a nutrient. I don't give a damn about the radium.

I make a compromise between nutrients and poisons. Given a choice between both or neither I choose both as necessary. I figure if I get the nutrients and the flavonoids, I probably can survive the mild poisons.

You didn't read what I wrote about those foods. I did not mean a choice between 3 foods. I meant each food is itself a compromise between food and a mild poison. Spinach is a compromise between food and a mild poison (oxalic acid). Salmon is a compromise between food and poison. Brazil nuts are a compromise between food and poison (radium).

Jerry:

I did read what you wrote about "those foods." Your assumption that I did not read what you wrote is, frankly, wrong.

Nevertheless, since Ayn was, through Galt, addressing macro moral issues, your minimalistic differentials that you posited with, for example, spinach and oxalic acid, are not applicable to the quote.

As we can understand from the intention of her premise, the illustration was not about the minor differences in food and a toxin. Her illustration in her argument was clearly meant to be stark. There is no compromise between food and poison. Food enhances life, poison ends life.

By analogical extension, premises which enhance the human mind's logical ability to perceive reality and chose to act in a rational fashion will live. However, humans who accept poisonous anti-life premises which block their ability to be conscious and make life affirming choices will die.

Your minimalistic examples, while interesting, have nothing to do with the stark choices projected in Ayn's quote you posted.

Adam

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Ayn Rand says in any compromise between food and poison (my examples qualify), it is only death that can win. But I eat these compromises (each of these foods is a compromise) for my health. If I go to extremes avoiding even mild poisons, then I don't get enough of the nutrients I need. That is why I'm confused by Ayn Rand's example with food and poison. Maybe that was not the best example to make her point. In an ideal world I suppose there would be such a thing as high quality nutrition without poisons.

Ayn Rand is talking about principles, not concretes. In philosophy one should not accept a compromise between capitalism and socialism. In real life the best candidate to vote for probably has a mixture of capitalist and socialist premises. One should not make compromises in principles but compromises might be unavoidable in concrete decisions.

"The dose makes the poison". (Paracelsus) .

Imo this biological principle can be extended to philosophical issues as well.

This makes it unnecessary to construct an 'either-or' opposition where compromise automatically gets the thumbs down; instead the focus can be directed on what kind of compromise it is.

Also bear in mind that Rand used her compromise example to polarize right versus wrong.

Rand: "There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil." (end quote)

"Right" versus "wrong" are epistemological categories, but what is the function of the term 'evil' here?

This is one of the frequent instances where Rand suddenly switches from epistemology to morality, the issue being no longer 'wrong' versus 'right', but 'morally wrong' versus 'morally right'.

Truth morphs into 'moral truth' (= the moral sytem worked out in her philosophy).

Rand: "The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway."

The "man in the middle" is accused of pretending that "no values exist".

But the "man in the midle" might for example be a skeptic who does not advocate a specific philosophy as whole.

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Ayn Rand says in any compromise between food and poison (my examples qualify), it is only death that can win. But I eat these compromises (each of these foods is a compromise) for my health. If I go to extremes avoiding even mild poisons, then I don't get enough of the nutrients I need. That is why I'm confused by Ayn Rand's example with food and poison. Maybe that was not the best example to make her point. In an ideal world I suppose there would be such a thing as high quality nutrition without poisons.

Ayn Rand is talking about principles, not concretes. In philosophy one should not accept a compromise between capitalism and socialism. In real life the best candidate to vote for probably has a mixture of capitalist and socialist premises. One should not make compromises in principles but compromises might be unavoidable in concrete decisions.

"The dose makes the poison". (Paracelsus) .

Imo this biological principle can be extended to philosophical issues as well.

Thus there is no necessity to construct an 'either-or' opposition where compromise automatically gets the thumbs down, but and shifts the focus instead on what kind of compromise it is.

So the compromise on rape is...?

The first inch?

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So the compromise on rape is...?

Coercion is no compromise.

Ahh, so when the state coerces your child into a state classroom because home schooling has been outlawed, like in Germany, all upstanding righteous folks should stand up and refuse to compromise to coercion...correct?

I have more examples Angela...taxation will be next.

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Ahh, so when the state coerces your child into a state classroom because home schooling has been outlawed, like in Germany, all upstanding righteous folks should stand up and refuse to compromise to coercion...correct?

I have more examples Angela...taxation will be next.

All laws are coercive, so to speak. But in a democratic society, one is free to protest against laws. In several cases, laws have been changed as result of protests, especially if the time was ripe for change.

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