lutherans-from-the-united-states

"I keep making mistakes, even the same ones over and over. I repeatedly attempt (and fail) to keep God and my fellow humans at arm’s length. I say no when I should say yes. I say yes when I should say no. I stumble into holy moments not realizing where I am until they are over. I love poorly, then accidentally say the right thing at the right moment without even realizing it, then forget what matters, then show tenderness ..."

"We should never be more loyal to an idea or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people...”"

"Maybe the Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore."

"I need a place to confess that I don't have everything figured out. Christianity is not a program for avoiding mistakes; it is a faith of the guilty. There is no "right" or perfect way to be. We learn from our mistakes; we extend grace to others and ourselves. In the same way a lover who loves your body allows you to have grace for it, so is grace the antithesis of rejection."

"Every human community will disappoint us, regardless of how well-intentioned or inclusive."

"Tell that to the BTK killer, I said. He was a churchgoer, raised two kids, married, and resisted the urge to kill for decades. He was a person, but he was a monster, too"

"Divisions are the mark of our time. (...) The truth is that our problem goes deeper than economics or politics. It is ideological. Divisive ideologies strive for the mastery of men's minds. Thousands follow their banners only because they see no convincing alternative. (...) There is a good road humankind must find and follow. It is a God-constructed road. It is the great high road of democracy's inspired ideology. It is valid for any nation. It is essential for world peace."

"Anti-­semitism? Bad, naturally. I suppose Hitler sees a Karl Marx in every Jew."

"Upon a foundation of changed lives permanent reconstruction is assured."

"Peace in the world can only spring from peace in the hearts of men."

"Either we sacrifice our national selfishness for the good of humanity, or we sacrifice the good of humanity to our national selfishness."

"Division is the work of human pride, hate, lust, fear, greed. Division is the trademark of materialism."

"Everybody wants to see the other fellow changed. Every nation wants to see the other nation changed. But everybody is waiting for the other fellow to begin. The Oxford Group is convinced that if you want an answer for the world today, the best place is to start with yourself. This is the first and fundamental need."

"Materialism is our great enemy. It is the chief "ism" we have to combat and conquer. It is the mother of all the "isms". Without the conquest of materialism, our nations will decay from within while we prepare to defend ourselves against attacks from without."

"I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defence against the anti-­Christ of Communism."

"When men change, nations change."

"Suppose everybody cared enough, everybody shared enough, wouldn't everybody have enough? There is enough in the world for everyone's needs but not enough for everyone's greed."

"And I have to say, really, talk about a very special guy that I made Secretary of the Interior. Does he know the interior — he knows it, he loves it. He loves seeing it and riding on it."

"I'm a geologist, and I don't consider myself a genius, but I'm a pretty smart guy."

"During the recent centennial of our National Park Service, I found myself at the ceremony at Yellowstone National Park, our first National Park established by Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. As I enjoyed the celebration under the famous Roosevelt arch, I could not help but notice the words etched in the stone at the top of the arch “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” And, on the side of the right pillar was a plaque with the words “Created by Act of Congress.” I thought “What a perfect symbol’ of what our land policy in a Nation as great as ours should be."

"Without question, our public lands are America’s treasure and are rich in diversity. I fully recognize and appreciate that there are lands that deserve special recognition and are better managed under the John Muir model of wilderness, where man is more of an observer than an active participant."

"Ryan Zinke is not, in fact, a geologist. He has never been a geologist. What he did is major in geology in college, which does not make you a geologist. All it does is qualify you to watch the movie San Andreas and whisper to your friend, "It wouldn't happen like that.""

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name."

"If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen-nothing else matters."

"The second liberal gripe against Carter is that he lost to Reagan. As the saying went, Carter was defeated by the three Ks — Khomeini, Kennedy and Koch. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Iranian revolution led to the hostage crisis that was a millstone round Carter’s neck. After 444 days in captivity, the US hostages were released a few minutes after Carter left office. It has not been proved that Reagan struck a back channel deal with Khomeini’s government to keep the hostages until after the 1980 election. But the evidence is very strong. Carter believes that William Casey, Reagan’s campaign manager, did strike a bargain. Such an unnatural Rolodex would also explain Reagan’s Iran-Contra shenanigans a few years later. Ted Kennedy’s primary challenge also damaged Carter. Though Kennedy infamously could not explain why he wanted to be president, Carter had his own theory: Kennedy saw it as his birthright. The gap between the rural Georgian farmer who grew up without shoes and the Boston aristocrat is a faultline that still hobbles the Democratic party. Biden is on Carter’s side of it. Ed Koch was New York’s Democratic mayor who thought Carter was biased against Israel. Carter’s Camp David deal neutralised Egypt — Israel’s most potent enemy — and thus did more for Israel’s security than any US president since. No good deed goes unpunished. Carter was the only Democratic president to get less than half of the Jewish vote. Paul Volcker’s last name does not start with a K. However, the then chair of the US Federal Reserve is probably the largest contributor to Carter’s defeat. With interest rates at 20 per cent, Carter stood little chance at the ballot box. It is worth noting that Carter picked Volcker in full knowledge of his anti-inflation credentials. On that, as so much else, Carter did the right thing but got no credit. The left hated him for it. The right pretended it was Reagan’s doing. Much the same can be said of how America won the cold war. The moral of Carter’s story is that virtue must be its own reward. History is a biased judge."

"The happy days of Bretton Woods, often viewed today with nostalgia, were a special case, workable because of a particular economic and political setting… the inherent contradictions in the system were too great. With the benefit of hindsight, it would seem that an erosion of the United States competitive position was implicit in the postwar arrangements."

"I start from the premise that the underlying pres­sures toward integration and interdependence are growing stronger, not weaker. We cannot reverse or stop the advancing technology that brings us fast and cheap communication and transportation, or the spread of knowledge."

"It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. [I]f the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with "free banking.""

"In the 1950s and 1960s, a substantial number of economists taking on a role of social philosopher defended a "little" inflation as a kind of social solvent, helping to reconcile competing political and economic pressures.… It was a game of mirrors, but it seemed acceptable for a while, more acceptable than imposing the degree of fiscal, monetary and other restraints necessary to deal with inflation."

"This is a time of testing — a testing not only of our capacity collectively to reach coherent and intelligent policies, but to stick with them."

"Fred Hirsch's last dicta: "A controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate objective for the 1980's"… The phrase captures what seems to me the prevailing attitudes and practices of most gov­ernments in this decade."

"Productivity growth in this country has actually been negative in a recent period. And, we have had higher oil prices; of course…. Under those conditions, the standard of living of the average American has declined."

"Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker essentially eliminated M1 as a target indicator. His successor, Alan Greenspan, eliminated M2. On the other hand, in the past year or two, Greenspan has said on various occasions that maybe we should reconsider using M2. The trouble is that all these measures of money cannot be relied on because the velocity of money changes. It is quite unstable."

"There does seem to me a latent danger— no part of the intention of present European leaders— implicit in the development [of the euro]. Regional monetary unity implies a greater degree of visible loss of autonomy for mem­ber countries; yet national econom ic problems will remain. The temptation could arise to solve some of these regional adjustment problems within Europe by direct subsidies to producers, by protection against the outside world, or by other means damaging to the trading opportunities of others."

"We live in a world in which individuals and busi­nessmen… they want to do so unencumbered by national boundaries. At the same time, modern democracies, at least as much as other forms of government, long for autonomy; they want to control their own destinies in ways responsive to the needs of an electorate often concerned less with na­tional than with local or sectorial interests. Yet, theory and experience indicate we can’t have it both ways, full integration and full autonomy."

"I've heard both the founding stories of Google and Yahoo, and for both those companies, the founders didn't even have to get into a car. They could literally go to the law office, the venture capitalists, the bank... on a bike. It's all that close together."

"I’m proud of what we achieved at Yahoo. That said, we had a quickly decaying legacy business. All we really managed to do was offset the declines."

"There are different phases of companies. When you’re in the tens of people, the idea itself either attracts people or it doesn’t. People are there because they think the problem you’re trying to solve is just that important."

"I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that's how you grow. When there's that moment of 'Wow, I'm not really sure I can do this,' and you push through those moments, that's when you have a breakthrough."

"I think that the big piece here is that it really allows us to partner. Yahoo! has always been a very friendly company."

"If you can find something that you're really passionate about, whether you're a man or a woman comes a lot less into play. Passion is a gender-neutralizing force."

"It was the height of the first boom, so it was 1999. It was a good year to be a graduate in computer science."

"I think I’ve always thought of culture as DNA. I don’t know a lot about genetics, but I understand some of it and I think that what you really want are the genes that are positive to hyper-express themselves in culture."

"I was at Google. And if you looked at Tumblr and Yahoo!, you know when you look at a map and you can see the way that South America and Africa used to fit together, I sort of joked that as we got to know Tumblr we were like we kind of felt like those continents, like our users were older, their users were younger."

"You can be good at technology and like fashion and art. You can be good at technology and be a jock. You can be good at technology and be a mom. You can do it your way, on your terms."

"I’ve tried to be gender-blind and believe tech is a gender-neutral zone but do think there has been gender-charged reporting. We all see the things that only plague women leaders, like articles that focus on their appearance, like Hillary Clinton sporting a new pantsuit. I think all women are aware of that, but I had hoped in 2015 and 2016 that I would see fewer articles like that. It’s a shame."

"It's really wonderful to work in an environment with a lot of smart people."

"David Karp is just incredibly special. I like to think that I’m good at empathy, but I will say that David Karp is just incredibly empathetic and really in tune with the community of people that he has, that are contributing and creating on Tumblr."

"It sure is boring to be around people who are in character all the time. I always find it's closer to mental illness than acting excellence."

"Stephen King writes a lot of things that are really charming and quirky, and that are more ironic than horror."