Starbucks has started to put philosophical quips on the outside of its cups. These are fun little sayings by different people, and this morning I got one that I particularly enjoyed:

Everywhere, unthinking mobs of "independent thinkers" wield tired cliches like cudgels, pummeling those who dare question "enlightened" dogma. If "violence never solved anything," cops wouldn't have guns and slaves may never have been freed. If it's better that 10 guilty men go free to spare one innocent, why not free 100 or 1,000,000? Cliches begin arguments, they don't settle them.
Jonah Goldberg, Editor-at-large of National Review Online.
Starbucks, The Way I See It # 22

While I agree that cliches don't help arguments, I'd have to say that cliches make arguments memorable. In this sound bite world, you're only going to get a few words of your argument heard. Unfortunately, a few words is too little to define anything of meaning.

I do love the term "mobs of independent thinkers", it's like seeing all the people trying to dress different by wearing clothes from the Gap.


posted Nov 7, 2005 | permanent link