Maxim 1: Poverty can break a spirit, and so can cruelty, but both are rude teachers that can teach you how to love.
Maxim 2: The deepest despair of Schizophrenia, is not seeing the world as it is, but as you think it is, which is usually exactly how it ought not.
Maxim 3: The truth is found by many, while the falsehood is found by only one, and then spread like slander.
Maxim 4: Forgiveness is not an answer to the man you hate’s trouble, but your own.
Maxim 5: If you have enemies, love them.
Maxim 6: Remember, there are forces outside of a man’s control, and bitterness can swallow you up.
Maxim 7: The deepest pain is knowing few truly do love you, and you are simply a token of another man’s fortune.
Maxim 8: Frustration is doubt's mask.
Maxim 9: War is most often fought because of resources, but for some it's fought because of boredom.
Maxim 10: Genocide is not the fault of religion, but opinion.
Maxim 11: A world where I can disagree with someone, and both of us have a right to say it, is safe.
Maxim 12: A world where opinion is censored, is unsafe.
Maxim 13: There's a beauty to Frank Baum's or Emily Dickenson's agnosticism. Just like there's a beauty to Paul's and Jesus' Christianity.
Maxim 14: The truth is ethics are beautiful, and the staunch Christian is as odious to me as the staunch atheist for their lack of them.
Maxim 15: What it means by Christ resurrecting, is I have a better world awaiting, and a good role model to follow getting there, and no need to repay a karmic debt.
Maxim 16: The word love has been corrupted, so no one knows what it really is. That's why the Gospel's Morals are so important to me, because they retain what I always knew about it.
Maxim 17: All the internet needs to be is Skillshare, Google Books, Databases and an Advanced Form of Wikipedia. That's it.
Maxim 18: Wikipedia has amassed many accounts of book burnings: I do not want to burn books, only protect people from those who would burn books. That's why the Internet needs to be made into a scholarly resource, and not a communications tool.
Maxim 19: The intelligent are always novel, but the sage sees what the unintelligent see also, but expresses it the right way.
Maxim 20: I don't like Apologetics. Except where it proves there is right and wrong.
Maxim 21: I’d rather be crazy than a jerk.
Maxim 22: Writers are misfits. And that's how we know what this world is really like.
Maxim 23: If you're a healthy, functioning adult, don't become a writer. Leave some crumbs for our sorry lot, so we can let you also know how not to hurt us.
Maxim 24: I think religion is a different kind of logic. It's how it ought trying to overcome how it is, within the religious person's soul.
Maxim 25: Nothing's obsolete. If we think that, we'll lose so much knowledge. That's why Rome collapsed. Decadence, and thinking new ways were better, which led to people forgetting how to maintain roads and their public utilities. You have to accumulate knowledge. That same thing is why there's so much poverty, is generations of skills have been forgotten through the modernization of work, and also the obsolescence of trades.
Maxim 26: I’d rather have a small portion now, than have an immortal name and suffer.
Maxim 27: Anything you can imagine, is fit for poetry.
Maxim 28: There is no bullet proof argument. Some people love evil, and hate peace.
Maxim 29: My work is subtle. Behind the scenes. Going on the front lines of the combat. Not a general, but a grunt. But we have the best chances of winning the medal of honor.
Maxim 30: I’d take a stupid yet wholesome man, to a shrewd and dishonest one.
Maxim 31: Great art comes from reality. Bad art comes from imitating others.
Maxim 32: To be a sage, one must understand that not all great events are calculated and well planned, or filled with grand motives. Sometimes, they occur for simple reasons such as offense, jealousy or boredom.
Maxim 33: Our World Leaders act like Barbarians. That is why. It is not a Dark Lord, but a petulant ruler.
Maxim 34: Fame sucks.
Maxim 35: Ethics remain the same. People change overtime, but our presiding psychological nature doesn't. We have innate sense of justice, until we make choices that remove it from us.
Maxim 36: Prejudice someone's mind to a notion, and you can make them pass over all truth.
Maxim 37: Simple and stupid has always been my achilles heel.
Maxim 38: Jesus was a moral sage. But, that's also not the reason I believe in Him. It's that, plus what He did for our redemption.
Maxim 39: Evangelicals want the cross without the morals, and Progressives want the morals without the cross. A true faith is love for God's morals, and an embracing of the cross.
Maxim 40: There's two sections of each Pauline Epistle. The Cross and what God expects now that we're saved.
Maxim 41: 'We hold these truths to be self evident.' Geometry is self evident, but not everyone can understand it.
Maxim 42: The interesting thing about the Exodus, is God drove Israel to a place where there was no way, and then delivered them.
Maxim 43: A good person used to tell me, "Two wrongs don't make a right." I'd say, "Well three left turns do." But growing older, I know she was right.
Maxim 44: Postmodernists are those people who you see a square sitting on the table, and you say, "I see a square," and they say "Do you really?" And then everyone thinks some profound statement was just made.
Maxim 45: The Bible is the only book, not wrought by my own ten fingers, that I actually enjoy reading.
Maxim 46: Most things are superficial.
Maxim 47: Hardly anyone is satisfied with the company they keep.
Maxim 48: Reading the Great Gatsby for the Fourth Time, I am no longer enamored by the tone, but by Gatsby, how we gain a false first impression, and finally the man gets revealed for who he truly is.
Maxim 49: The reason I'm Christian, is the reason atheists are atheists. That's why both groups talk past one another.
Maxim 50: I saw a peer with her teenage daughter, and thought the daughter looked more grown up.
Maxim 51: Only by asking the right questions, can you get the right answers.
Maxim 52: I shift left when the right's in power, and right when the left's in power. As all good journalism should.
Maxim 53: You are what you hate.
Maxim 54: If you did just 1% of your work, you’d have 199% of it to do the next day.
Maxim 55: To accumulate all the wrong you've done over a day, and all the omissions of work, you'd accumulate such a debt only Christ could repay.
Maxim 56: Give people some time, they'll turn anything vulgar.
Maxim 57: The LORD's Prayer has everything we need. To think about it, going above that is more than what we need. Any less, we could lose ourselves.
Maxim 58: Know who the heroes are, or you'll end up supporting the villains.
Maxim 59: I’d rather have a little friction with friends and family, than be all alone.
Maxim 60: Anyone who critiques other's writings feels insecure about their own. You have to turn that off. Nobody likes that. And you could potentially ruin a great author that way.
Maxim 61: If you want to write a great novel, you have to have no doubts about it, and write from the heart. You remove that energy, then the novel sucks and becomes a dime piece meant to sell copies and not much more.
Maxim 62: Accusations are projections of yourself, not the person across from you.
Maxim 63: [M]oral arguments always fail to persuade, until their consequences are fully seen[.]
Maxim 64: What people want to hear always beats what they need to hear.
Maxim 65: Some people just say things, with no context. It's an important lesson to learn, and avoid debates.
Maxim 66: The only philosophy too dangerous to hear, is the one that bans them.
Maxim 67: If you debate, debate to learn, not to convince the other person.
Maxim 68: Core to Christian teaching is Christ... without whom we'd know nothing. Filter all you hear through Him, including both Testaments.
Maxim 69: The best poetry is budded through water and sunshine, not fire and drought.
Maxim 70: Democrat evil gets celebrated, and Republican evil doesn't. So, I knew good or bad, Trump was the safer candidate.
Maxim 71: Almost all the most important things, aren't spelled out in a single Bible verse, [but] when how they are, people still can't wrap their heads around it.
Maxim 72: To rightly divide truth, is to think like calculus... to predict the pattern to its logical end.
Maxim 73: [T]he wise man never says he’s wise. {} He lets others come to that conclusion themselves. Just like the good man never says he’s good. He lets others come to that conclusion themselves.
Maxim 74: All religions are not a road to God... all save three are a road to hell. Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant are the only canonical Christians, prophesied in scripture: Ephraim, Judah and Israel. And many of them also have false teachings.
Maxim 75: There is no “They”. It’s “We”.
Maxim 76: Power has little to do with it, since we elect it. The power is just our own reflection.
Maxim 77: If you must have a dark persona, make it like Johnny Cash or Jerry Garcia. Not Slipknot or Tekashi69.
Maxim 78: My friend asked me, "What do you remember from martial arts?" I jokingly replied, "I'm a master at all the techniques of a white belt. Nothing more."
Maxim 79: Never go back over another man's work, especially not a child's. They must learn how to do it the right way, and that through their own error; not through your picking up after them.
Maxim 80: Jesus hid His true meaning in metaphors, so only the faithful could understand it.
Maxim 81: Be not a man possessed by a singular idea, but rather by listening, gain knowledge of them all.
Maxim 82: The war fought over ideals, is a mask for economics. Don't ever be fooled.
Maxim 83: Shared beliefs are a kind of currency. As it says, "I share the same scent, therefore I can be trusted."
Maxim 84: You are predestined because God foreknew your love and kindness.
Maxim 85: You’ll have more success as Marcel Duchamp in this world, than Leonardo or Michelangelo.
Maxim 86: Don't spoil every illusion. The feeling it inspires is more precious than the truth.
Maxim 87: Women do far worse when in power. Men cause war, women corrupt peace.
Maxim 88: [W]hen science starts to undermine science, and tested moral knowledge, then it stops being trusted.
Maxim 89: The fall of America is exactly like the fall of the Manchu Dynasty.
Maxim 90: The ethics of Confucius and Christ will create a better world; dismantling them has created a worse world.
Maxim 91: Golden Ages, where the vast majority of people---from the poor to the rich---are happy, are always a little misogynistic, and also very homophobic.
Maxim 92: When people in power have the ability to press lawsuits against people who have none, especially for criticizing them, then we've lost our Democracies.
Maxim 93: I’d take a salary over my dreams, but my dreams were pursued so I wouldn’t have to go into debt, just to obtain a salary.
Maxim 94: Teachers have needed part time employment for the summer for ages. It's just the competitiveness for low hanging fruit, that's what's new.
Maxim 95: If work evolves too quickly, so that nobody understands it, save for a few years' worth of time, then we need to regress our progress to where people could work, and stay consistent.
Maxim 96: People perform at consistent habits, and not ever changing occupations.
Maxim 97: You take one course in life, and you follow it. You don't try to do thirty different things.
Maxim 98: You don't need bad, to know good. But, you certainly need good, to know bad.
Maxim 99: Someone who knows only bad, and never sees good, doesn't even know how to comprehend the good.
Maxim 100: Everyone doesn't need to be a philosopher. But artists do, so our art enriches those who aren't.
Maxim 101: Being aware of what you don’t know, and asking the right questions, leads to sound knowledge.
Maxim 102: What is interesting, is the parabola x^4 is larger than x^32, but x^32 is actually larger, as its slope changes slower, due to the fact that it meets a threshold of more area underneath the curve.
Maxim 103: Somewhere along the line, people got stupid, forgot everything, and then put it all back together the wrong way.
Maxim 104: The wisdom of the Irish, the wisdom of the Egyptian, the wisdom of the Viking and Chinese and Native American, the wisdom of the Jew... it all speaks in one accord.
Maxim 105: Men muse upon the sage's wisdom, but rarely follow it.
Maxim 106: Just about the only wise man in history, who wasn’t a bit stupid, actually, is Jesus Christ. But, you saw what they did to Him.
Maxim 107: [T]he Christian hates sin. He isn’t just afraid of hell, but hates his wrongdoing within himself.
Maxim 108: A conservative's evil is borne from a respect of conscience, so it becomes more odious than a liberal's, which is the complete rejection of it.
Maxim 109: I read a little bit every day. Some days I don't. Some weeks I don't.
Maxim 110: Myths are not lies, or half truths... they are ancient cultures' education.
Maxim 111: You would learn there are not 75 languages, as an Irishman, which may have shocked you, but you also learned a lot more than you would have without your myths.
Maxim 112: The child is bequeathed a mythology of Nursery Rhymes, Tall Tales and Happy Endings. It is good for them to have, so they can conquer the deep darkness they will encounter in life.
Maxim 113: The internet should only be a tool for learning. Anything beyond that it fails.
Maxim 114: As a child you lick all the icing. As an adult, you like the cake.
Maxim 115: Truth is found by multiple different people, across multiple different times.
Maxim 116: Nat King Cole romanticized the Mona Lisa, while our modern pedant scorns it.
Maxim 117: Gratitude is what's lacking these days.
Maxim 118: If everyone’s a fly, and there’s only a few bees left, then all there is is… well you get the picture.
Maxim 119: I often wonder if I'm the butt of a cruel joke, where everyone knows there's great art being made right now, and great movies... but then I remember Ayn Rand's Romantic Manifesto, and understand the decadent intelligentsia is now culturing the tastes of the public.
Maxim 120: Don’t go out looking for people to help. Help the people right there in front of you.
Maxim 121: If you ask for a Serpent, God may bring a Fish—but still, don’t tempt God by asking for serpents.
Maxim 122: If all were prey, there'd be no war. If all were predators, there'd be great conflict in perpetuity.
Maxim 123: You got to have ears that aren't too heavy.
Maxim 124: One person cannot outhink 1000.
Maxim 125: I am never going to be a superior man because I must first get it all wrong and babble, before I know anything.
Maxim 126: [W]ise men all have great flaws you can find. That’s why I worship Christ, is He had none.
Maxim 127: The Syrophoenician dog was not called so because Jesus was racist: She was called so because Jewish Culture was, and now the Gentiles were to be grafted in due to the Jews' sin.
Maxim 128: I don't think to understand why God allows suffering, for I don't know. I only know that there would be more suffering without Him.
Maxim 129: You see in Christ, the meekness of our God, that coming down to Earth, He suffered like us. Such a strange story.
Maxim 130: I think God gave us laws to follow, and intervened in a few points of history to set the scales back to good.
Maxim 131: The interesting thing about Christ, is that He did nothing but good deeds, and was crucified for it. Meaning, when millions of children starve to death in wars and famines, you often have to wonder if it's man made, and they are just killing God.
Maxim 132: A stillborn is a sad thing, as is a child lost to grievous misfortune. We cry out, "Why did God allow this," and my only answer is "This world's not our true home."
Maxim 133: [H]umans have an inborn cruelty, that if not expressed toward the right objects, turns toward each other, and often gets innocent people hurt.
Maxim 134: Hosea speaks to the salvation of the Gentiles... thus, the Syrophoenician Dog was a fulfillment of prophecy, that now, salvation was extended even to her sorry lot.
Maxim 135: Like a Postmodernist, we use Christ---His Law and Example---as our lens, almost like corrective vision for near blindness; so use Him to instruct us on all of man's teachings.
Maxim 136: Perceive what is real, and then put it concisely.
Maxim 137: Some of the most profound theories were proven by the most curious minds.
Maxim 138: People today know how to add, subtract and multiply, but are very bad at division.
Maxim 139: Sin borne in a society makes each new generation's goal worse than the one preceding it.
Maxim 140: There’s an end to knowledge and wisdom.
Maxim 141: [If Y]ou do zigzags in all directions you don’t get as far as a straight line.
Maxim 142: Good artists borrow, they don’t steal.
Maxim 143: The problem with modern grammar, is it cuts out necessary information, and doesn't know how to tell the complete truth.
Maxim 144: I wrote sermons, in the form of fiction, essays and poetry, not scripture.
Maxim 145: There needs to be a little bit of miracle for there to be what's real. But not too much.
Maxim 146: I sometimes wonder if Atheists choose the worst parts of the faith to pick apart, when those same behaviors they're caught doing too. And they don't only do them, but make it much worse.
Maxim 147: I'm a Mainline, conservative Protestant with a classical education. It's just not my religion [that atheists critique], but if you read the real words of real Christians put to death in the Inquisition too, you'll start to see it. I'm somewhere between Michelangelo and a Mennonite.
Maxim 148: Atheists presume that God must be placated, but it's actually the case that God's Law is inherently better for us, and that is why He must judge.
Maxim 149: Spinoza, and his life's story, draws me closer to Christ, not further away from Him. I see, ironically, the sad necessity for God, and not a reason to stop believing in Him. And it's not to Spinoza's shame, but to the church.
Maxim 150: If asked why did I believe in God, the answer is He is good.
Maxim 151: I just don't think people do what's good without threat of punishment or hope of reward.
Maxim 152: Truth is multidimensional, not linear.
Maxim 153: God must exist, for the state's punishment and reward causes more malady, and more unconscionable behavior, not less.
Maxim 154: Truth must subsist on divine laws, so men follow them through course of conscience and not by threat of the State's withdrawal or bestowal of rewards and punishments.
Maxim 155: I mean me personally, I see philosophy right now reduced to arguing about square pegs and round holes. It doesn't really go beyond that. And the sad thing square pegs and round holes are losing.
Maxim 156: Law shapes people's thought processes.
Maxim 157: We just have to accept humans aren't perfect and do get it wrong sometimes.
Maxim 158: If you want to lose your faith, or learn Christianity's great distractions, go to Seminary.
Maxim 159: As a youth I felt love, but did not love. Now I feel cold sorrow, but do love.
Maxim 160: [A] wise man is a bit of a fool.
Maxim 161: A great mind coupled with great faith brought all our great discoveries.
Maxim 162: Too many of us have our ears to the Bible, and not to our fellow man.
Maxim 163: I think there's some truth to Conspiracy Theories. Corporations want to make more money, communists want to make communism, and a lot of people with a lot of clout think the world's population is too large. It's really just greed, lust and error in high places, being put there by our vote and dollar.
Maxim 164: Looking back on my life, I regret nothing. I accomplished more sometimes, in one week, than many would in a whole lifetime. I learned everything I needed to learn. I did everything I needed to do. The world betrayed me, I did not betray it.
Maxim 165: I find in Luther what not to be---a man making up rules as he goes along, and men and women following.
Maxim 166: You got to create your own inspiration. The muse comes, only by chasing after it.
©2024 - 2025 B. K. Neifert
All Rights Reserved
Maxims 2025 (Started Winter’s December 2024)
Published
B. K. Neifert 