Stories to Remember

Boiling Frog

The boiling frog story is a widespread anecdote describing a frog slowly being boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to significant changes that occur gradually. According to contemporary biologists the premise of the story is not literally true; a frog submerged and gradually heated will jump out. However, some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true, provided the heating is sufficiently gradual.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

The moral stated at the end of the Greek version is, "this shows how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them". It echoes a statement attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laërtius in his The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, where the sage was asked what those who tell lies gain by it and he answered "that when they speak truth they are not believed". William Caxton similarly closes his version with the remark that "men bileve not lyghtly hym whiche is knowen for a lyer".

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics. The law describes a process known as entropy, a measure of the number of specific ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder". The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. After his fall, and subsequent shattering, the inability to put him together again is representative of this principle, as it would be highly unlikely, though not impossible, to return him to his earlier state of lower entropy, as the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel by George Orwell published in 1949. The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or, in the government's invented language, Newspeak, called Ingsoc) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrimes". The tyranny is epitomised by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. Big Brother and the Party justify their oppressive rule in the name of a supposed greater good. The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to re-write past newspaper articles so that the historical record always supports the current party line. Smith is a diligent and skilful worker, but he secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.

Mark of the Beast

We know WHO or WHAT the Beast is, but what is its MARK? Let us use one of the tried and true principles of Bible study which is to let God's word interpret itself. Notice that nothing is said in Revelation 13 about high tech items such as computers and government issued photo IDs, although it's possible that such tools may be used to enforce the mark of the beast in the future. Notice that the mark (Revelation 13:16) appears on the right hand or on the forehead of people. The right hand is symbolic of a man's ability to do something that he thinks about. The forehead is symbolic of the brain and mind, where thoughts, good and bad, come from. Notice also that this mark will be popular and that most people will accept it. They will take the mark because they want to buy or sell, which includes their labor and services at work to their employers, not just product and service purchases in stores (verse 17).

You have posted some fine examples OP, but I always enjoyed Aesop's fables, and this one in particular:

www.aesopfables.com...

"That will teach you," said an old man who had followed them:

"Please all, and you will please none".

they're rather excellent & spiffy examples

animal farm is good too

there's a story called "the adventures of mark twain" (it's available as a free audiobook) that i probably won't ever forget...

Allegory of the Cave


Plato has Socrates describe a gathering of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to designate names to these shadows. The shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.

Those producing the shadows today are the Mainstream Media.