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Oscar winner and Pulitzer Prize recipient William Saroyan (August 31, 1908 - May 18, 1981) who gained world fame with his classic book "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" (1934), was born in California to Armenak and Takoohi Saroyan, survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide perpetrated by Turks in the Ottoman Empire.
With his unmistakably American literary works, deeply rooted in his Armenian heritage, William Saroyan soon established himself as one of the preeminent short story writers, playwrights and novelists in the United States.
In 1939 and 1940 William Saroyan's "My Heart's in the Highlands" and "The Time of Your Life" were staged for theater and "Love's Old Sweet Song" opened on Broadway, winning the New York Critics Circle Award.
In 1943 his MGM screenplay "The Human Comedy" was novelized and published and received great reviews, and he won the Academy Award for Best Writing Original Story for "The Human Comedy".
He wrote the lyrics to his cousin Ross Bagdasarian's famous hit song "Come On-a My House", performed by Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, and Rosemary Clooney, which was featured in Madonna's "Swept Away" (2002) and Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952). (Bagdasarian is better known as "David Seville," of "Alvin and the Chipmunks" fame.) (The above bio is from the Internet Movie Database. Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography.
All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.
Be, beget, begone.
Each book can make a life or a fragment of it more beautiful.
Every man alive in the world is a beggar of one sort or another, every last one of them, great and small.
Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good someone else.
Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?
Everything alive is part of each of us, and many things which do not move as we move are part of us. The sun is part of us, the earth, the sky, the stars, the rivers, and the oceans. All things are part of us, and we have come here to enjoy them and to thank God for them.
Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.
I am enormously wise and abysmally ignorant.
I believe that time, with its infinite understanding, will one day forgive me.
I care so much about everything that I care about nothing.
I did my best, and let me urge you to do your best, too. Isn't it the least we can do for one another?
I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.
I don't like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn't worth a dime in the open market.
I have made a fiasco of my life, but I have had the right material to work with.
I sometimes think that rich men belong to another nationality entirely, no matter what their actual nationality happens to be. The nationality of the rich.
In the end, today is forever, yesterday is still today, and tomorrow is already today.
It is impossible not to notice that our world is tormented by failure, hate, guilt, and fear.
Nothing good ever ends.
Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart.
Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed.
Sunday is the day people go quietly mad, one way or another.
The end of life evokes the errors of it, and a fellow wishes he had known better.
The purpose of my life is to put off dying as long as possible.
The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.
The whole world and every human being in it is everybody's business.
There is no such thing as a soldier. I see death as a private event, the destruction of the universe in the brain and in the senses of one man, and I cannot see any man's death as a contributing factor in the success or failure of a military campaign.
What art needs is greater men, and what politics needs is better men.
You must remember always to give, of everything you have. You must give foolishly even. You must be extravagant. You must give to all who come into your life. Then nothing and no one shall have power to cheat you of anything, for if you give to a thief, he cannot steal from you, and he himself is then no longer a thief. And the more you give, the more you will have to give.
You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.
Categories: Quotes of the day, William Saroyan
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Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; August 30, 1797 - February 1, 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind.
Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
Elegance is inferior to virtue.
Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.
How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!
I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other.
I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.
If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.
It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.
It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.
Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated.
Live, and be happy, and make others so.
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
The beginning is always today.
The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.
The labors of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.
The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables.
The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.
What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?
When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?
With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.
A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.
Categories: Mary Shelley, Quotes of the day
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John Locke FRS (August 29, 1632 - October 28, 1704), widely known as the Father of Classical Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A dreamer lives forever, and a toiler dies in a day.
All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.
But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression.
Children (nay, and men too) do most by example.
Children should from the beginning be bred up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting any living creature...
Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.
Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.
Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches.
Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guide
Habits wear more constantly and with greater force than reason, which, when we have most need of it, is seldom fairly consulted, and more rarely obeyed.
He that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son.
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.
Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.
Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.
So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with.
The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.
The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.
The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.
There cannot any one moral Rule be propos'd, whereof a Man may not justly demand a Reason.
There cannot be a greater rudeness, than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse..
There remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them.
Virtue is harder to be got than a knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.
We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
What worries you, masters you.
Whenever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer justice, it is still violence and injury, however colored with the name, pretenses, or forms of law
Where there is no desire, there will be no industry.
Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.
Categories: John Locke, Quotes of the day
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As long as there's a man alive on the face of the earth, this day will
always be remembered the world over.
-Dick Gregory
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(YouTube video: NBC's "wrap-up" of the march on Washington.)
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(YouTube video: Peter, Paul and Mary perform prior to Dr. King's speech..)
On August 28, 1963, I was a few weeks short of nine years old and spending most of my time at the Ninth Avenue Playground across from the Homestead Police Station. It was the Wednesday before Labor Day, the end of summer vacation and the beginning of the fourth grade. I was on my way back out to the playground when my grandmother stopped me. She called me into the living room and told me to sit down and watch the television. Lots of people were in Washington, DC talking about something.
As a nine year old desperately trying to wring enjoyment out of the last week of his summer vacation, the last thing I wanted to do was watch a bunch of adults I didn't know give boring speeches about things that didn't matter to me. But She Who Must Be Obeyed wouldn't take no for an answer; she wasn't even swayed by the knowledge that the reason for my urgent trip to the playground was to retrieve a pot holder I had made for her before the lunch break.
She had been originally attracted to the newscast when she heard Mahalia Jackson singing. My grandmother claimed to be a Baptist (although I'd never seen her in a church in my life), and loved to listen to black gospel singers. I remember her sitting on her chair with her soiled apron, clutching a dishcloth and watching the screen intently.
You listen to this," she told me. "This is important."
I plopped down on the floor and watched as a black guy I didn't recognize approached the microphone. He was standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and there were more people there than I had ever seen in my life.
Then he spoke.
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I am happy to join with you today, in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
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Even as a nine year old, I knew I had witnessed something special. Years later, it occurred to me that the first political speech to which I had ever paid attention turned out to be what most agree was the finest example of public oratory delivered in the 20th century. In fifty years, I've never heard anything that remotely approaches its perfect composition and delivery.
I looked over my shoulder and saw something that really disturbed me... my grandmother was crying.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
The unschooled old woman, born in the hills of West Virginia, shook her head. "Nothing, Kevie," she said. "You just remember what that man just said. You do what that man said, and everything will be all right."
It's been 50 years, and things still aren't "all right."
Perhaps my grandchildren will finally realize the dreams proposed on that hot August day.
America's democracy is still unfinished. The effort to create a more perfect union is a never ending one.
We must remember that. Thankfully, many do. And their efforts, like the situations they strive to correct, will never end.
Categories: History, Martin Luther King, Jr., Video, YouTube
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Joelle Cherie Barkes joined the family on May 9, but the final adoption legalities weren't completed until yesterday. Now the embargo has been lifted, and the torrent of new grandbaby pictures can begin...
My son, Douglas; my daughter-in-law, Angela; and Joelle Cherie, the first baby in the family with the Barkes surname since my daughter Sara's arrival in 1977. Taken shortly after yesterday's final adoption proceedings.
Joelle realizes how easily she will be able to wrap her grandfather around her little finger, and is delighted.
Leanna, the Senior Granddaughter, shows the kid the ropes.
From her first photo shoot. The kid's got it.
My international friends may ask, why is it Joelle Cherie and not Joëlle Chérie? Her parents insist it's just an Anglicized spelling. I maintain you can't Anglicize two definitively French names. Without the accents, it's Joel Sherry, which sounds like a cheap cooking wine or a third-rate cable access sportscaster.
It's a battle I'll save for another day. Once she learns how to write her name, and she says, "Grandpap, look, I can write my name," the old man with the greying beard will say, "Sweetie, your name sounds so beautiful... would you like to make it look as beautiful as it sounds?"
Ah, subversion. The sweetest perquisite of grandparenthood...
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Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 - January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States (1963–1969), a position he assumed after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States (1961–1963). He is one of only four people who served in all four elected federal offices of the United States: Representative, Senator, Vice President, and President. Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, served as a United States Representative from 1937–1949 and as a Senator from 1949–1961, including six years as United States Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader and two as Senate Majority Whip. After campaigning unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1960, Johnson was asked by John F. Kennedy to be his running mate for the 1960 presidential election.
Johnson succeeded to the presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, completed Kennedy's term and was elected President in his own right, winning by a large margin over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. Johnson was greatly supported by the Democratic Party and as President, he was responsible for designing the "Great Society" legislation that included laws that upheld civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental protection, aid to education, and his "War on Poverty." Johnson was renowned for his domineering personality and the "Johnson treatment," his coercion of powerful politicians in order to advance legislation.
Meanwhile, Johnson escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War, from 16,000 American advisors/soldiers in 1963 to 550,000 combat troops in early 1968, as American casualties soared and the peace process bogged down. The involvement stimulated a large angry antiwar movement based especially on university campuses in the U.S. and abroad. Summer riots broke out in most major cities after 1965, and crime rates soared, as his opponents raised demands for "law and order" policies. The Democratic Party split in multiple feuding factions, and after Johnson did poorly in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, he ended his bid for reelection. Republican Richard Nixon was elected to succeed him. Historians argue that Johnson's presidency marked the peak of modern liberalism in the United States after the New Deal era. Johnson is ranked favorably by some historians because of his domestic policies. (Click here for full Wikipedia article.)
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A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom.
Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.
Boys, I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad.
Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.
Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath.
Freedom is not enough.
Friendly cynics and fierce enemies alike often underestimate or ignore the strong thread of moral purpose which runs through the fabric of American history.
Greater love hath no man than to attend the Episcopal Church with his wife.
Guns... are all symbols of human failure. They are necessary symbols. They protect what we cherish. But they are witness to human folly.
Hell, by the time a man scratches his ass, clears his throat, and tells me how smart he is, we've already wasted fifteen minutes.
I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her way. And second, let her have it.
I seldom think of politics more than 18 hours a day.
I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy's window, and say it smells like roses.
I'd rather give my life than be afraid to give it.
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: "President Can't Swim."
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
It is important that the United States remain a two-party system. I'm a fellow who likes small parties and the Republican Party can't be too small to suit me.
It's damned easy to get in a war but it's gonna be awfully hard to ever extricate yourself.
It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. (re: J. Edgar Hoover)
Light at the end of the tunnel? We don't even have a tunnel; we don't even know where the tunnel is.
Make no mistake. There is no such thing as a conventional nuclear weapon.
Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.
My generals are always right about other people's wars and wrong about our own.
Never make a speech at a country dance or a football game.
Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulations upon anyone's achievement, or express sympathy in sorrow or disappointment.
Never trust a man unless you've got his pecker in your pocket.
Our safest guide to what we do abroad is always what we do at home.
Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.
Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.
The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn't let them into the family brokerage business.
The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.
The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.
The future holds little hope for any government where the present holds no hope for the people.
The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.
The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.
The world has narrowed to a neighborhood before it has broadened to a brotherhood.
There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.
There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong- deadly wrong- to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.
Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.
We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society.
We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter-and to write it in the books of law.
When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.
While you're saving your face, you're losing your ass.
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
Categories: Lyndon B. Johnson, Quotes of the day
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Granddaughter Lea starts fifth grade today. She seems to be more enthusiastic each year. Separating her from her mom, my daughter Sara, made the first day of preschool rather traumatic. But it's been all downhill from there.
Lea's dog, Bella, is nothing if not consistent.
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Say you're a vocal instructor who loves musical theater, and you've scored tickets to see Kristin Chenoweth perform with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. And say you get called on stage and get to sing a duet of "For Good" from "Wicked" with Kristin Chenoweth. And say you nail it, and blow everyone away...
This is the stuff of dreams. Note how the conductor turns around when Sarah begins singing, and the orchestra applauding at the end. And, of course, the crowd goes wild.
Another version of the video, and Sarah's story, are here.
Categories: Kristen Chenoweth, Sarah Horn, Wicked
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Benjamin Crowninshield "Ben" Bradlee (b. August 26, 1921) is a vice president at-large of The Washington Post. As executive editor of the Post from 1968 to 1991, he became a national figure during the presidency of Richard Nixon, when he challenged the federal government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers and oversaw the publication of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's stories documenting the Watergate scandal. (Click for full Wikipedia article.)
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As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
As long as a journalist tells the truth, in conscience and fairness, it is not his job to worry about consequences. The truth is never as dangerous as a lie in the long run. I truly believe the truth sets men free.
Churchill writes memoirs. Journalists and editors don't write memoirs.
Editors do run the risk of appearing arrogant if they choose to disagree with anybody who calls them arrogant.
Everybody who talks to a newspaper has a motive. That's just a given. And good reporters always, repeat always, probe to find out what that motive is.
Generals who can write always make me nervous.
Have a good time. The newspaper will be great if you’re having a good time.
I do worry about how newspapers respond to falling circulation figures. I'm not sure that the answer is for newspapers to try to cater to whatever seems to be the fad of the day.
I don't mean to sound arrogant, but we're in a holy profession.
I have no lint left in my navel for that.
I used to love the newspaper business because if you had an idea, you could get it into the paper immediately, in a matter of hours. Now you have to watch out and worry about who you are offending and blah blah blah. So it's changed.
I've been here longer than God.
If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be 'gotcha' journalism, but it's also good journalism.
In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, 'It's not a perfect world.'
It changes your life, the pursuit of truth, if you know that you have tried to find the truth and gone past the first apparent truth towards the real truth. It's very, it's very exciting.
It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.
It wasn't in me to preach. I can say somebody's a horse's ass, but I can't tell people what to do.
It's very hard to stand up to the government which is saying that publication will threaten national security. People don't seem to realize that reporters and editors know something about national security and care deeply about it.
Maybe some of today's papers have too many 'feel-good' features, but there is a lot of good news out there.
One of the lessons I learned in journalism is that you don't argue with the A shares.
Pick your fights. Don't duck 'em, but don't fight second-rate opponents.
Some guy tells you something. He says that's a national security matter. Well, you're supposed to tremble and get scared and it never, almost never means the security of the national government. More likely to mean the security or the personal happiness of the guy who is telling you something.
The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.
There really isn't enough time in the day to convene a task force on every little decision. If you're publishing 140,000 words five times a day you've got to decide. And you've got to get it off the table and get on to the next one before you go crazy.
There will always be leaks; in Washington, everywhere.
When the history of the world is written, this will not be in it.
You never monkey with the truth.
Categories: Ben Bradlee, Quotes of the day
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Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim. According to The New York Times, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history." (Click for full Wikipedia article.)
-----
A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.
Any great art work... revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world- the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
Einstein said that 'the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.' So why do so many of us try to explain the beauty of music, thus depriving it of its mystery?
Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century. He introduced the beat to everything, music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution- the 60s comes from it.
I believe in people. I feel, love, need and respect people above all else, including natural scenery, organized piety and nationalistic superstructures. One human figure on the slope of a mountain can make the mountain disappear for me, one person fighting for truth can disqualify for me the entire system which had dispensed it.
I think it is time we learned the lesson of our century: that the progress of the human spirit must keep pace with technological and scientific progress, or that spirit will die. It is incumbent on our educators to remember this; and music is at the top of the spiritual must list.
I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.
I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.
I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic.
If you're a good composer, you steal good steals.
In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing.
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time. The wait is simply too long.
Mozart's music is constantly escaping from its frame, because it cannot be contained in it.
Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.
Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning... except its own.
Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.
The 20th century has been a badly written drama, from the beginning. The opposite of a Greek drama. Act one: Greed and hypocrisy leading to a genocidal world war, a boom, a crash, totalitarianism. Act two: Greed and hypocrisy leading to a genocidal world war, a boom, a crash, totalitarianism. Act three: Greed and hypocrisy... I don't dare continue.
The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.
The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.
The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm, that's a problem. And if we have no second fiddle, we have no harmony.
The trouble with you and me... is that we want everyone in the world to personally love us, and of course that's impossible; you just don't meet everyone in the world.
This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.
To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.
To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both.
When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.
When you get the feeling that whatever note succeeds the last is is the only possible note that can rightly happen in that instant, that context, then chances are you're listening to Beethoven.
-----
Bernstein would have been 95 today. Here he is at 67, conducting his full score to West Side Story for the first time. The 1985 recording featured the era's top operatic voices, but forget the singers... the joy is watching Bernstein lead "a contract orchestra" of New York musicians, interpreting the music as he imagined it, and thoroughly enjoying its performance.
Categories: Leonard Bernstein, Quotes of the day
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A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the
world.
-Louis Pasteur
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition,
and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-George Bernard
Shaw
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul
has simply nothing to do.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
A little philosophy makes a man an Atheist: a great deal converts him to
religion.
-David Hume
A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
-G.K.
Chesterton
A philosopher always knows what to do until it happens to him.
-Unattributed
A philosopher is a person who doesn't care which side his bread is
buttered on; he knows he eats both sides anyway.
-Dr. Joyce
Brothers
A philosopher told me that, having examined the civil and political
order of societies, he now studied nothing except the savages in the
books of explorers, and children in everyday life.
-Nicolas
Chamfort
A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problems
than by its solution of them.
-Suzanne K. Langer
All philosophy lies in two words: sustain and abstain.
-Epictetus
All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the
politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.
-Lucretius
Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
-Sydney
J. Harris
Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
-David
Hume
Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship. Then it moved to
Greece and became a philosophy, then it went to Rome and became an
institution, and then it went to Europe and became a government. Finally
it came to America where we made it an enterprise.
-Richard
Halverson
Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is
insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.
-Stephen
Vizinczey
Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.
-Diogenes
Doing something stupid once is just plain stupid. Doing something stupid
twice is a philosophy.
-Dan O'Neill
Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.
-Margaret
Thatcher
Faith and philosophy are air, but events are brass.
-Pierre
Melville
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no
survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to
survival.
-C.S. Lewis
Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in
philosophy only ridiculous.
-David Hume
Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad
philosophy needs to be answered.
-C.S. Lewis
He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his
wife would have it, an idiot.
-Douglas Adams
History is Philosophy teaching by examples.
-Thucydides
I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world
than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of
others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.
-Neil deGrasse
Tyson
I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time. (In
the comic strip Peanuts)
-Charles M. Schulz
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full.
Scratch where it itches.
-Alice Roosevelt Longworth
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study
mathematics and philosophy.
-John Adams
I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.
-Carol
Leifer
If the American Atheists Society or Saddam Hussein himself ever sent an
unrestricted gift to any of my ministries, be assured I will operate on
Billy Sunday's philosophy: The Devil's had it long enough, and quickly
cash the check.
-Jerry Falwell
If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have
learned women.
-Abigail Adams
In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is
the things that are met with by the way.
-Havelock Ellis
In the very books in which philosophers bid us scorn fame, they inscribe
their names.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
It is a function of government to invent philosophies to explain the
demands of its own convenience.
-Murray Kempton
Libertarians secretly worried that ultimately someone will figure out
the whole of their political philosophy boils down to "get off my
property." News flash: This is not really a big secret to the rest of us.
-John
Scalzi
My own philosophy is if you're not having sex, you're finished.
-Helen
Gurley Brown
My studies in Speculative philosophy, metaphysics, and science are all
summed up in the image of a mouse called man running in and out of every
hole in the Cosmos hunting for the Absolute Cheese.
-Benjamin
DeCasseres
My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are
blind to all the universe has to offer.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination,
and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.
-David
Hume
Of course I believe that solipsism is the correct philosophy, but that's
only one man's opinion.
-Melvin Fitting
One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has
not already been said by one philosopher or another.
-René
Descartes
One of the strangest delusions of the Western mind is to the effect that
a philosophy of profound wisdom is on tap in the East.
-H.L.
Mencken
Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for
science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and
probably wrong.
-Richard P. Feynman
Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.
-Bertrand
Russell
Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science. Science discovers,
philosophy interprets.
-Albert Einstein
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers
that may never be questioned.
-Unattributed
Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex.
-Karl
Marx
Philosophy! The lumber of the schools.
-Jonathan Swift
Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends and chemistry
begins and astrology ends, and astronomy begins.
-Christopher
Hitchens
Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy
of ignorance.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
-Bertrand
Russell
Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good
practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values
from science, ethics, and philosophy.
-Paul Kurtz
Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a
crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.
-Freda
Adler
That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place.
One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does a
Falling Tree in the Forest Make a Sound if There's No One There to Hear
It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of
'em says, "Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a
high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a
very interesting demonstration of optical principles."
-Terry
Pratchett
The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising
genuine doubts.
-Morris Raphael Cohen
The highest point of philosophy is to be both wise and simple; this is
the angelic life.
-John Chrysotom
The men who are not interested in philosophy need it the most urgently;
they are the most helplessly in its power.
-Ayn Rand
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in
moral philosophy, that is the search for a superior moral justification
for selfishness.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
The purpose of a liberal education is to make you philosophical enough
to accept the fact that you will never make much money.
-Unattributed
The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on
too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be
good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity
and until they do (and find the cure) all ideal plans will fall into
quicksand.
-Richard P. Feynman
The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a
humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an
exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy.
Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
-John Gardner
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is
suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to
answering the fundamental question of philosophy.
-Albert Camus
There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church
as a human being.
-James Joyce
There is no record in human history of a happy philosopher.
-H.L.
Mencken
There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not said it.
-Marcus
Tullius Cicero
There is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and
that is, to contradict other philosophers.
-William James
There's a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker.
-Charles
M. Schulz
To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility
as a means of transportation. (Life of Pi)
-Yann Martel
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts,
foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation
that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an
open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
-John F.
Kennedy
We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.
-Martin
L. Gross
When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be
philosophers.
-Walter Lippmann
While it is very sturdy of comfortable men to point out that life is
unfair, the people it is unfair to are not apt to be morally or
philosophically elevated by the announcement.
-Russell Baker
Categories: Philosophy, Quotes of the day
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News Headline: “Is social media ruining our grammar?”
No.
Not at all.
Social media are ruining our grammar.
-Zay
N. Smith, Quick Takes
Categories: Observations, Zay N. Smith - Quick Takes
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I'm visiting two doctors this afternoon. I've seen one for 27 years, and been a patient of the other for 42 years. The good news is my mood should improve, and the rash should clear up. Any day now.
-----
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his
client to plant vines.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
A doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under
his care.
-George Bernard Shaw
A great doctor kills more people than a great general.
-Gottfried
Wilhelm von Leibnitz
A virus is a Latin word translated by doctors to mean "Your guess is as
good as mine."
-Unattributed
All the possibilities
It had to reject are
What give life and
warmth to
An actual character;
The roots of wit and charm tap
Secret
springs of sorrow,
Every brilliant doctor
Hides a murderer.
-W.H.
Auden
As she lay there dozing next to me, one voice inside my head kept
saying, "Relax... you are not the first doctor to sleep with one of his
patients,' but another kept reminding me, "Howard, you are a
veterinarian."
-Dick Wilson
Beware of the young doctor and the old barber.
-Benjamin Franklin
Crime isn't a disease, it's a symptom. Cops are like a doctor that gives
you aspirin for a brain tumor.
-Raymond Chandler
Doctors bury mistakes. Lawyers hang them. But journalists put theirs on
the front page.
-Unattributed
Doctors cut, burn and torture the sick, and then demand of them an
undeserved fee for such services.
-Heraclitus
Doctors will tell you don't smoke, don't drink, eat certain foods...
From this point on, if I take excellent care of myself, I'll get very
sick and die.
-Rodney Dangerfield
God heals, the doctor takes the fee.
-Benjamin Franklin
He's a fool that makes his doctor his heir.
-Benjamin Franklin
Heaven defend me from a busy doctor. (Welsh Proverb)
-Unattributed
I was an ugly kid. When I was born, after the doctor cut the cord, he
hung himself.
-Rodney Dangerfield
I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's
office was full of portraits by Picasso.
-Rita Rudner
If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer
and my banker to do so.
-G.K. Chesterton
If the doctor told me I had only six months to live, I'd type faster.
-Isaac
Asimov
If there were enough doctors, we would all be sick.
-Wendell
Johnson
If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the
theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing
is safe.
-Lord Salisbury
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to
knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
-Marcel Proust
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there
are three other people.
-Orson Welles
My illness is due to my doctor's insistence that I drink milk, a whitish
fluid they force down helpless babies.
-W.C. Fields
Some doctors make the same mistakes for twenty years and call it
clinical experience.
-Dr. Noah Fabricant
The doctors x-rayed my head and found nothing.
-Yogi Berra
When I was born, the doctor turned me over and said, "Look! Twins!"
-Rodney
Dangerfield
You should have scheduled an appointment, gone through your physician's
assistant, insisted on seeing your primary care doctor, gotten a
referral, and come to me sooner! (doctor to patient in a cartoon caption)
-Unattributed
Categories: Doctors, Quotes on a topic
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Earlier in the evening, I had a severe spasm in my right leg. It was still bothering me, but I went to bed...
Only to be awakened two hours later with a cramp in my right little toe of such magnitude that as I reached to massage it, I was certain it had rotated 180° and folded back over the top of my foot.
Nope... it was positioned appropriately, but I had to get up and put pressure on it to stop the sensation of it being crushed by a large piece of farm equipment.
So I'm at my desk, pressing my foot into the floor, and trying to take my mind off it...
They then list various causes, including neurological diseases, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, hypoglycemia, and hormone disorders.
Oh, good. No serious diseases in that list...
Categories: KGB
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Extremely busy, lots of deadlines...
Today is Dorothy Parker's birthday: visit her page here.
It's also Ray Bradbury's birthday; click here for his quote collection.
Did I mention pressure? In various forms... see you tomorrow.
-----
Definition of expert: x as in unknown, spurt as in drip under pressure.
(From Computerworld)
-Unattributed
Hermits have no peer pressure.
-Steven Wright
I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a
little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality
under my pressure.
-E.B. White
I'm a registered Republican, I only seem liberal because I believe that
hurricanes are caused by low barometric pressure and not gay marriage.
(dialogue from "The Newsroom")
-Aaron Sorkin
I'm working on a plan to take all the salt out of all the oceans. The
fish are getting high blood pressure.
-Steven Wright
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice,
but nothing to choose from.
-Peter Ustinov
It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would
make no sense. It would be a description without meaning- as if you
described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.
-Albert
Einstein
Lobbyists are people who go to Washington to mix business with pressure.
-Lane
Olinghouse
Pressure is a five dollar bet with three dollars in your pocket.
-Lee
Travino
The polygraph looks for abrupt increases in heart rate, blood pressure
and perspiration. The polygraph is, therefore, a highly reliable
detector of orgasms. But does it detect lies? Only if you're lying about
having an orgasm.
-Robert Park
The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than
anyone else. We subject him and his family to close and constant
scrutiny and denounce them for things that we ourselves do every day. A
Presidential slip of the tongue, a slight error in judgment- social,
political, or ethical- can raise a storm of protest. We give the
President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man
should take, more pressure than a man can bear. We abuse him often and
rarely praise him. We wear him out, use him up, eat him up. And with all
this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty
or party nationality; he is ours, and we exercise the right to destroy
him.
-John Steinbeck
There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.
-Alfred Adler
There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say "it was god's
will" when granny dies, but they get angry when they lose a cow.
-Terry
Pratchett
Things get worse under pressure. (Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics)
-Unattributed
To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much
pressure they're under from the public.
-Noam Chomsky
Truth has a way of shifting under pressure.
-Curtis Bock
Categories: Quotes on a topic
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I clean off my computer desktop. Into your eyes.
Apparently this drug gives you a stuporous, frozen expression and the
ability to see pharmaceutical company mascots.
Categories: Miscellany, WTF?
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Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 - March 15, 1937)- known as H. P. Lovecraft- was an American author of horror, fantasy, poetry and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction.
Lovecraft's guiding aesthetic and philosophical principle was what he termed "cosmicism" or "cosmic horror", the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally inimical to the interests of humankind. As such, his stories express a profound indifference to human beliefs and affairs. Lovecraft is the originator of the Cthulhu Mythos story cycle and the Necronomicon, a fictional magical textbook of rites and forbidden lore.
Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his lifetime, his reputation has grown over the decades, and he is now regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century. According to Joyce Carol Oates, an award-winning author, Lovecraft- as with Edgar Allan Poe in the 19th century- has exerted "an incalculable influence on succeeding generations of writers of horror fiction". Science fiction and fantasy author Stephen King called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." King has made it clear in his semi-autobiographical non-fiction book Danse Macabre that Lovecraft was responsible for King's own fascination with horror and the macabre, and was the single largest figure to influence his fiction writing. Lovecraft's stories have been adapted into plays, films and games, such as Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and id Software's Quake.
Click here for the full Wikipedia article. And before reading the quotes, note that Lovecraft had a decidedly uncommon outlook on life.
---
All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.
Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.
As for the Republicans- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.
As human beings, our only sensible scale of values is one based on lessening the agony of existence.
Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.
Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots.
Fear best lends itself to the creation of Nature-defying illusions.
From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.
I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.
If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.
It is good to be a cynic- it is better to be a contented cat- and it is best not to exist at all.
It must be remembered that there is no real reason to expect anything in particular from mankind; good and evil are local expedients- or their lack- and not in any sense cosmic truths or laws.
Memories and possibilities are even more hideous than realities.
No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.
Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species—if separate species we be—for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.
Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.
The basis of all true cosmic horror is violation of the order of nature, and the profoundest violations are always the least concrete and describable.
The Man of Truth has learned that Illusion is the One Reality, and that Substance is the Great Impostor.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.”
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.
There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences.
There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range.
There was really nothing for serious men to do in cases of wild gossip, for superstitious rustics will say and believe anything.
Time, space, and natural law hold for me suggestions of intolerable bondage, and I can form no picture of emotional satisfaction which does not involve their defeat—especially the defeat of time, so that one may merge oneself with the whole historic stream and be wholly emancipated from the transient and the ephemeral.
To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest.
Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way.
We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos, yet other beings with wider, stronger, or different range of senses might not only see very differently the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy, and life which lie close at hand yet can never be detected with the senses we have.
Categories: H.P. Lovecraft, Quotes of the day
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Gabrielle "Coco" Bonheur Chanel (August 19, 1883 - January 10, 1971) was a French fashion designer and founder of the Chanel brand. She was the only fashion designer to appear on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Along with Paul Poiret, Chanel was credited with liberating women from the constraints of the "corseted silhouette" and popularizing the acceptance of a sportive, casual chic as the feminine standard in the post-World War I era. A prolific fashion creator, Chanel's influence extended beyond couture clothing. Her design aesthetic was realized in jewelry, handbags, and fragrance. Her signature scent, Chanel No. 5, has become an iconic product. (Click for full Wikipedia entry.)
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A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.
A woman has the age she deserves.
A woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future.
As long as you know that most men are like children, you know everything.
Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.
Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.
Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.
Elegance is refusal.
Fashion fades, only style remains the same.
Fashion is architecture. It is a matter of proportions.
Fashion is made to become unfashionable.
Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.
How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but to be someone.
I don't care what you think about me. I don't think about you at all.
I don't do fashion, I AM fashion.
I was a rebellious child, a rebellious lover, a rebellious couturière- a real devil.
In 1919 I woke up famous. I'd never guessed it. If I'd known I was famous, I'd have stolen away and wept. I was stupid. I was supposed to be intelligent. I was sensitive and very dumb.
In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.
It's best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.
Men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness.
My life didn't please me, so I created my life.
Nothing is ugly as long as it is alive.
Only those with no memory insist on their originality.
Passion goes, Boredom remains.
Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.
Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.
The best color in the whole world is the one that looks good on you.
The best things in life are free. The second best things are very, very expensive.
The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.
There are people who have money and people who are rich.
There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.
There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly. Fashion is at once a caterpillar and a butterfly, caterpillar by day, butterfly by night
There is nothing worse than solitude. Solitude can help a man realize himself; but it destroys a woman.
Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.
Women think of all colors except the absence of color. I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony.
You live but once; you might as well be amusing.
Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.
(in 1971)
Categories: Coco Chanel, Quotes of the day
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Brian Wilson Aldiss, OBE (b. August 18, 1925) is an English writer and anthologies editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells, his influential works include the short tory "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long", the basis for the Stanley Kubrick-developed Steven Spielberg film, A.I. Artificial Intelligence. (Click for full Wikipedia article.)
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An overcrowded world is the ideal place in which to be lonely.
Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.
However you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.
I can't help believing that these things that come from the subconscious mind have a sort of truth to them. It may not be a scientific truth, but it's psychological truth.
I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer.
I've no objection to morality, except that it's obsolete.
If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn't be where we are now.
Keep violence in the mind where it belongs.
Let's have a toast- to the future generation of consumers, however many heads or assholes they have!
Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!
Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.
One of the characteristics of age was that all avenues of talk led backward in time.
Plato would have no actors in his republic, in case pretense devoured what was real. Plato's fears have proved well-grounded.
Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It's patriotic to overconsume.
Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.
To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important.
We have built illusions round us and see no way out of the glass forest.
Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.
Whatever terrific events may inform our lives, it always comes to that in the end; we just want to lie down.
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.
Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.
Once land gets in a state, once it begins to deteriorate, it is hard to reverse the process. Land falls sick just like people—that's the whole tragedy of our time.
Fantasy is literature for teenagers.
Categories: Brian Aldiss, Quotes of the day
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To build character, use a 4D printer.
The
Covert Comic
Categories: Covert Comic, Observations, Quotes of the day
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Mary Jane West (August 17, 1893 - November 22, 1980), known as Mae West, was an American actress, singer, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades.
Known for her bawdy double entendres, West made a name for herself in vaudeville and on the stage in New York before moving to Hollywood to become a comedienne, actress and writer in the motion picture industry. In consideration of her contributions to American cinema, the American Film Institute named West 15th among the greatest female stars of all time. One of the more controversial movie stars of her day, West encountered many problems, including censorship. When her cinematic career ended, she continued to perform on stage, in Las Vegas, in the United Kingdom, on radio and television, and recorded rock and roll albums.
Asked about the various efforts to impede her career, West said, "I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it."
(Click for full Wikipedia article.)
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A hard man is good to find.
A man in love is like a clipped coupon- it's time to cash in.
A man in the house is worth two in the street.
Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.
Beulah, peel me a grape.
Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you.
Good sex is like good Bridge... if you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.
Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.
He who hesitates is last.
He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of.
His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.
I don't know a lot about politics, but I can recognize a good party man when I see one.
I don't like myself, I'm crazy about myself.
I feel like a million tonight. But one at a time.
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
I go for two kinds of men. The kind with muscles, and the kind without.
I like my clothes tight enough to show I'm a woman, but loose enough to show I'm a lady.
I like two kinds of men: domestic and imported.
I used to be Snow White... but I drifted.
I wrote the story myself. It's all about a girl who lost her reputation but never missed it.
I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.
I'm the lady who works at Paramount all day... and Fox all night.
I've always had a weakness for foreign affairs.
I've been in more laps than a napkin.
I've been rich and I've been poor... Believe me, rich is better.
Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
It's better to be looked over than overlooked.
It's hard to be funny when you have to be 'clean.'
It's not the men in my life that counts- it's the life in my men.
Keep a diary, and someday it'll keep you.
Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
One and one is two; two and two is four; and 'five will get you ten' if you work it right!
Opportunity knocks for every man, but you have to give a woman a ring.
Save a boyfriend for a rainy day, and another, in case it doesn't rain.
She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong.
So many men... so little time.
Some men are all right in their place- if they only knew the right places!
There are no good girls gone wrong, just bad girls found out.
Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.
To err is human, but it feels divine.
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.
Virtue has its own reward, but no sale at the box office.
When a girl goes wrong, men go right... after her.
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.
When I'm good, I'm very good. When I'm bad, I'm better.
When it comes to finances, remember that there are no withholding taxes on the wages of sin.
When you got the personality, you don't need the nudity.
Why don't you come up and see me sometime... when I've got nothin' on but the radio?
You can say what you like about long dresses, but they cover a multitude of shins.
You may admire a girl's curves on the first introduction.. but the second meeting shows up new angles.
Categories: Mae West, Quotes of the day
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(By Mike Twohy in The New Yorker)
Categories: Cartoons, Fourth Amendment, Mike Twohy, NSA
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Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO (August 16, 1888 - May 19, 1935), known professionally as T.E. Lawrence, was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916–18. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as "Lawrence of Arabia," a title which was used for the 1962 film based on his World War I activities. (Click for full Wikipedia article.)
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All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
He was old and wise, which meant tired and disappointed...
Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.
Many men would take the death-sentence without a whimper, to escape the life-sentence which fate carries in her other hand.
Mankind has had ten-thousand years of experience at fighting and if we must fight, we have no excuse for not fighting well.
What I have done, what I am doing, what I am going to do, puzzle and bewilder me. Have you ever been a leaf and fallen from your tree in autumn and been really puzzled about it? That’s the feeling.
Immorality, I know. Immortality, I cannot judge.
The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armory of the modern commander.
To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one's tail.
This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought.
Isn't it true that the fault of birth rests somewhat on the child? I believe it's we who led our parents on to bear us, and it's our unborn children who make our flesh itch.
I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars.
An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot. The logical end of a war of creeds is the final destruction of one.
Cling tight to your sense of humor. You will need it every day.
I prefer lies to truth, especially when the lies are about me.
It is difficult to keep quiet when everything is being done wrong, but the less you lose your temper the greater your advantage. Also then you will not go mad yourself.
The literature of disease is more interesting to me than all the healthy books.
The sword also means clean-ness and death.
There could be no honor in sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat
Your success will be proportioned to the amount of mental effort you devote to it.
This death's livery which walled its bearers from ordinary life was sign that they have sold their wills and bodies to the State: and contracted themselves into a service not the less abject for that its beginning was voluntary.
As for fame after death, it’s a thing to spit at; the only minds worth winning are the warm ones about us. If we miss those, we are failures.
Categories: Quotes of the day, T.E. Lawrence
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Napoleon Bonaparte (August 15, 1769 - May 5, 1821) was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the latter stages of the French Revolution and its associated wars in Europe. (Click for Wikipedia article.)
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A book in which there were no lies would be a curiosity.
A commander in chief ought to say to himself several times a day: If the enemy should appear on my front, on my right, on my left, what would I do? And if the question finds him uncertain, he is not well placed, he is not as he should be, and he should remedy it.
A form of government that is not the result of a long sequence of shared experiences, efforts, and endeavors can never take root.
A general must be a charlatan.
A Government protected by foreigners will never be accepted by a free people.
A great people may be killed, but they cannot be intimidated.
A man who has no consideration for the needs of his men ought never to be given command.
A prince should suspect everything.
Ability is nothing without opportunity.
All great events hang by a hair.
All men of genius, and all those who have gained rank in the republic of letters, are brothers, whatever may be the land of their nativity.
An army which cannot be reenforced is already defeated.
Aristocracy is the spirit of the Old Testament, democracy of the New.
As a rule it is circumstances that make men.
At the beginning of a campaign it is important to consider whether or not to move forward; but when one has taken the offensive it is necessary to maintain it to the last extremity.
Audacity succeeds as often as it fails; in life it has an even chance.
Conscience is the most sacred thing among men.
Courage cannot be counterfeited. It is one virtue that escapes hypocrisy.
Democracy may become frenzied, but it has feelings and can be moved. As for aristocracy, it is always cold and never forgives.
Destiny urges me to a goal of which I am ignorant. Until that goal is attained I am invulnerable, unassailable. When Destiny has accomplished her purpose in me, a fly may suffice to destroy me.
Every man has within him a still small voice, which tells him that nothing on earth can oblige him to believe that which he does notvbelieve.
Fanaticism must be put to sleep before it can be eradicated.
From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.
From triumph to downfall is but a step. I have seen a trifle decide the most important issues in the gravest affairs.
Greatness is nothing unless it be lasting.
He who cannot look over a battlefield with a dry eye, causes the death of many men uselessly.
He who fears being conquered is certain of defeat.
How many seemingly impossible things have been accomplished by resolute men because they had to do, or die.
I do not see in religion the mystery of the incarnation so much as the mystery of the social order. It introduces into the thought of heaven an idea of equalization, which saves the rich from being massacred by the poor.
Imagination governs the world.
Immortality is the best recollection one leaves.
In France, only the impossible is admired.
In love the only safety is in flight.
In order not to be astonished at obtaining victories, one ought not to think only of defeats.
In politics nothing is immutable. Events carry within them an invincible power. The unwise destroy themselves in resistance. The skillful accept events, take strong hold of them and direct them.
In politics, an absurdity is not an impediment.
In practical administration, experience is everything.
In war one must lean on an obstacle in order to overcome it.
In war, character and opinion make more than half of the reality.
In war, groping tactics, half-way measures, lose everything.
In war, luck is half in everything.
It is rare that a legislature reasons. It is too quickly impassioned.
It must be recognized that the real truths of history are hard to discover. Happily, for the most part, they are rather matters of curiosity than of real importance.
Jesus Christ was the greatest republican.
Laws which are consistent in theory often prove chaotic in practice.
Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you.
Man loves the marvelous. It has an irresistible charm for him. He is always ready to leave that with which he is familiar to pursue vain inventions. He lends himself to his own deception.
Morality has nothing to do with such a man as I am.
Never depend on the multitude, full of instability and whims; always take precautions against it.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Nothing is more dangerous than to flatter a people. If it does not get what it wants immediately, it is irritated and thinks that promises have not been kept; and if then it is resisted, it hates so much the more as it feels itself deceived.
Obedience to public authority ought not to be based either on ignorance or stupidity.
One can lead a nation only by helping it see a bright outlook. A leader is a dealer in hope.
One is more certain to influence men, to produce more effect on them, by absurdities than by sensible ideas.
Ordinarily men exercise their memory much more than their judgment.
Ordinary men died, men of iron were taken prisoner: I only brought back with me men of bronze.
Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency.
Our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined.
Parties weaken themselves by their fear of capable men.
Peace ought to be the result of a system well considered, founded on the true interests of the different countries, honorable to each, and ought not to be either a capitulation or the result of a threat.
Policemen and prisons ought never to be the means used to bring men back to the practice of religion.
Policy and morals concur in repressing pillage.
Posterity alone rightly judges kings. Posterity alone has the right to accord or withhold honors.
Power is founded upon opinion.
Simpletons talk of the past, wise men of the present, and fools of the future.
Success is the most convincing talker in the world.
The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know.
The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.
The division of labor, which has brought such perfection in mechanical industries, is altogether fatal when applied to productions of the mind. All work of the mind is superior in proportion as the mind that produces it is universal.
The existence of God is attested by everything that appeals to our imagination. And if our eye cannot reach Him it is because He has not permitted our intelligence to go so far.
The fool has one great advantage over a man of sense- he is always satisfied with himself.
The future destiny of the child is always the work of his mother. Let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons.
The great difficulty with politics is, that there are no established principles.
The laws of circumstance are abolished by new circumstances.
The man of ability takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that can give him a chance of success; whilst the less able man sometimes loses everything by neglecting a single one of those chances.
The moment of greatest peril is the moment of victory.
The praises of enemies are always to be suspected.
The religious zeal which animates priests, leads them to undertake labors and to brave perils which would be far beyond the powers of one in secular employment.
The word impossible is not French.
There are only two forces that unite men- fear and interest. .
There are two systems, the past and the future. The present is only a painful transition.
There is a joy in danger.
There is nothing so imperious as feebleness which feels itself supported by force.here is nothing so imperious as feebleness which feels itself supported by force.
There is only one favorable moment in war; talent consists in knowing how to seize it.
To listen to the interests of all, marks an ordinary government; to foresee them, marks a great government.
Unhappy the general who comes on the field of battle with a system.
Unite for the public safety, if you would remain an independent nation.
War is a lottery in which nations ought to risk nothing but small amounts.
War is a serious game in which a man risks his reputation, his troops, and his country. A sensible man will search himself to know whether or not he is fitted for the trade.
Waterloo will wipe out the memory of my forty victories; but that which nothing can wipe out is my Civil Code. That will live forever.
We frustrate many designs against us by pretending not to see them.
Whatever misanthropists may say, ingrates and the perverse are exceptions in the human species.
You cannot drag a man's conscience before any tribunal, and no one is answerable for his religious opinions to any power on earth.
Categories: Napoleon Bonaparte, Quotes of the day
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Today is Linda Ellerbee's birthday. Check out her page here.
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Quotes of the day: Russell Baker (b August 14, 1925)
Russell Wayne Baker (born August 14, 1925) is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer known for his satirical commentary and self-critical prose, as well as for his autobiography, Growing Up. (Click for full Wikipedia article.)
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A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday.
A railroad station? That was sort of a primitive airport, only you didn't have to take a cab 20 miles out of town to reach it.
A solved problem creates two new problems, and the best prescription for happy living is not to solve any more problems than you have to.
Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.
All politicians are humble, and seldom let you forget it. They go around the country boasting about their humility. They are proud of their humility. Many are downright arrogant about their humility and insist that it qualifies them to be President.
Americans like fat books and thin women.
Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated 'the lesson of history.'
An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong.
Anything that isn't opposed by about 40 percent of humanity is either an evil business or so unimportant that it simply doesn't matter.
By any precise definition, Washington is a city of advanced depravity. There one meets and dines with the truly great killers of the age, but only the quirkily fastidious are offended, for the killers are urbane and learned gentlemen who discuss their work with wit and charm and know which tool to use on the escargots.
Can't anything be done about calling these guys student athletes? That's like referring to Attila the Hun's cavalry as 'weekend warriors.'
Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.
Eternal boyhood is the dream of a depressing percentage of American males, and the locker room is the temple where they worship arrested development.
Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.
I frankly admit to not knowing who I am. This is why I refuse to buy clothes that will tell people who I want them to think I am.
I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world.
I've had an unhappy life, thank God.
If you are going to preach that unfairness is inescapable for some, good sense suggests that you also accept the inevitability of beastly behavior by people who have to carry the burden.
In America nothing dies easier than tradition.
In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses.
In televisionland we are all sophisticated enough now to realize that every statistic has an equal and opposite statistic somewhere in the universe.
Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.
Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say what we really need is a car that can be shot when it breaks down.
It seems to be a law of American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.
It's good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamelessly foolishly.
Journalism was being whittled away by a Wall Street theory that profits can be maximized by minimizing the product.
Life is always walking up to us and saying, 'Come on in, the living's fine,' and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.
Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear.
Live by publicity, you'll probably die by publicity.
Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
Nowadays almost every business is like show business, including politics, which has become more like show business than show business is.
On New York's East Side one occasionally meets a person so palpably evil as to be fascinatingly irresistible.
Only the Government, it seems, has a legal right to manipulate opinion with hot documents.
People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.
People who say you're just as old as you feel are all wrong, fortunately.
Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.
So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom.
Some people like to eat octopus. Liberals, mostly.
The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him.
The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.
The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep.
The old notion that brevity is the essence of wit has succumbed to the modern idea that tedium is the essence of quality.
The people who are always hankering loudest for some golden yesteryear usually drive new cars.
There are no liberals behind steering wheels.
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.
Watergate left Washington a city ravaged by honesty.
When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible- cowards and fools.
While it is very sturdy of comfortable men to point out that life is unfair, the people it is unfair to are not apt to be morally or philosophically elevated by the announcement.
You can always tell folks from nonfolks. Folks like to feel good, like to smile for the camera when there's a big photo opportunity for a really good cause.
Categories: Quotes of the day, Russell Baker
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Wearing a Pirates cap, at a Pirates game, eating a Primanti Brothers sandwich. Yeah, that just about covers it.
Categories: KGB Family
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Quotes of the day: Helen Gurley Brown (February 18, 1922 - August 13, 2012)
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After you're older, two things are possibly more important than any others: health and money.
Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork- reading, writing, thinking- can.
Don't use men to get what you want in life. Get it yourself.
Feeling insecure is good for you. It forces you to do something better, use all your talents.
Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.
How could any woman not be a feminist? The girl I'm editing for wants to be known for herself. If that's not a feminist message, I don't know what is
I think marriage is insurance for the worst years of your life. During your best years you don't need a husband. You do need a man of course every step of the way, and they are often cheaper emotionally and a lot more fun by the dozen.
I used to have all the sex to myself.
If only one of you is in the mood, do it. Even if sex isn't great every time, it's a unique form of communication and togetherness that can help you stay together with a good degree of contentment.
If you're not a sex object, you're in trouble.
Love doesn't drop on you unexpectedly; you have to give off signals, sort of like an amateur radio operator.
Marry a decent, good, kind person who will cherish you.
Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.
My own philosophy is if you're not having sex, you're finished.
Nearly every glamorous, wealthy, successful career woman you might envy now started out as some kind of schlep.
Never fail to know that if you are doing all the talking, you are boring somebody.
One of the paramount reasons for staying attractive is so you can have somebody to go to bed with.
The message was: So you're single. You can still have sex. You can have a great life. And if you marry, don't just sponge off a man or be the gold-medal-winning mother. Don't use men to get what you want in life- get it for yourself.
What you have to do is work with the raw material you have, namely you, and never let up.
You can have your titular recognition. I'll take money and power.
Categories: Helen Gurley Brown, Quotes of the day
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Quotes of the day: Cecil B. DeMille, (August 12, 1881 - January 21, 1959)
-----
A picture is made a success not on a set but over the drawing board.
Creativity is a drug I can't do without.
Dangerous! Of course it's dangerous; who said it wasn't? But that's pictures. We don't fake anything in pictures; we've got to have the real thing.
Every time I make a picture the critics' estimate of American public taste goes down ten percent.
Give me any two pages of the Bible and I'll give you a picture.
God gave us free agency, and then gave us the commandments to keep us free.
I didn't write the Bible and didn't invent sin.
I knew the meaning of 'plot,' 'counterplot,' and 'situation' long before I could read or write.
I make my pictures for people, not for critics.
I win my awards at the box office.
It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.
Most of us serve our ideals by fits and starts. The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.
Now, public libraries are most admirable institutions, but they have one irritating custom. They want their books back.
Remember you're a star. Never go across the alley even to dump garbage unless you are dressed to the teeth.
The greatest art in the world is the art of storytelling.
The public is always right.
The way to make a film is to begin with an earthquake and work up to a climax.
There can be no liberty without the law.
What I have crossed out I didn't like. What I haven't crossed out I'm dissatisfied with.
You are here to please me. Nothing else on earth matters. (to his crew)
Categories: Cecil B. DeMille, Quotes of the day
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Name the national animal of Scotland.
Nope. Not even close.
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Quotes of the day: Alex Haley, (August 11, 1921 – February 10, 1992).
-----
Any time you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.
Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.
History is written by the winners.
I wasn't going to be one of those people who died wondering what if? I would keep putting my dreams to the test- even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.
If you think about it, there’s not a religious group, there’s not a nationalistic group, there’s not a tribe, there is no grouping of people to my knowledge, of any consequence, who have not, at one or another time, been the object of hatred, racism, or who has not had people against them just because they were them.
In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.
In the bush, trust no one you don't know.
Never completely encircle your enemy. Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.
Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.
Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.
The family is our refuge and our springboard; nourished on it, we can advance to new horizons.
The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.
The way to succeed is never quit. That’s it. But really be humble about it
We all suffer. If a man's wise, he learns from it.
When an old person dies it's like a library burning.
When you clench your fist, no one can put anything in your hand, nor can your hand pick up anything.
When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth.
You can never enslave somebody who knows who he is.
You have to deal with the fact that your life is your life.
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Quotes of the day: Andrew Sullivan, (b. August 10, 1963)
-----
The dirty little secret of journalism is that it really isn't a profession, it's a craft. All you need is a telephone and a conscience and you're all set.
Although I never publicly defended promiscuity, I never publicly attacked it. I attempted to avoid the subject, in part because I felt, and often still feel, unable to live up to the ideals I really hold.
The Dixiecrats meet again in New York. Now they're called Republicans.
No American should be forced to choose between their spouse and their country.
How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?
The most successful marriages, gay or straight, even if they begin in romantic love, often become friendships. It's the ones that become the friendships that last.
Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder- just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing.
I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit.
Even if it's deep unhappiness, it's your unhappiness.
In this nonfundamentalist understanding of faith, practice is more important than theory, love more important than law, and mystery is seen as an insight into truth rather than an obstacle.
It is the great lie of our time that all religious faith has to be fundamentalist to be valid.
Here's why I find it impossible to be a Republican: any crowd that instantly cheers the execution of 234 individuals is a crowd I want to flee, not join.
Homosexuality is like the weather. It just is.
I'm sorry but I find the protectors of child rapists preaching to women about contraception to be a moral obscenity. When all the implicated bishops and the Pope resign, ther replacements will have standing to preach.
The lack of control in new media is terrifying, especially for those who have something to hide. Everyone has something to hide.
The thing about tech geeks is that they really are creatures of the night.
For my part, I find the attempt to ban any naturally growing plant to be an attack on reality, and a denial of some of the most basic freedoms. I guess that's why today's GOP is so in favor of it.
My own view, as a struggling and doubting person of faith, is that truth matters in whatever mode we find it- but ultimate truth, because we are not ultimate beings, will always elude us.
A nation isn't simply its people today. It's also its people yesterday. It's a contract, not just between the current generations, but between all the generations who have ever made it up.
Even when Americans are nostalgic, they are nostalgic for a myth of the future.
You cannot negotiate peace with people whose power is entirely dependent on the will to wage war.
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Visiting with the grandchildren has changed over time...
Categories: KGB Family, Photo of the day
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Quotes of the day: James Lileks (b. August 9, 1958):
-----
A Children's Museum is more of a Funatorium. You are encouraged to touch things, which is poor training for subsequent museum visitation.
Calculus destroys self-esteem on contact.
Contempt for the things people choose of their own free will is, at its heart, contempt for free will.
I don't care. I am way past caring. I have not a jot of the care-sauce left in my bones. The care tank is empty. There's no one home in Careville. The dog ate my care. The Care Crop didn't come up this year. Self.com/care comes up as a 404.
I don't want my TV choices dictated by people who have nothing better to do than watch TV.
I grew up with cartoons the way cartoons were meant to be: mice jabbing hatpins into the anuses of venal felines, tie-wearing bears confounding federal employees, squirrel-and-moose teams foiling Communist plots.
I want to believe in intelligent design, and hence I am suspicious of anything that seems to confirm my desire to believe.
I'll feel that horrible feeling in my stomach you get when you've gone over to the Dark Side. But I'll be fine. That's the good thing about the Dark Side. Eventually, your eyes adjust.
If King Kong showed up today on the Empire State building, only German tourists would notice. New Yorkers would notice only after the rotting body of the dead ape was starting to overwhelm the smell of uncollected restaurant trash.
If we were meant to be blinded by science, they wouldn't have put eyewash fountains in the high school chemistry lab.
MAD [mutually assured destruction] only works when the other guy is SANE.
Modern death is a matter of bright rooms and hard machines. Live long enough, and you might be filed away in a nursing home, your history scoured away, your life winnowed down to a few items on the table and some pictures of people who don't come around enough. When you are about to pass on, there is no quiet to attend you: busy fuss and professional zeal strive to bring you back, nail you to the soft cross of the rented bed.
Never trust someone who can't say sorry to a dog.
New York women dress in case they will be photographed. DC women dress in case they have to testify.
Odd how that term 'thing' has ominous connotations. If you said 'The Item From Another Planet,' it would sound as if we'd been invaded by office supplies.
Same is bad until different is worse.
She was from the wrong side of the tracks no matter how you gerrymandered the town.
The worst thing about depression isn't the sense that you're accentuating the negative, it's that you're seeing things the way they really are, stripped of the illusions you use every day to divert yourself from the Yawning Maw of Futility. It's the wind that blows off the snow and reveals the stone.
The Yoda scenes tend to drag the tenth time you've seen them. ("Stall we must. Second act this is. Talk odd would you if puppet with hand up rear were you.")
Those who don't remember the past are doomed to buy it again at Old Navy, and think they're hip.
Trying to reconstruct the past from the magazines and pictures is like reverse engineering a snowflake from a drop of water.
We always ask where the time went. We never ask where it's coming from.
We are going to lose 51 states. Puerto Rico will demand statehood just for the chance not to vote for this guy.
We're the Axis of Elvis.
When the remodeling contractor points out that Rome wasn't built in a day, it is necessary to point out that Rome was, eventually, built.
When your opponent sets up a straw man, set it on fire and kick the cinders around the stage. Don't worry about losing the Strawperson-American community vote.
You can say what you will about America, but it provides job security for its critics.
Categories: James Lileks, Quotes of the day
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On August 8, 1974, President Richard M. Nixon announced he would resign the next day.
The night before, Nixon had met in the Oval Office with Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott, and Congressman John Jacob Rhodes. They told Nixon that he not only faced certain impeachment in the House of Representatives over the Watergate scandal, but that there were enough votes in the Senate to convict him and remove him from office.
It was the first time a U.S. President resigned.
-----
I thought it was a helluva thriller. JFK`s murder marked the end of a
dream, the end of a concept of idealism that I associate with my youth.
Race war, Vietnam, Watergate. If JFK had lived, the combat situation in
Vietnam would never have occurred.
-Oliver Stone
Everybody has a little bit of Watergate in him.
-Billy Graham
I suspect there have been a number of conspiracies that never were
described or leaked out. But I suspect none of the magnitude and sweep
of Watergate.
-Bob Woodward
I used to think that the Civil War was our country`s greatest tragedy,
but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil
War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on
both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.
-Andrea Cohen
From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our
Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again
so as to reaffirm that no one- absolutely no one- is above the law.
-Leon
Jaworski
Watergate showed more strengths in our system than weaknesses... The
whole country did take part in quite a genuine sense in passing judgment
on Richard Nixon.
-Archibald Cox
Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the
public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are
absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy
and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.
-John le
Carre
The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America
allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to bypass the
regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election.
-Gerald
R. Ford
This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of
innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a
presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will
misbehave.
-Dee Dee Myers
Before Watergate and Viet Nam, the American public, as a whole, believed
everything it was told, and since then it doesn't believe anything, and
both of those extremes hurt us because they prevent us from recognizing
the truth.
-Daniel Keys Moran
Watergate was unique because it allowed the public to play its
democratic role in expressing its outrage at the presidency.
-Samuel
Dash
Well, a lot of people don't want to be quoted. But keep in mind that Bob
Woodward did all of his Watergate reporting with anonymous sources, and
we know how that turned out.
-Edward Klein
The government paid the family of Richard Nixon $18 million for papers,
tape recordings and other materials seized after Watergate.
-Dexter
S. King
I learned one thing in Watergate: I was well-intentioned but
rationalized illegal behavior. You cannot live your life other than
walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.
-Chuck
Colson
When you're a lawyer, you expect your client to lie to you, but not when
he is the President.
-Dick Houser
As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and
President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of
doing.
-Golda Meir
The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man
without punishing the office.
-Arthur M. Schlesinger
You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the
president. I`m innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you
don't, take my job.
-Richard M. Nixon
There's a cancer on the presidency.
-John Dean
I can take it... The tougher it gets, the cooler I get...
-Richard
M. Nixon
I gave 'em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with
relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I'd have done the
same thing.
-Richard M. Nixon
When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.
-Richard
M. Nixon
Once you get into this great stream of history, you can't get out.
-Richard
M. Nixon
Watergate does not bother me,
Does your conscience bother you?
-Lynyrd
Skynyrd
The slow-rising central horror of Watergate is not that it might grind
down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president
whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of
cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might
somehow fail to learn something from it.
-Hunter S. Thompson
Even Napoleon had his Watergate.
-Yogi Berra
Categories: Quotes on a topic, Watergate
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A clear conscience needs no public information officer. (from The New
York Times)
-Unattributed
A conscience which has been bought once will be bought twice.
-Norbert
Weiner
A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.
-Doug
Larson
A man who has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his
intrusion on that of others.
-Jane Austen
A person may sometimes have a clear conscience simply because his head
is empty.
-Ralph W. Sockman
A reformer is one who insists on his conscience being your guide.
-Millard
Miller
A satellite has no conscience.
-Edward R. Murrow
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil
conscience of their parents.
-H.L. Mencken
Almost all reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in
houses just as big as they can pay for.
-Logan Pearsall Smith
Any attempt to replace the personal conscience by a collective
conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward
totalitarianism.
-Hermann Hesse
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a
policy, but nothing more.
-Albert Camus
Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience
of the human race than any other error.
-George Bernard Shaw
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
-Oscar Wilde
Conscience does make cowards of us all.
-William Shakespeare
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
-H.L. Mencken
Conscience is a small inner voice that doesn't speak your language.
-Unattributed
Conscience is better served by a myth.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us someone may be looking.
-H.L.
Mencken
Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular
wish operating within us.
-Sigmund Freud
Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinion of others.
-Sir
Henry Taylor
Conscience places a bridle upon the tongue.
-Publilius Syrus
Conscience reigns but it does not govern.
-Paul Valery
Conscious is when you are aware of something, and conscience is when you
wish you weren't.
-Unattributed
Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
-Robert G. Ingersoll
Did anyone ever wrestle with his conscience and lose?
-Mort Sahl
Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to
conscience, above all liberties.
-John Milton
I am a conscientious man. When I throw rocks at seabirds, I leave no
tern unstoned.
-Ogden Nash
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions,
even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political
person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.
-Lillian
Hellman
I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long
one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and
complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by
conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.
-Theodore
Parker
I don't think you can make a lawyer honest by an act of legislature.
You've got to work on his conscience. And his lack of conscience is what
makes him a lawyer.
-Will Rogers
I have faith in the universe, for it is rational. Law underlies each
happening. And I have faith in my purpose here on earth. I have faith in
my intuition, the language of my conscience, but I have no faith in
speculation about Heaven and Hell. I'm concerned with this time- here
and now.
-Albert Einstein
I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him
is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse
the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality
expressing the very highest respect for law.
-Rev. Martin Luther
King, Jr.
If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you
should go home and examine your conscience.
-Woodrow Wilson
In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused
popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's
representatives.
-Felix Frankfurter
In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.
-Mohandas
K. Gandhi
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three
unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience,
and the prudence never to practice either of them.
-Mark Twain
(Samuel Clemens)
It is easier to cope with a bad conscience than with a bad reputation.
-Friedrich
Wilhelm Nietzsche
Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire,
called conscience.
-George Washington
Most people sell their souls and live with a good conscience on the
proceeds.
-Logan Pearsall Smith
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
-Albert
Einstein
Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect. Be true to
your own mind and conscience, your heart and your soul. So only can you
be true to God.
-Theodore Parker
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and
conscientious stupidity.
-Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Now that women have been more or less freed by the three C's- cars,
can-openers, and contraceptives- it seems too bad that the fourth one,
conscience, so often has to butt in.
-Peg Bracken
Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil,"
it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.
-Sydney
J. Harris
Pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures,
speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain. It is
God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
-C.S. Lewis
People who wrestle with their consciences usually go for two falls out
of three.
-Unattributed
Reason deceives use often; conscience never.
-Jean Jacques Rousseau
Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.
-Henry
Wheeler Shaw
Temptation is the voice of the suppressed evil; conscience is the voice
of the repressed good.
-J.A. Hadfield
The Anglo-Saxon conscience doesn't keep you from doing anything. It just
keeps you from enjoying it.
-Salvador de Madaringa
The bonus is really one of the great give-aways in business enterprise.
It is the annual salve applied to the conscience of the rich and the
wounds of the poor.
-E.B. White
The conscience is a thousand witnesses.
-Richard Taverner
The good conscience of the wicked rest on all the villainies they
refrain form committing.
-Stephen Vizinczey
The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with the all the
collective activities of the human race, springs chiefly from this
source: that individuals have a moral code which makes the actions of
collective man an outrage to their conscience.
-Reinhold Neibuhr
The Religion of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience
of every man.
-James Madison
The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of
nuclear giants and ethical infants.
-Omar Bradley
There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of
conscience.
-Stokely Carmichael
There is nothing evil save that which perverts the mind and shackles the
conscience.
-St. Ambrose
There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and
that is to have a clear conscience, or none at all.
-Ogden Nash
They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart.
There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.
-Joseph
Conrad
To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly
and call your bad behavior "righteous indignation"- this is the height
of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
-Aldous
Huxley
Tyrants have no consciences, and reformers no feeeling; and the world
suffers both by the plague and by the cure.
-Horace Walpole
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not
subject to the regulation of conscience.
-Adam Smith
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector
enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
-John
F. Kennedy
We lie to ourselves, in order that we may still have the excuse of
ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which
we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most
monstrous crimes.
-Aldous Huxley
What we call conscience, in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of
the constable.
-Christian Bovee
When your conscience says law is immoral, don't follow it.
-Jack
Kevorkian
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The Science Is Awesome page on Facebook noted in a post that the Curiosity rover has been on Mars for one year. It's measured radiation there, found dried up stream beds which shows Mars once had flowing water, became the first machine to drill into the surface of another planet, and has discovered some of the elements that are essential for life.
Meanwhile on Earth, the US House of Representatives has voted 40 times to repeal Obamacare.
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People are worried about genetically modified foods, but everything will
be fine. At least that's what my broccoli keeps saying.
-@Kelkulus
Confused about Pork Week. Is it Pork the verb or the noun?
-Joe
Garden
Just had a terrible nightmare where I wasn't effectively leveraging my
core competencies when applying best practices.
-Asterios Kokkinos
*Velociraptor jiggles bathroom door handle* "Someone's in here!"
*jiggling stops*
-Matt Roller
Taylor Swift seems like one of those chicks who thinks it's cute to put
her bare feet on the dashboard of a car when riding shotgun.
-Jenny
Johnson
"Quinoa is an ancient grain." It sure tastes like it.
-Jim
Gaffifan
How come nobody delivers donuts? Why is every donut place afraid of a
million dollars?
-Andy Daly
I wish malls had Destroy-a-Bear stores.
-Alex Blagg
There should be a third gun in 2 Guns that audience members can
kill themselves with.
-Jake Weisman
Google Geek Camp is a great way for your children to interact with grown
men wearing eyeball cameras.
-Amanda Melson
OK. In hindsight, I probably had too many references to karma in that
eulogy.
-Justin Shanes
Facebook is suddenly nothing more than an accounting of which of my
friends and relatives will believe anything they read.
-Dave Holmes
Eating a turkey burger is like watching "Goodfellas" on basic cable.
-CJ
Sullivan
I bet Andy Dufresne ended up married miserable and sick of Mexican food.
-Moshe
Kasher
Older, unmarried man in a cape says he's okay with gays. Huh.
-Alex
Baze
Still haven't seen "Pacific Rim" but did shake a bag of recycling, so
kind of?
-Albertina Rizzo
Great place for humor: HappyPlaceTM.
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Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 - February 22, 1987) was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives. It is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist.
Born Andrej Varhola, Jr., Warhol was the fourth child of Andrej Varhola (Americanized as Andrew Warhola, Sr., 1889–1942) and Júlia (née Zavacká, 1892–1972). His parents were working-class Lemko emigrants from Mikó (now called Miková), located in today's northeastern Slovakia, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Warhol's father immigrated to the United States in 1914, and his mother joined him in 1921, after the death of Warhol's grandparents. Warhol's father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. (Click for full Wikipedia article)
Quotes:
After being alive, the next hardest work is having sex.
Art is what you can get away with.
As soon as you stop wanting something you get it. I've found that to be absolutely axiomatic.
Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there- I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television- you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television.
Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.
Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.
During the 60s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered.
Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.
I don't see anything wrong with being alone, it feels great to me.
I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images, because their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective-images do.
I'm a deeply superficial person.
I've never met a person I couldn't call a beauty.
In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.
Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.
Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, "So what." That's one of my favorite things to say. "So what."
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.
When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them.
People should fall in love with their eyes closed.
I think everybody should be nice to everybody.
An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.
It's not what you are that counts, it’s what they think you are.
-----
Warhol died in New York City at 6:32 am on February 22, 1987. According to news reports, he had been making good recovery from routine gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital before dying in his sleep from a sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia. Prior to his diagnosis and operation, Warhol delayed having his recurring gallbladder problems checked, as he was afraid to enter hospitals and see doctors.
"I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish,
everything should just keep going on the way it was only you just
wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be
blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say
"figment'."-Andy Warhol
(Photo credit: QuirkyTravelGuy.com)
Warhol is buried at the St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park. It's located right behind PAT's Washington Junction light rail station. To get there from Library Road (Route 88), turn on to Connor Road. In about 250 feet, there's an unmarked intersection. On the right is Willow Avenue; on the left is the entrance to the cemetery. His grave should be easy to spot; visitors leave cans of Campbell Soup and other gifts. Or plug the following into your GPS: N 40° 21.266; W 080° 01.790.
Categories: Andy Warhol, Quotes of the day
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Granddaughter Leanna enjoying her vacation
in the woods in northern
Pennsylvania.
Categories: KGB Family
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Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (August 5, 1850 – July 6, 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents.
A protégé of Flaubert, Maupassant's stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouements. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He authored some 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse. The story "Boule de Suif" ("Ball of Fat", 1880) is often accounted his masterpiece. His most unsettling horror story, "Le Horla" (1887), was about madness and suicide, and has been cited as an inspiration for American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu." Fans of the Star Trek television series have suggested writer/producer Gene L. Coon modified the neologism "horla" to "horta" in naming the silicon-based creature which appeared in the series' "Devil in the Dark" episode
Click here for the full Wikipedia article on de Maupassant.
---
A legal kiss is never as good as a stolen one.
Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.
History, that excitable and lying old lady.
How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!
I have come to the conclusion that the bed comprehends our whole life; for we were bom in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it.
It is the encounters with people that make life worth living.
Legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother.
Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.
Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being. We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us.
Military men are the scourges of the world.
Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.
We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs... of our barbarous ancestors.
You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.
Categories: Guy de Maupassant, Quotes of the day
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If the doctors told Sen. McConnell he had a kidney stone, he would
refuse to pass it.
-U.S. Senate candidate Alison Grimes (D-KY)
Categories: Paula Poundstone, Politics, Snrk
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Barack Hussein Obama II, born August 4, 1961, is the 44th and current President of the United States, the first African American to hold the office. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law school from 1992 to 2004. (Click for full Wikipedia article.)
-----
Americans... still believe in an America where anything's possible- they just don't think their leaders do.
Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you feel the impact.
Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can't stop marching. Even when they're turning the hoses on you, you can't stop.
I miss being anonymous.
I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks.
If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren't willing to make some sacrifices in order to realize them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.
In my first term, we passed health care reform. In my second term, I guess I'll pass it again.
It may make your blood boil and your mind may not be changed, but the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. It is essential for our democracy.
Look, when I was a kid, I inhaled frequently. That was the point.
Many of you know that I got my name, Barack, from my father. What you may not know is Barack is actually Swahili for "That One." And I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn't think I'd ever run for president.
Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.
My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.
My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.
The elevation of appearance over substance, of celebrity over character, of short term gains over lasting achievement displays a poverty of ambition. It distracts you from what's truly important.
The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me and completely baffling to my wife.
There a few things in life harder to find and more important to keep than love. Well, love and a birth certificate.
There's not an action that I take that you don't have some folks in Congress who say that I'm usurping my authority. Some of those folks think I usurp my authority by having the gall to win the presidency.
We live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained.
We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.
We've got a story to tell that isn't just against something but is for something.
What Washington needs is adult supervision.
When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.
You can question somebody's views and their judgment without questioning their motives or patriotism.
Categories: Barack Obama, Quotes of the day
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The Big Mac was introduced in 1968. It cost 45 cents.
The federal minimum wage was $1.60 an hour.
Excluding taxes, a McDonald's worker could buy 3.5 Big Macs for one hour of work.
The price varies by location, but today a Big Mac is about $3.99.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
One hour of work now equals only 1.8 Big Macs.
Now do you see the problem?
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[Lecturing to college students] was like being in a house with a whole
set of very bright baboons. You expected them to burst into human speech
at any minute, but they never did.
-Katherine Anne Porter
A good indignation makes an excellent speech.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
A speech is made great, not from the words used, but from the ideas
conveyed. If the ideas, principles and values and substance of the
speech are great, then it's going to be a great speech, even if the
words are pedestrian. The words can be soaring, beautiful and eloquent
but if the ideas are flat, empty or mean, it's not a great speech.
-Theodore
(Ted) Sorensen
Anyone wishing to communicate with Americans should do so by e-mail,
which has been specially invented for the purpose, involving neither
physical proximity nor speech.
-Auberon Waugh
Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing
college students should never be released into the world until they have
been properly sedated.
-Garry Trudeau
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
except to encourage attendance in Christian churches; or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof, except to require prayer in schools; or abridging
the freedom of speech, except for those questioning the Bush
administration; or of the press, except that not owned by Rupert
Murdoch; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, except those
protesting pre-emptive wars; and to petition the government for a
redress of grievance, except those we don't like.
-Gary Hart
During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa.
-Henry
Adams
Election year is that period when politicians get free speech mixed up
with cheap talk.
-J.B. Kidd
Freedom of speech in no way guarantees freedom from hearing.
-Pat
Paulsen
I believe in the free speech that liberals used to believe in, the
economic freedom that conservatives used to believe in, and the personal
freedom that America used to believe in.
-Doug Mataconis
I want to be American. America is the coolest place on the face of the
Earth. You've got freedom of speech. You've got McDonalds.
-Ozzy
Osbourne
If figures of speech based on sport and fornication were suddenly
banned, American corporate communication would be reduced to pure
mathematics.
-Jay McInerny
If you want free speech, walk in a closet and talk to yourself.
-Howard
Stern
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the
indefensible.
-George Orwell
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three
unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience,
and the prudence never to practice either of them.
-Mark Twain
(Samuel Clemens)
It is not enough to "have" free speech. People must learn to speak
freely.
-Christopher Hitchens
Liberty don't work as good in practice as it does in speeches.
-Will
Rogers
Look wise, say nothing, and grunt: speech was given to conceal thought.
-William
Osler
Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It
seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.
-Lyndon B.
Johnson
Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then
mount the stump for a speech on conservation.
-Adlai E. Stevenson
II
Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?
-Roger
Ebert
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of
thought which they seldom use.
-Søren Kierkegaard
Politically popular speech has always been protected: even the Jews were
free to say "Heil Hitler."
-Isaac Asimov
Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech.
-Susan Sontag
Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory
word, preserves contact- it is silence which isolates.
-Thomas Mann
Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where
it often substitutes for both.
-John Andrew Holmes
Speech is not free if it costs people their jobs.
-Henry A. Wallace
Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old
listeners.
-Anthony Trollope
The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.
-Clifton
Fadiman
The best impromptu speeches are the ones written well in advance.
-Ruth
Gordon
The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the
point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation
to tolerate speech.
-Anthony Kennedy
The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech, because
nobody ever tries to ban the other kind.
-Mike Godwin
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in
falsely shouting "fire" in a theater and causing a panic.
-Oliver
Wendell Holmes
The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that
we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.
-Justice
Robert Jackson
The price of liberty is, in addition to eternal vigilance, eternal
patience with the vacuous blather occasionally expressed from behind the
shield of free speech.
-Michael Shermer
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not
the power of speech.
-George Bernard Shaw
Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial
in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead
to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.
-George
Orwell
Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books,
and there is some evidence that they can't read them, either.
-Gore
Vidal
We are so proud of our guarantees of freedom in thought and speech and
worship, that, unconsciously, we are guilty of one of the greatest
errors that ignorance can make- we assume our standard of values is
shared by all other humans in the world.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech.
-David Brin
What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to.
-Hansell
B. Duckett
Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when
driven to speech by something outside himself-like, for instance, he
can't find any clean socks.
-Jean Kerr
You have the right to free speech, as long as you're not dumb enough to
actually try it.
-The Clash
Categories: First Amendment, Quotes on a topic
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A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
-Walter
Bagehot
Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by
kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more
thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
-Penn
Jillette
Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of
charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice
of its own indifference.
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Dogs' lives are too short. Their only fault, really.
-Agnes Sligh
Turnbull
Employees want to feel they participated in the formation of the
business plan. This scam is called "buy in," and it's essential for
reminding the employees that if anything goes wrong, it's their fault.
-Scott
Adams
Failure to understand reality is not reality's fault.
-Bill
Henneman
I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you.
-Robert
J. Elkins
I hold that companionship is a matter of mutual weaknesses. We like that
man or woman best who has the same faults we have.
-George J.
Nathan
I like a friend better for having faults that one can talk about.
-William
Hazlitt
I might have my faults, but being wrong ain't one of them.
-Jimmy
Hoffa
I think that in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be
somewhat poisoned by emotion. Dislike, displeasure, resentment,
faultfinding, imagination, passionate remonstrance, a sense of
injustice- they all make fine fuel.
-Edna Ferber
If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.
-Jack
Kerouac
If you want people to notice your faults, start giving advice.
-Kelly
Stephens
If youth is a fault, it is one which is soon corrected.
-Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.
-James Thurber
It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted
to do something.
-Anthony Trollope
Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked
and even hated but for our qualities.
-Bernard Berenson
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of
control of them.
-Jack Kerouac
My perception was/is that while the rest of the computer world was
striving for Fault Tolerant Software, Microsoft was working on Fault
Tolerant Users.
-John Robinson
None of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
-Oscar
Wilde
People who think they're generous to a fault usually think that's their
only fault.
-Sydney J. Harris
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents'
shortcomings.
-Laurence J. Peter
Some faults are so closely allied to qualities that it is difficult to
weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.
-Oliver Goldsmith
Some people find fault like there's a reward for it.
-Zig Ziglar
The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.
-Benjamin
Franklin
The fault lies not with our technologies but with our systems.
-Roger
Levian
The future is unwritten. Cyberspace is the funhouse mirror of our own
society, reflects our values and our faults, sometimes in terrifying
exaggerations. It doesn't matter who you are today, if you don't show up
in that mirror you are just not going to matter very much. Our kids have
to show up in the mirror.
-Bruce Sterling
The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any
other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
-Alexis
de Tocqueville
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it
deliberately with faulty arguments.
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people,
they think it's their fault.
-Henry Kissinger
The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that's
laughable is vanity.
-Henri Bergson
There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing
opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor,
perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without
responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.
-John F. Kennedy
To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.
-Alexander
Pope
Tolerance comes with age. I see no fault committed that I myself could
not have committed at some time or other.
-Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe
We are dismayed when we find that even disaster cannot cure us of our
faults.
-Marquis de Vauvenargues
We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves that we have no
great ones.
-Francois de la Rochefoucauld
We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has
accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.
-George
Eliot
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful
God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own
mistakes.
-Gene Roddenberry
We see men fall from high estate on account of the very faults through
which they attained it.
-Jean de la Bruyere
We've been through so much together, and most of it was your fault.
-Ashleigh
Brilliant
When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it
is relinquished voluntarily by default, it can never be recovered.
-Dorothy
Thompson
When you like someone, you like them in spite of their faults. When you
love someone, you love them with their faults.
-Hermann Hesse
With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any
other organization of men that ever existed.
-Clarence Darrow
Categories: Quotes on a topic
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(Photo By Cody Duty/Houston Chronicle)
The Galileo shuttlecraft, fully restored to its original luster when it was featured in the 1967 Star Trek episode "The Galileo Seven," is now on permanent display inside Space Center Houston’s Zero-G Diner. (Click for full story.)
Categories: Star Trek
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