Favorite quotes:
To call him a dog hardly seems to do him justice, though inasmuch as he had four legs, a tail, and barked, I admit he was, to all outward appearances. But to those of us who knew him well, he was a perfect gentleman. - Hermione Gingold
We want GE to become a company where people come to work everyday in a rush to try something they woke up thinking about the night before. We want them to go home from work wanting to talk about what they did that day, rather than trying to forget about it. We want factories where the whistle blows and everyone wonders where the time went, and someone suddenly wonders aloud why we need a whistle. We want a company where people find a better way, every day of doing things: and where by shaping their own work experience, they make their lives better and our Company best. - General Electric Vision Statement
Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior. - Dee Hock
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. - Reinhold Niebuhr ("Serenity Prayer")
The important thing is to advance brightly and strive to be victorious at each moment, right where we are; to begin something here and now instead of fretting and worrying over what will happen. This is the starting point for transforming our lives. - Daisaku Ikeda (from Raquel)
For some people, Atlas Shrugged is a cautionary tale. For others, it's a how-to manual. - Glenn Reynolds, InstaPundit.com, 11-Jul-2011
Modern art is what happened when painters stopped looking at girls. - Bernard Samson (Len Deighton in "Spy Line")
Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. If you're going through hell, keep going. We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. Anyone who isn't a liberal by age 20 has no heart. Anyone who isn't a conservative by age 40 has no brain. - Winston Churchill
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule it. - H. L. Mencken
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. - George Orwell
The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher (paraphrased)
I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end. - Margaret Thatcher
A nation of sheep will surely beget a government of wolves. - Henry de Jouvenel
To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead. - Thomas Paine
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. - Mark Twain
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. - H. L. Mencken
Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do. - Oprah Winfrey
Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. - Carrie Fisher
A good piece of magic is a work of art and should be respected as such; it is a flower, not an alarm clock, and if you pull it to pieces to find out what makes it work, you have destroyed it, and your own pleasure. - Robertson Davies
When you get a dog you're in for some of the happiest years of your life, and one of the worst days of your life.
An entertainer gives you exactly what you want. An entertainer gives you those good old songs that you want to hear. An artist gives you what you don't know you want. Something you might know you want the next time, but you never knew you wanted before. - David Cronenberg
My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub. - Grover Norquist.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. - Benjamin Franklin
Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm. - Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain. - Vivian Greene
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. - Thomas Jefferson
Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner. - Lao Tzu
Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times. - Aeschylus (from "The Running Grave", Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling))
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Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. - the famous voiceover from Apple's Think Different ads (Steve Jobs).
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather What can I and my compatriots do through government to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?
Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp. - Economist Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Whatever is well conceived is clearly said, And the words to say it flow with ease. - Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it. - Joan Didion
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers. - Calvin Coolidge, Address at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 5, 1926.
Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn. Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth - The Dark Knight (2008) (IMDb)
In every partnership, there is a person who stacks the dishwasher like a Scandinavian architect and a person who stacks the dishwasher like a racoon on meth. - Coley (@ColeyTangerina) on Twitter, 22-Feb-2023
Earth is a beta site.
Ralph's Observation: It is a mistake to let any mechanical object realise that you are in a hurry.
Never have more kids than you have car windows. - Erma Bombeck
Carpe diem (seize the day).
The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. - Frederic Bastiat
I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death. - Patrick Henry (St. John's Church, March 1775)
When I rest, I rust. - Fritz Thyssen, German industrialist (1873-1951)
It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt. - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) (by way of Michelle Malkin)
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
In 1850 Robert Ingersoll wrote that schools polish the pebbles and dull the diamonds.
My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light! - First Fig, from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), Edna St. Vincent Millay
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures - Jessamyn West
Peter Keating is the man who wasn't great and didn't know it. Ellsworth Toohey is the man who wasn't great and knew it. Wynand is the man who was great but didn't know it. And Roark is the man who was great and knew it. - Ayn Rand on "The Fountainhead"
Woke is just the latest politically correct term for being politically correct...
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. - Alan Kay
Bumper Stickers:
Eve was framed…
It's not the pace of life that worries me, but the sudden stop at the end…
Love mystifies me… Chocolate I understand.
Forget world peace... Visualize using your turn signal.
I understand. I just don't care.