Welcome to Random Thoughts!
What It Is, and What It Ain't
I guess this is where I'll put whatever random stuff I feel like putting up. It may change frequently, and it may not. Some stuff may stay and some may leave. In other words, I'll do whatever pleases me at the moment. Those of you who know me are probably either laughing or cursing right now after reading that last line.
Quotes
I like quotes from people who actually have interesting thoughts. They can inspire and teach. These are ones that struck something in me. You may agree with them, or not, but hopefully they will provoke thought or conversation. I will start with three that seem especially important right now. I have emailed this to President Bush to remind him of the beliefs of some of this Country's most important leaders and thinkers. I only wish he would actually receive and read the email and give the quote serious thoughtful consideration. Maybe if enough people did this........"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
"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
"Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare."
Dorothy Thompson
"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free." Clarence Darrow
"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
"The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with." Eleanor Holmes Norton
"We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free." Epictetus
"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be." James Baldwin
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." Confucius
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." J.R.R. Tolkien
"The real measure of our worth is how much we'd be worth if we lost all our money." John Henry Jowett
"If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third, place." Cicero
"The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender." Vince Lombardi
"The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for." Oscar Wilde
Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence. Lin Yutang
"Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it." Jane Wagner
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." Albert Einstein
"I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies another this right makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it." Thomas Paine
"If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere." Frank A. Clark
"There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo." Erma Bombeck
"Blessed are the idiots for they are the happiest people on earth." Lin Yutang
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." Pablo Picasso
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant." Robert F. Kennedy
"The world knows very little about its heroes. The courageous acts that take most out of you are usually the ones that other people will never know about." Anne Tyler
"Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic." Dan Rather
"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity." Albert Einstein
"No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating." Harold Rosenberg
"We often think that when we have completed our study of 'one' that we know all about 'two,' because 'two' is 'one and one.' We forget that we still have to make a study of 'and.'" Sir Arthur Eddington
"You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred." Woody Allen
"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth." Muhammad Ali
"Man, unlike the animals, has never learned that the sole purpose of life is to enjoy it." Samuel Butler
"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city." George Burns
"The only man who makes no mistakes, is the man who never does anything." Eleanor Roosevelt
"When life hands you a lemon, say, 'Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else ya got?'" Henry Rollins
"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." Erica Jong
"There's no heavier burden than a great potential." (Linus' Law) Charles Schultz
"Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half." Gore Vidal
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." Mahatma Gandhi
"We attract hearts by the qualities we display; we retain them by the qualities we possess." Jean Baptiste Antoine Suard
"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office." Robert Frost
"Life is like a ten-speed bike; most of us have gears we never use." Charles M. Schultz
"He never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today." Tryon Edwards
"Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." Thomas Alva Edison
"Character isn't inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts…." Helen Gahagan Douglas
"If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they wouldn't reach any conclusion." George Bernard Shaw
"The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause." Mark Twain
"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." Dr. Seuss
"The point of quotations is that one can use another's words to be insulting." Amanda Cross
"It is no profit to have learned well if you neglect to do well." Publilius Syrus
"I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy." J. D. Salinger
"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance." Kurt Vonnegut
"Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor." Robert Frost
"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place." H. L. Mencken
"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking." Jerry Seinfeld
"What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public." Vilhjalmur Stefansson
"Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy." Isaac Newton
"We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems." John W. Gardner
"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument." William G. McAdoo
"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." Solomon Short
"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity." Louis Pasteur
"You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down." Mary Pickford
"It is not just the strength of great ideas but the duration of their influence that changes society." Friedrich Nietzche
"You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward." James Thurber
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." Robert A. Heinlein
"Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box." Italian Proverb
"Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists." John Kenneth Galbraith
"To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself." Albert Einstein
"My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?" Charles Schultz
"That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent." Aldous Huxley
"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them." Isaac Asimov
"The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure." Jean Jacques Rousseau
"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." Edgar Allen Poe
"The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them." Orson Scott Card
"When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all." Theodore Roosevelt
"When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water." Benjamin Franklin
"The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards." Arthur Koestler
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." Galileo
"Creative ideas reside in people's minds but are trapped by fear or rejection. Create a judgment-free environment and you'll unleash a torrent of creativity." Alex Osborne
"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." Mark Twain
"It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know." Henry David Thoreau
"When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened." John M. Richardson, Jr.
"It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem." Malcolm Forbes
"I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views." Abraham Lincoln
"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything." George Lois
"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip." Will Rogers
"A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world." John le Carre
"Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality." Jules de Gaultier
"Always be nice to people on the way up; because you'll meet the same people on the way down." Wilson Mizner
"I've always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position." Pat Conroy
If you want a happy ending, that depends of course on where you stop your story." Orson Welles
"All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income." Samuel Butler
"Education: That which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge." Mark Twain
"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." Mignon McLaughlin
"Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily." George Santayana
"If you don't accept responsibility for your own actions, then you are forever chained to a position of defense." Holly Lisle
"The secret of being boring is to say everything." Voltaire
"The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution." Bertrand Russell
"There are only two ways of telling the complete truth -- anonymously and posthumously." Thomas Sowell
"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues." Abraham Lincoln
"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." A. A. Milne
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true." James Branch Cabell
"Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings." Laurence J. Peter
"Trouble is only opportunity in work clothes." Henry J. Kaiser
"Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other." John F. Kennedy
"Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of witnesses." Margaret Millar
"I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life." Rita Rudner
"See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing if you are for the right thing then you'll do it without thinking." Maya Angelou
"Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome." Arthur Ashe
"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people." W.C. Fields
"Be who you are and say what you feel 'cause people who mind don't matter and people who matter don't mind." Theodor Seuss Geisel
"Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else." Ogden Nash
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." Oscar Wilde
"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after." George Orwell
"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give." Sir Winston Churchill
"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before." Mae West
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." Bill Cosby
"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort." Herm Albright
"It is useless to try to reason someone out of something they were never reasoned into." Jonathan Swift
"My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right? Charles M. Schulz
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." Mark Twain
"We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic." Susan Jeffers
"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty." Maya Angelou
"The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." Oscar Wilde
"You always pass failure on the way to success." Mickey Rooney
"He who dares to teach must never cease to learn." John Cotton Dana
"What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others." Confucius
"On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use." Epictetus
"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails." Bertha Calloway
"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity." Henry David Thoreau
"There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"It is a sign of strength, not of weakness, to admit that you don't know all the answers." John P. Lougbrane
"Muddy water, let stand - becomes clear." Lao Tzu
"Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." Chief Seattle
"If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either." Dick Cavett
"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost." J. R. R. Tolkien
"There are two kinds of light: the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures." James Thurber
"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." H.G. Wells
"From listening comes wisdom, and from speaking repentance." Sun Tzu
"You don't lead by pointing a finger and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case." Ken Kesey
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
"The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well." John D. Rockefeller
"You must be the change you want to see in the world." Mahatma Ghandi
"Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods." Aristotle
"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with." Mark Twain
"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is." Erich Fromm
"The more you know, the more you know you need to know." Garth R. Morgan
"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them." George Bernard Shaw
"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it." Pablo Picasso
"I never did very well in math. I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally." Calvin Trillin
"When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty." George Bernard Shaw
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Abraham Lincoln
"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." Solomon Short
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live." Henry David Thoreau
"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others." Cicero
"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives." William Dement
"Before criticizing someone, walk a mile in their shoes. Then when you do criticize them, you will be a mile away and have their shoes." John Handy
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved." Helen Keller
"Sometimes the only difference we can make is passing our wisdom on to someone who will make the bigger difference." Linda B. Gray
"Regret for wasted time is more wasted time." Mason Cooley
"If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach toward immortality." Norman Cousins
"Look to the future, because that's where you'll spend the rest of your life." George Burns
"When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it." Bernard Bailey
"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none." Thomas Carlyle
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'." Michael McClary
"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." H. L. Mencken
"Life's a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest." Wilson Mizner
"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not." Andre Gide
"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities." Sophocles
"New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more we have to work with, the richer we become." Kurt Vonnegut
"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea." Robert Heinlein
"Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities." Aldous Huxley
"He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate." Henry David Thoreau
"One of the standard problems with the universe is that it's large enough that unlikely things happen pretty often." Nigel Sharp
"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength." Eric Hoffer
"Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself - and thus make yourself indispensable." Andre Gide
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." John Lennon
"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." Alvin Toffler
"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer." Frank Zappa
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
"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
"Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare." Dorothy Thompson