Promises

Civilization rests on a set of promises; if the promises are broken too often, the civilization dies, no matter how rich it may be, or how mechanically clever. Hope and faith depend on the promises; if hope and faith go, everything goes.

-- Herbert Agar, American author

RIP Michael Crichton

We are all assumed, these days, to reside at one extreme of the opinion spectrum, or another. We are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. We are free traders or protectionist. We are pro-private sector or pro-big government. We are feminists or chauvinists. But in the real world, few of us hold these extreme views. There is instead a spectrum of opinion.

-- Dr. John Michael Crichton (23 October 1942 - 4 November 2008), American author, film & TV producer, "Mediasaurus: The decline of conventional media" - Speech at the National Press Club, Washington D.C. (7 April 1993)

Don't Have To Think

The whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time.

-- Homer Simpson

Politician Vs. Statesman

A politician is a man who thinks of the next election; while the statesman thinks of the next generation.

-- James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888), preacher and author

Talk Sense

Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man -- war, poverty, and tyranny -- and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each.

-- Adlai Stevenson, acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, IL, 26 July 1952

Victory, Not Truth

Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than virtue.

-- Robert Wright, author and journalist (b. 1957)

Orthodoxy

As gifted as he is, he is essentially going to execute the Republican agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda, with a new face and a maverick approach to it, and he'd be quite good at it. But I think we need a generational change.

-- Colin L. Powell, discussing Senator John McCain, and endorsing Senator Barack Obama, New York Times, 20 October 2008

In Defense Of Cheating

[O]ur current educational methods ... test by requiring students to prove that they can regurgitate the information presented in class without assistance from others .... But in real life, asking others for help is not only permitted, it is encouraged. Why not rethink the entire purpose of our examination system? We should be encouraging students to learn how to use all possible resources to come up with effective answers to important problems. Students should be encouraged to ask others for help, and they should also be taught to give full credit to those others. So, the purpose of this contribution to Ubiquity is to offer an alternative approach: to examine the origins of cheating, and by solving the root cause, to simultaneously reduce or eliminate cheating while enhancing learning.

-- Donald A. Norman, Professor of Computer Science, Northwestern University, Ubiquity, Volume 6, Issue 11, 29 September 2008

http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v6i11_norman.html

Lack

I'm glad I didn't have to fight in any war. I'm glad I didn't have to pick up a gun. I'm glad I didn't get killed or kill somebody. I hope my kids enjoy the same lack of manhood.

-- Tom Hanks

The Other Attitude

I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me.

-- Paul Leonard Newman (1925-01-26 - 2008-09-26), American actor and film director, founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all profits and royalties to charity, in "Paul Newman's Road To Glory", interview with Paul Fischer, Film Monthly, 1 July 2002

Remorse

True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it is a regret over motive.

-- Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)

Newspapers

A newspaper is not just for reporting the news, it's to get people mad enough to do something about it.

-- Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel Clemens (1835-1910), American writer and humorist

Procedure Is Everything

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats, procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

-- Thomas Sowell (30 June 1930-), American economist, political writer, and commentator

Whose Problem?

If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.

-- J. Paul Getty (1892-1976) American industrialist

We Often Borrow

We often borrow from our tomorrows to pay our debts to our yesterdays.

-- Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) [Sand and Foam]

Rivet Their Chains

If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Too Easy A Disguise

How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be "American" before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? It is really too easy a disguise for our shortcomings to dress them up as a form of patriotism!

-- Edith Wharton

Space Otherwise Reserved

If I extrapolate from myself, there's a lot of deceit in the world without a beginning, middle, or end. The way it really works, a lot of the time, is that you suffer from the weight of what happened, from what you said and did, so you lie as therapy. Now the story you make up starts to take up space otherwise reserved for reality. For phenomena you substitute epiphenomena. Skew becomes ascendant. The secondary becomes primary. When it's time to confess, you don't know what you're saying.

-- David Guterson (4 May 1956-), American novelist, short story writer, poet, in "The Other" (2008)

Bypassing Trouble

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935), American Judge

Bannister

The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the one who will win.

-- Roger Bannister (1929-), British athlete, first person in the world to run a mile in under four minutes, on May 6, 1954

Mistakes

Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.

-- Al Franken, "Oh, the Things I Know", 2002

Knock Yourself On The Head

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.

-- Horace Mann, educational reformer (1796-1859)

Awful Privilege

An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.

-- William K. Clifford (4 May 1845 - 3 March 1879), English mathematician and philosopher, The Ethics of Belief (1877)

No Chaste Minds

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

-- Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

Code For The Maintainer

Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live.

-- From theC2 Wiki Page, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CodeForTheMaintainer

Ridiculous

Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in.

-- Sam Harris, author (1967- )

Violence

Victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. ... [W]hen you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color, or his beliefs or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who are different from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens, but as enemies. Our lives on this planet are too short, the work to be done is too great. But we can perhaps remember, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life, that they seek as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness. Surely this bond of common fate, this bond of common roles can begin to teach us something, that we can begin to work a little harder, to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

-- Robert Francis Kennedy (20 November 1925 - 6 June 1968), American politician, "On the Mindless Menace of Violence", speech, City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio, 5 April 1968, the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated

Extent To Which You Resist

The state can't give you freedom, and the state can't take it away. Freedom is something you're born with, and then one day someone tries to deny it. The extent to which you resist is the extent to which you are free.

-- Bruce "Utah" Phillips (1935 - 2008), labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet; "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest"

Fat Chance

But if it's true that the only true life I had was the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for eight hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that, at the end of the day, they will give it back in an unmutilated condition? Fat chance!

-- Bruce "Utah" Phillips (1935 - 2008), labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet; "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest"

RIP Utah Phillips

It takes a long time just to plain shut up and listen.

-- Bruce "Utah" Phillips (May 15, 1935 - May 23, 2008), labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet, and self-described "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest", 2004 Democracy Now interview, on the difficulty of learning the lessons of life

If You Want To Feel Proud

If you want to feel proud of yourself, you need to do things of which to feel proud. Feelings follow actions.

-- Oseola McCarty (1908-1999), washerwoman in Hattiesburg, MI, famous for her bequest to Southern Miss

Test The Depths

When you want to test the depths of a stream, don't use both feet.

-- Chinese Proverb

Take It As It Happens

You have to take it as it happens, but you should try to make it happen the way you want to take it.

-- German proverb

Dying?

Somebody ought to tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit every minute of every day. Do it, I say, whatever you want to do, do it now.

-- Michael Landon (1936-1991), American actor, director

Begin Now

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake.

-- Marie Beyon Ray

We Hate Change

Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.

-- Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986) British-born U. S. journalist and author

Risk Anything

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

-- Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) New Zealander modernist writer

And Yet

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are -- that is the fact.

-- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French existentialist philosopher, dramatist & novelist

Abstinent

People can be abstinent, and it's not weird.

-- Jami Waite, a teenager in Hallsville, Texas, New York Times, 18 July 2007

Irony

Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.

-- Bill Nye, Interview with Wired.com, April 2005

No Regrets

We should have no regrets. The past is finished. There is nothing to be gained by going over it. Whatever it gave us in the experiences it brought us was something we had to know.

-- Rebecca Beard, physician, speaker, author

Wasted

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted.

-- Ruth E. Renkl

Not How Old You Are

It is not how old you are, but how you are old.

-- Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)

A Skeleton In Your Closet

If you have a skeleton in your closet, take it out and dance with it.

-- Carolyn MacKenzie

Consider Every Day Lost

We should consider eve