Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Track

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." --Will Rogers

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Seek

Isidor Isaac Rabi's mother used to ask him, upon his return from school each day, "Did you ask any good questions today, Isaac"?
--Steve Chandler

Friday, March 27, 2009

Goals III

"Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I'll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I'll give you a stock clerk." --J.C. Penney

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Interesting

"An interesting life is one filled with controversial successes punctuated by occasional and spectacular failures"
--Paul Yingling, Lt. Col., Political Philosophy Professor U.S. Military Academy at West Point

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Troubles

"I have had many troubles, but the worst of them never came."
--James A. Garfield (1831-1881) 20th US President

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Occasionally

"Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature."
--Kin Hubbard

Monday, March 23, 2009

Scoundrels

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
--H. L. Mencken

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Dilemma

And so we had to step in. And it [the bank bailouts] was the right thing to do -- even though it's infuriating, even though it makes you angry, because you're thinking, I was responsible, and these folks are irresponsible, and somehow I'm paying for them -- it was the right thing to do to step in.

The same is true with AIG. It was the right thing to do to step in. Here's the problem. It's almost like they've got -- they got a bomb strapped to them and they've got their hand on the trigger. You don't want them to blow up, but you got to kind of talk them -- ease that finger off the trigger.

--President Barack Obama, March 18, 2009, town hall meeting, Cosa Mesa, California

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Hard

"When I hear somebody say, Life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, Compared to what?"
--Sydney J. Harris

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Participants

"CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power."
--Arthur C. Clarke

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Rules

"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
--Henry David Thoreau

Monday, March 16, 2009

Boxing

"To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other."
--Jack Handey

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Waiting

"I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long "

--Arthur C. Clarke, "The Sentinel" (1948), original titled "Sentinel of Eternity" this is the short story which later provided the fundamental ideas for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) written by Clarke and Stanley Kubrick.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Figures

"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

Figures

"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

Friday, March 13, 2009

Bow

"Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?
--Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Fear III

Death is not the biggest fear we have;
our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive --
the risk to be alive and express what we really are.
--Don Miguel Ruiz

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Science II

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835-1910)

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Hunger

"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all."
--Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977)

Monday, March 09, 2009

Very

"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history." --Dan Quayle

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Somebody

"Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us."
--Jerry Garcia, (of the Grateful Dead)

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Do

"It's not only what we do, but what we fail to do, for which we are accountable."
--Moliere (1622-1673)

Friday, March 06, 2009

Apolitical

"The scientific name for an animal that doesn't either run from or fight its enemies is lunch."
--Michael Friedman

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Expectations III

"I never expect to lose. Even when I'm the underdog, I still prepare a victory speech."
--Jackson Brown (Life's Little Instruction Book)

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Spare

"Spare An Animal, Eat A Vegetable"
--Author Unknown

Monday, March 02, 2009

Patients

"Patients of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains"
--TLC (With thanks to Karl)

"Modern Health Care System Is The Leading Cause Of Death"

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Celibate

"A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism."
--Carl Sagan (1934-1996) US astronomer, author