Monday, December 31, 2012

Two

"The reason there are two senators for each state is so that one can be the designated driver."
--Jay Leno

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Pretext

"To the wicked, everything serves as pretext."

--Voltaire

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Diagnosis

"The fact that your patient gets well does not prove that your diagnosis was correct."
--Samuel J. Meltzer

Friday, December 28, 2012

Predict

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
--Alan Kay

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Progress V

"Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator and change has its enemies."
--Robert Kennedy

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Taught

"Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught."

--Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), U.S. writer

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Radiations

"The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reaches us. So it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiations of their personalities".
--Kahlil Gibran

Monday, December 24, 2012

Scraps

"Life is like a path...and we all have to walk the path... As we walk... we'll find experiences like little scraps of paper in front of us along the way. We must pick up those pieces of scrap paper and put them in our pocket... Then, one day, we will have enough scraps of papers to put together and see what they say... Read the information and take it to heart."
--Uncle Frank Davis (quoting his mother), Pawnee

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Error II

"The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832)

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Fantastic

"Science has 'explained' nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness." --Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English Novelist, Essayist, Critic


Friday, December 21, 2012

Golden

"You have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by."
--Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) Scottish Journalist, Writer, Dramatist

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Worth

"A diamond with a flaw is worth more than a pebble without imperfections."
--Chinese Proverb

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Nonconformist

"If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standards of nonconformity."
--Bill Vaughan

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

First III

"If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax."
-- Plutarch

Monday, December 17, 2012

Worthlessness

"He's the best physician that knows the worthlessness of the most medicines."
--Benjamin Franklin

Precarious

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
--Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Source: The Gathering Storm, bk.I ch.19 p.348 (Houghton Mifflin, 1948)

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Lists

"In 1928, Germany enacted its Gesetz uber Schusswaffen und Munition (Law on Firearms and Ammunition), which required firearms and ammunition acquisition permits and record keeping for all transactions. Through this legislation, the police acquired knowledge of all firearm owners, which was used to the Nazis' advantage when they took power in 1933. The Nazi Waffengesetz (Weapons Law) of 1938, signed by Adolph Hitler, built upon the previous registration systems and strictly regulated handguns. ... On the first day the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia, they put up posters in every town ordering the inhabitants to surrender all firearms, including hunting guns. The penalty for disobedience was death. The Nazis were able to use local and central registration records of firearms owners and hunters to execute the decree. Lists of potential dissidents and other suspects were already prepared, and those persons disappeared immediately. The Nazi commander of Belgium and Netherlands proclaimed that '[t]he surrender of weapons and other implements of war has been ordered by special proclamation.... Hunting guns are [also] to be surrendered ....' The Nazi head of Norway decreed that '[a]ll arms and munitions must be handed over' because only licensed officials and persons with police permits retained the right to possess arms."
--Stephen P. Halbrook
Source: Congress Interprets the Second Amendment: Declarations By A Co-Equal Branch On The Individual Right To Keep And Bear Arms, 62 Tenn. L.R. 597, 619 -- 623 (1995)

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Dance II

"The girl who can't dance says the band can't play."
--Yiddish Proverb

Ends III

"The only ends for which governments are constituted, and obedience rendered to them, are the obtaining of justice and protection; and they who cannot provide for both give the people a right of taking such ways as best please themselves, in order to their own safety."

--Algernon Sidney
(1622-1683) English statesman, writer, Whig leader
1672

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Cabbages

Number 6: "Unlike me, many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages."

--The Prisoner

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Normal IV

"The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together."
--Hannah Arendt

Monday, December 10, 2012

Debauched

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."
--Samuel Adams (1722-1803),
was known as the "Father of the American Revolution."
Source: letter to James Warren, 4 November 1775. Reference: Our Sacred Honor, Bennett (261)

Sunday, December 09, 2012

Intimate

"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four unless there are three other people."
--Orson Welles

Saturday, December 08, 2012

Undertake

"Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world, making the most of one's best."
--Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) American Clergyman, Author, Teacher

Thursday, December 06, 2012

Creeping II

"It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living."
--Eric Hoffer

Instrument

"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it...No grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."
--Justice Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954),
U. S. Supreme Court Justice
Source: U.S. Supreme Court, 08 Dec 1945,
and reprinted in Precision-Guided Coverage, Molly Ivins, May 2003

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Well III

"The Swiss are well armed and enjoy great freedom."
--Niccolo Machiavelli
(1469-1527) Italian Statesman and Political Philosopher
Source: The Prince (1513)

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Name II

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"
--Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi


Monday, December 03, 2012

Times II

"There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose."
--John Kenneth Galbraith

Sunday, December 02, 2012

Control III

"There are only two possible forms of control: one internal and the other external; religious control and political control. They are of such a nature that when the religious barometer rises, the barometer of [external] falls and likewise, when the religious barometer falls, the political barometer, that is political control and tyranny, rises. That is the law of humanity, a law of history. If civilized man falls into disbelief and immorality, the way is prepared for some gigantic and colossal tyrant, universal and immense."
--Juan Donoso-Cortes, Spanish philosopher, statesman, and writer.

Saturday, December 01, 2012

Many III

"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."

--James thurber (1894 - 1961)
New Yorker, Apr. 29, 1939
"The Owl who was God"