Sunday, April 30, 2017

Unforeseen

"Turned the wrong way around, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied in 'History', harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic."
--Philip Roth,
"The Plot Against America" (2004)

Saturday, April 29, 2017

Weird

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional."
--Hunter S. Thompson,
"Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72"

Friday, April 28, 2017

Created II

"And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess.'"
--Art Buchwald

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Impotence II

"There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you."
--Norman Mailer,
"Armies of the Night" (1968)

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Debt II

"A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."
--G. Gordon Liddy

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Buying

"We buy books because we believe we are buying the time to read them."
--Warren Zevon

Monday, April 24, 2017

Evil II

"I cannot regard someone like John Gotti as more evil than someone in George Bush's position."
--William Kunstler,
toast at a 1970 party celebrating a civil suit victory by a gangster.  

Sunday, April 23, 2017

Dictates

"A planet full of people meant nothing against the dictates of economic necessity!"
--Issac Asimov,
"The Currents of Space" (1952)

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Comfortable III

"Just give me a comfortable couch, a dog, a good book, and a woman. Then if you can get the dog to go somewhere and read the book, I might have a little fun."
--Groucho Marx

Friday, April 21, 2017

MBE

"Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE [Member of the Order of the British Empire] received theirs for heroism in the war--for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more."
--John Lennon

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Skepticism II

"Skepticism, not cleanliness, is next to godliness. Skepticism is the father of freedom. It is like the pry that holds open the door for truth to slip in."
--Gerry Spence,
"Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom: An Owner's Manual for Life"

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Madman II

"The only difference between me and a madman is I'm not mad."
--Salvador Dalí

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Actualities

"Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist."
--Charles Bukowski

Monday, April 17, 2017

Sound II

"Most of our executives make very sound decisions. The trouble is many of them have turned out not to have been right."
--Donald Bullock

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Goodness

"If anyone or anything tries to curse or kill the Goodness at the Center of all things, it will just keep coming back to life. Forever Easter."
--David Housholder, "The Blackberry Bush"

Saturday, April 15, 2017

Unstable

"As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying."
--Arthur C. Clarke,
"Voices from the Sky : Previews of the Coming Space Age" (1967)

Friday, April 14, 2017

So-Called

"No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws,
whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being..."
--Benjamin Constant
[Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque] (1767-1830) Swiss-born thinker, writer and French politician.
Source: Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments (1810) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), p. 401-402.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Timid III

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower
(1890-1969), 34th US President, WWII Generalv

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Sleeping II

"One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."
--Martin Luther King Jr.

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Inviolate II

"If we would be free, if we mean to hold inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have so long contended, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble cause for which we have so long endured, and to which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest should be obtained, then we must fight! I repeat Sir, we must fight! A call to arms and an appeal to the God of hosts is all that we have left."
--Patrick Henry
(1736-1799) US Founding Father
Source: "The War Inevitable" speech to the Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775

Monday, April 10, 2017

Tamed

"Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother not to send him to school and was well on his way to immortality and fortune at the age of thirteen, would be referred today for psychological counseling; Thomas Edison would find himself in Special Ed until his peculiar genius had been sufficiently tamed."
--John Taylor Gatto,
"The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling"

Sunday, April 09, 2017

Self-Defense

"A tree never hits an automobile except in self-defense."
--Author Unknown

Saturday, April 08, 2017

Dolphins

"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons."
--Douglas Adams,
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Friday, April 07, 2017

Indisputable

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers."
--John Adams
(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President
Source: Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

Thursday, April 06, 2017

Dignity III

"'Animals don't behave like men,' he said. 'If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality."
--Richard Adams,
"Watership Down"

Wednesday, April 05, 2017

Civilization III

"Now we got a lawyer, we got civilization, which I understand to mean that a man has a chance to get rich without
--Sinclair Lewis,
"The God-Seeker" (1949)

Tuesday, April 04, 2017

Function IV

Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived", but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.

It is a difficult assignment. The conditions the teacher arranges must be powerful enough to compete with those under which the student tends to behave in distracting ways.

--B.F. Skinner,
"Free and Happy Student" in The Phi Delta Kappan (September 1973); later published in Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978).

Monday, April 03, 2017

Dialogue II

"Education is a kind of continuing dialogue, and a dialogue assumes different points of view."
--Robert M. Hutchins
(1899-1977)
Source: Time magazine, December 8, 1952

Sunday, April 02, 2017

Dies

"In any man who dies there dies with him,
his first snow and kiss and fight."
--Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 
July 18, 1932 - April 1, 2017
Soviet Dissident and Poet,
"People" (1961)

Saturday, April 01, 2017

Attacked

"Whenever we are attacked, people are willing to give up someone else's liberties for their own security."
--Andrew P. Napolitano