Lessons III

"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last."
--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
"His Last Bow"

Bridge III

"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river."
--Nikita Khrushchev

Technique

"It doesn't make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement."
--Jackson Pollock

Mulberry

"I will not say that your mulberry-trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive."
--Jane Austen,
Letter to Cassandra (05-31-1811) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]

Treaty II

"What treaty have the Sioux made with the white man that we have broken? Not one. What treaty have the white man ever made with us that they have kept? Not one."
--Sitting Bull

Politicians

She said, "You might become politicians."

"No!" cried Beni, with sudden fierceness; "we must not abandon our high calling. Bandits we have always been, and bandits we must remain!"

--L. Frank Baum,
"American Fairy Tales"

Helped

"While the USA helped defeat the Germans in World War II, we failed to defeat the Nazis."
--Jim Marrs,
"The Rise Of The Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten To Take Over"

Mandates

"Science is showing how other animals are like us in morally relevant ways, but unlike us in medically relevant ways. Now that we are proving that other animals are indeed sentient beings with complex and rich emotional and cognitive lives, it's time for us to change our moral view and demand a more just approach to our relationship with other animals. The accumulating evidence mandates that we cannot continue to hide behind the veil of science to justify our exploitation of other animals for medical experiments."
--Aysha Akhtar, MD, MPH

Listening

"I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I'm going to learn, I must do it by listening."
--Larry King
(November 19, 1933 - January 23, 2021)

Culture IV

"Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence."
--Karl Kraus

Condition

"This concern with the basic condition of freedom -- the absence of physical constraint -- is unquestionably necessary, but is not all that is necessary. It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free -- to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act."
--Aldous Huxley,
"Brave New World"

Full

"I hope that all of you who are students here will recognize the great opportunity that lies before you in this decade, and in the decades to come, to be of service to our country. The Greeks once defined happiness as full use of your powers along lines of excellence, and I can assure you that there is no area of life where you will have an opportunity to use whatever powers you have, and to use them along more excellent lines, bringing ultimately, I think, happiness to you and those whom you serve."
--John F. Kennedy,
"Address at the University of Wyoming"
September 25, 1963

Task II

"I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be every where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell."
--Abraham Lincoln
(Delivered at Springfield, Illinois, on February 11, 1861, before embarking on his inaugural journey to Washington).

Submitting

"At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called 'enemy,' I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
(January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968)
"Beyond Vietnam" Speech
April 4, 1967

Dynamic

"The records are built like a Wagner opera.  They start simply and they end with dynamic force, meaning and purpose. It’s in the mind, I dreamed it up. It’s like art movies."
--Phil Spector
(December 26, 1939 - January 16, 2021)

Arts IV

"If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.,
"A Man Without a Country"

Awareness II

"The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics."
--Albert Schweitzer,
Radio appeal for peace, Oslo, Norway (March 30, 1958)

Destiny III

"A man must know his destiny...if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder...if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it."
--George S. Patton Jr.

Sharper II

"The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born."
--Nikola Tesla,
Quoted in "Nikola Tesla's Life And Work" by István G. Kocsis (2015).

Ultimate

"The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people."
--Martin Luther King Jr.

Mutilate

"There are innumerable ways to murder a person, but the most subtle and pernicious of these is to mutilate the soul of the innocent by denying or downgrading their uniqueness and their beauty."
--Gerry Spence

Opponent

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."
--Yann Martel,
"Life of Pi"

Protected II

"The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected."
--William O. Douglas

Blamed

"These men were wrongfully rejected, the veterans. The fighting man should never have been blamed for Vietnam."
--Neil Sheehan
(October 27, 1936 - January 7, 2021)

Proper II

"There was a discussion of terrorism. Terrorism would be used widely in Europe and in other parts of the world. Terrorism at that time was thought would not be necessary in the United States. It could become necessary in the United States if the United States did not move rapidly enough into accepting the system. But at least in the foreseeable future it was not planned. And very benignly on their part. Maybe terrorism would not be required here, but the implication being that it would be indeed used if it was necessary. Along with this came a bit of a scolding that Americans had had it too good anyway and just a little bit of terrorism would help convince Americans that the world is indeed a dangerous place... or can be if we don't relinquish control to the proper authorities."
--"Public Record",
"The New Order of Barbarians: The New World System"
 

Ought

"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have."
--Richard Salant,
Former President Of CBS "News"

Generously

"There is no talent so ardently supported, nor generously rewarded, as the ability to convince parasites they are victims."
--Thomas Sowell

"Distance Learning"

For those who still haven't figured out "Distance Learning", or the push for the students to have their cameras on all the time:


"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence."
--George Orwell,
"1984"

Begin III

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."
--Thomas Paine,
"Common Sense" (1776)

Reigns

"There were two 'Reigns of Terror,' if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the 'horrors' of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves."
--Mark Twain,
"A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (1889)

Sleep-Walkers

“Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.”
― Franz Kafka

Favor II

"Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor."
--Robert Frost,
"The Black Cottage" (1914)

Pottage

"Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear."
--Hunter S. Thompson,
"Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century"