Make This Stuff Up

A Jewish financier rips off millions of dollars devoted to memorializing the Holocaust--who could make this stuff up? Dickens, Balzac, Trollope and, for that matter, even Mel Brooks might be appalled.
--Frank Rich

Someone Is Watching

A deregulated environment encourages gambling and, eventually, criminality. Regulations inhibit the impulse to see what can be gotten away with. They remind the players that someone is watching.
--Jane Smiley

Always

Always be sincere, even when you don't mean it.
--Irene Peter

Before I Was Born

I did not find the world desolate when I entered, and as my fathers planted before I was born, so do I plant for those who will come after me.
--Talmud

Tell the Stories

Some say that children learn to speak in order to tell the stories already in them.
--Roger Rosenblatt

Unused

Many of our troubles arise from faculties unused.
--A.C. Benson

Forced Pleasantries

There's something in the alone-in-the-crowdness of the holiday party circuit, the forced pleasantries and laughter, the charge to be friendly and engaging--but only in a trivial and superficial way--that is very much like the existential condition of the alcoholic psyche.
--Jim Atkinson

Hope Alone

The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it.
--Harvey Milk

As If

I think we should act as if. I think we should read books, and tell children stories, and take them to the theatre, and learn poems, and play music, as if it would make a difference.
--Philip Pullman

Is To

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science.
--Henri Louis Bergson

Get Over It

America is having a period where we are redefining our mental picture of what an "American" is. In the mid 19th century, we had to mentally adjust to including Germans and Irish. In the late 19th and early 20th century, we struggled with mentally including Eastern and Southern Europeans, mostly Catholics and Jews, in the mix. Now it's Muslims and Asians. We'll get over it.
--Ciocia

Saves a Ton

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.
--H. H. Munro (Saki)

Desire to Know It

Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don't know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.
--Sir William Haley

Such a Wonderful Thing

If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.
--Lane Kirkland

Mother

Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That's all she is.
--Rob Watson

Only Abnormality

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.

--Anais Nin

Maybe We Could

If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.

--Federico Fellini

Ask Yourself

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.

--John Stuart Mill

Work Ethic

Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an "ethic."

--Barbara Ehrenreich

Requirements

Freedom requires capitalism.
Capitalism requires consequences.

--willrob456r

A Good Document

The idea that he doesn't have experience is nuts to me. He's a constitutional law professor. I happen to miss the Constitution; I thought it was a good document.

--Samantha Power

Reached An Age

I don't even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages.

--Umberto Eco

A Little Wild

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.

--John Maynard Keynes

Dark Science

If money is a science, then it is a dark science, darker than alchemy.

--Neal Stephenson

The Books

The books we love, love us back.

--John Leonard

The Difference

It is the accumulation of the hundreds of minute decisions that is the difference between mediocrity and true excellence.

--Eva S. Moskowitz

A Good Shingle

A good shingle for the new administration to hang out, rather than The New Covenant or A Fair Exchange or English Spoken Here, would be Keep Seat Belt Buckled. Happy days are not here and the sky above is not clear.

--Garrison Keillor

Silly Me

I always thought "In God we trust" on U.S. money is unconstitutional. Silly me, it's sarcasm.

--PuWeiTa

Creation

The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation.

--Jonathan Larson

You Are

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.

--C. S. Lewis

Best Hope

Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears.

--Ronald Reagan

Gifted

He's a gifted man, but in the end, he's just a man.

--Michelle Obama

What We Share

Our opponent says that there is a real America. But I am sorry--there aren't a real America and an unreal America. Soldiers in the trenches don't ask each other if they are red or blue. You can support the war and be a patriot, and not support the war and still be a patriot. We are tired of these old divisions and ways of separating Americans from each other. We are all Americans and what we share is greater than what divides us.

--Barack Obama

The Right Ending

The right ending is an open door you can't see too far out of.

--Michael Ondaatje

Live Like

If you want to live like a Republican, vote for a Democrat.

--Harry S Truman

Fight Hard Enough

If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.

--Paul Wellstone

Every Age

There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.

--Samuel Johnson

Imperfect Creatures

As a politician myself I am deeply mindful that we are imperfect creatures and don't always act with justice uppermost on our minds.

--Barack Obama

Round Peg, Square Hole

Almost every wrong prediction about this election cycle has come from those trying to force the round peg of this year's campaign into the square holes of past political wars.

--Frank Rich

What's the Use

What's the use of being a politician if you can't make a living at being a hypocrite?

--Norman Mailer

Not Very Unreasonable

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

--Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations)

Slower to Trust

Voters are slower to trust you with big things if they see a lack of skill in small things.

--Peggy Noonan

Owes a Return

Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.

--John Stuart Mill

Everyone Is Watching

My attitude is, the more I'm in public, I don't even want to pick my nose. I'm assuming everyone is watching.

--Barack Obama (interview with Katie Couric, October 16, 2008)

No Meaning

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

--C. S. Lewis

Existing Model

In order to change something, don't struggle to change the existing model. Create a new model and make the old one obsolete.

--Buckminster Fuller

That's What Happens

I don't take any of it personally, and I don't take most of it seriously. That's what happens in politics.

--Hillary Clinton

Hope

Hope is a tattered flag and a dream of time.

--Carl Sandburg

Lies

What's the major cause of the nation's financial crisis? Lies; a river of lies emptied into a sea of mendacity, sucked up into the sky again by a great hurricane of deceit, and rained back down upon us in a deluge of prevarication.

--Glenn W. Smith

In Its Essence

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.

--Franklin D. Roosevelt

Scare You

Some things will scare you so bad that you hurt yourself.

--Molly Ivins

Rules

Rules cannot take the place of character.

--Alan Greenspan

Money Destroys

If the whole country is going to pot, and it certainly is, I think you could graph the decline not only in morals, but in a sense of social éclat and social standards--I think you could plot the decline right next to the rise of the Dow Jones--the higher the Dow, the lower the standards. Money destroys all other values.

--Norman Mailer (March 1999)

Secular Miracle

That a piece of paper of no intrinsic value should pass for good money the world over is nothing less than a secular miracle.

--James Grant

Men Who Bite Dogs

The press likes the unusual. The man bite dog story. The maverick senators who do weird stuff. But just because men who bite dogs make for good copy doesn't make biting a dog a good idea.

--Matthew Yglesias

Toothache

When we have a toothache, we know that not having a toothache is happiness. But later, when we don't have a toothache, we don't treasure our non-toothache.

--Thich Nhat Hanh

Not There

We learned a painful lesson in the 1930s and today: The invisible hand often seems invisible because it's not there.

--Joseph Stiglitz (2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics)

Acknowledge Luck

I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck: the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others; made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.

--Paul Newman

Special Skills

Sarah knows how to field-dress a moose. I know how to castrate a calf. Neither of those things has anything at all to do with this election. But since we know so much about Sarah's special skills, I wanted to make sure you knew about mine too.

--Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge (D-Iowa)

If You Must

If you must break the law, do it to seize power. In all other cases observe it.

--Julius Caesar

Private Banks

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

--Thomas Jefferson

Progress

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

--C. S. Lewis

The Sequel

Beneath the sniping, so many real things lie in ruins: a corporate paradigm displaying no shred of responsibility, but eager for rescue by taxpayers; a military leadership's implicit promise to its recruits and their families; a public discourse commodified into channels that feed any given preacher's resentments to a self-selecting chorus. In these déjà vu battles, the combatants forever escape one another's final judgment, whirl off into the void, leaving us standing awed in the rubble, uncertain of what we've seen, only sure we're primed for the sequel.

--Jonathan Lethem

Fundamental

The fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.

--President Herbert Hoover (October 24, 1929)

Socialism

The GOP does believe in socialism: Privatize the profits. Socialize the losses.

--Anonymous

Mediocre

Only the mediocre are always at their best.

--Jean Giraudoux

Oblivious

As we've been writing for several years, the greatest threat to economic growth has been reckless monetary policy. Yet both the Bush Treasury and John McCain's campaign seem oblivious to the monetary roots of our current economic troubles.

--The Wall Street Journal editoral page

Terms With Stupidity

It's not getting any smarter out there. You have to come to terms with stupidity, and make it work for you.

--Frank Zappa

Knows More

She [Sarah Palin] knows more about energy that probably anyone else in the United States of America.

--John McCain

A Hard Job

If you see a whole thing--it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives.... But close up a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.

--Ursula K. LeGuin

Wreckage

What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one.

--Margaret Mitchell

Not Seasons Enough

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

--Yehuda Amichai

Bicycle Prayers

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.

--Emo Philips

A Blessing

As far as I'm concerned Barack Obama is a "Baruch," which means a blessing. He is a blessing to the United States Senate, to America, and to our shared hopes for better, safer tomorrows for all our families.

--Joe Lieberman (March 2006)

Blows My Mind

They've been a pastor for two years at a church with 150 people but he shares our values, so we hired him to be pastor of our 5,000 person church? It wouldn't happen! We don't say, "He shares our values, so let's hire him." That's absurd. Yet we apply that to choosing presidents. It blows my mind.

--Mark DeMoss (former chief of staff to Jerry Falwell)

Key Criteria

I think about whether that person who I select would be most prepared to take my place. And that would be the key criteria.

--John McCain (April 2008)

Reality TV

Politics as reality TV. Watch as we put this hockey mom and beauty contest runner-up into the second most powerful political position in civilization! Will she make it? Tune in and find out!

--Flown Muse (comment on Huffington Post, August 30, 2008)

Choice

Behavior is a choice, even if fantasy and imagination are uncontrollable.

--Camille Paglia

The Impossible

We can
Each of us
Do the impossible
As long as we can convince ourselves
That it has been done before.

--Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Sower)

Nuance

We don't do nuance well in politics.

--Barack Obama

Adventure

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

--G. K. Chesterton

The Last Time

When you remember something, you don't remember the thing itself--you just remember the last time you remembered it.

--John Barlow

Appear Bright

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

--Anonymous

Good and Happy

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy--I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

--Bertrand Russell

Roswell, N.M.

The Republicans will hit him hard and low in September and portray him as a Muslim opium dealer who infiltrated this country via Roswell, N.M.

--Garrison Keilor

Have Forever

Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test. Do you love me stripped of everything that might be lost, for only the things I will have forever?

--Alain de Botton

The Truth

The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth.

--John Edwards

Technology 1-2-3

1) Everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal.

2) Anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it.

3) Anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

--Douglas Adams

One By One

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

--Charles Mackay

Pointless

The more the universe is comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.

--Steven Weinberg (Nobel laureate physicist at the University of Texas)

Smart Kids

Children are smarter than any of us. Know how I know that? I don't know one child with a full time job and children.

--Bill Hicks

Boundless

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

--Frank O'Hara

All Creation

All creation is a mine, and every man a miner.

--Abraham Lincoln

Slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.

--Emily Dickinson

Go Buy

If we all join hands and go buy a new SUV, everything will be all right.

--Robert McTeer (then-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, April 2001)

To The Bottom

Rather than trying to stay on top of things, I am trying to get to the bottom of things.

--Donald Knuth

Some Control

We don't find happiness in more gadgets and experiences. We do find happiness in having some control of our time and work, a chance for real leisure, in the escape from the uncertainties of war, poverty, and corruption, and in a chance to pursue individual freedoms--all of which come with increased affluence.

--Kevin Kelly

Reinvention

This may be a lousy time to own the shares of legacy newspaper companies, but it's a great time for communication among human beings. Never has so much been possible, so easily. Reinvention trumps loss.

--Scott Burns

Do Nothing

Procrastination feeds on distractions. Most people find it uncomfortable just to sit and do nothing; you avoid work by doing something else.

--Paul Graham

Accept Myself

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
--Carl Rogers

Rudimentary

Getting shot down over Vietnam may not be a qualification for president in 2008, but surely a rudimentary facility with a laptop is.

--Frank Rich

Escape

The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.

--Alan Saporta

One Success

There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way.

--Christopher Morley

Sky-High

In a world of sky-high transportation costs, outsourcing production to where labor is cheapest might not always make economic sense.

--Andrew Leonard

Carbon Footprint

"Carbon footprint" is to your physical being what "soul" is to your spiritual being.

--Verlyn Klinkenborg

Misty Morning

A misty morning does not signify a cloudy day.

--Ancient proverb

Stories Dying

I worry about stories dying, replaced by stuff. Content for platforms does not a story make. Today, you arrive anywhere and surf the Net. Being "always on" is being always off, to something.

--Roger Cohen

Getting Old

Getting old is not for sissies.

--Bette Davis

He Needs Money

Religion easily--has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man...living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

--George Carlin

Way Station

Happiness is a way station between too little and too much.

--Channing Pollack

Internal Debate

I had an internal debate. Because I knew that the A.P. was going to take a picture, and they were trying to portray it like Dukakis wearing that tank helmet. But I wanted to make sure that the children who saw that picture knew that even the Democratic nominee for president wears a helmet when he goes biking.

--Barack Obama

Pursuit of Pleasure

We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.

--William Channin

Escape

The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.

--Alan Saporta

Blow It Out

If ya ain't got it in ya, ya can't blow it out.

--Louis Armstrong

A Whim

Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

--Anonymous

The Future

There are two classes of people who tell what is going to happen in the future: those who don't know and those who don't know they don't know.

--John Kenneth Galbraith

Basis for Running

We are a great country, an unselfish country, and a compassionate country, and I intend to make that my basis for running over the period of the next few months.

--Robert F. Kennedy (June 1968)

To The End

We pledged to support her to the end. Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.

--Rep. Charles B. Rangel

It's About Empathy

People are always asking actors, "How are you like this character?" But that's not what acting's about. It's not about identification. It's about empathy for people, for the human condition.

--Julianne Moore

Three Opinions

There are three opinions you can't voice in America without being dismissed as a crackpot, if not worse: The '60s experiments in consciousness expansion were basically a good thing; organized religion is oppressive; children and teen-agers have a right to enjoy their sexuality.

--Ellen Willis

The Light

I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.

--Hafiz

Good Guilt

Guilt is good, people! The only people who don't suffer guilt are sociopaths and serial killers. Guilt means you have a conscience. You have self-awareness.

--Ron Rosenbaum

We All

In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

--John F. Kennedy

Plants Have Exploited Us

Though we self-importantly regard domestication as something people have done to plants, it is at the same time a strategy by which the plants have exploited us and our desires--even our most idiosyncratic notions of beauty--to advance their own interests.

--Michael Pollan

The Story Here

The story here isn't simply the old, familiar tale of the nation's stark racial divide, but also another tale, just as old, less often remarked, of how the white poor and the black poor have long been kept at one another's throats as a means of keeping them from looking too closely or clearly at the ways both are maniuplated by the forces of money and power.

--Leonard Pitts, Jr.

10,000 Ways

I haven't failed. I've found 10,000 ways that don't work.

--Ben Franklin

Ugly Place

Silicon Valley is an ugly place. Not physically, but, for all its gleeful output, socially. We're talking about the global mecca for antisocial, intensely competitive workaholics who aim to beat each other at achieving obscene wealth.

--Farhad Manjoo

Just Go

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN'S HAIKU

Our views are made by
Our definitions of them.
Just go ride your bike.

--John Bell

Conventional Thinking

I don't want to go with conventional thinking. I don't care if it's always been done this way. Now, that might be the right way to do it. But that's not the reason to do it.

--Mike D'Antoni

Jaw Not War

Jaw, jaw, is better than war, war.

--Winston Churchill

Solitude

She loved solitude, but she also loved being with people, and a life spent entirely in solitude made no sense to her.

--Brian Morton

Wealthy White Man

If you don't acknowledge that being a wealthy white man with the right ancestors blesses you with the desirable sort of inequality, how can you fix the undesirable sort of inequality?

--Maureen Dowd

Who Are We?

The overriding question here is simple: Who are we? This election represents a giant mirror, a chance to find out who we are as a people. The issue is whether America is still the scared, reactionary, sclerotic, profoundly creaky nation that it has been for the last eight years, or whether it's ready to shrug off the Bush era and begin anew. It comes down to whether America is old or young.

--Gary Kamiya

The Soul of Marriage

The soul of marriage is created by small acts, small words, and small, everyday interactions.

--Thomas Moore

Overt and Unashamed

The attacks will be overt and unashamed, except for the National Review types who will phrase their racism with their usual apparent cognitive dissonance: "Since I know I'm not a racist, I can say whatever racist thing pops into my head, and if you think the racist thing I just said was racist that proves you are the real racist."

--Lance Mannion

Experience, A Spider Web

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

--Henry James

What's the Point

And what's the point of all this excess wealth we have been creating if it doesn't lead to more leisure time? Surely that is the point of earning more than you need? But it seems the wealthier we get, the harder and longer we have to work. It's all upside down.

--Dharmaruci

Hope Alone

Of course, hope alone is not enough, but it's not trivial. It's not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.

--Tim Shriver

Problems and Beauty

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

--Buckminster Fuller

Level of Fame

They should draw an equation: What level of fame do you need to achieve to keep doing what you want? Because you don't want any more than that.

--Tina Fey

Deep Wisdom

There is deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we can only come to our senses and feel it.

--Elizabeth A. Behnke

A World

A world of made is not a world of born.

--e.e. cummings

All Your Questions

In the solitude of your mind are the answers to all your questions about life. You must take the time to ask and listen.

--Bawa Mahaiyaddeen

Food

God comes to the hungry in the form of food.

--Mahatma Gandhi

Let The Reader Catch

The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.

--Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart

A Pack

History is, after all, only a pack of tricks we play on the dead.

--Voltaire

Finished

When you're finished changing, you're finished.

--Benjamin Franklin

Closest Non-Human Relationship

A home is often the closest non-human relationship we have in our lives. It can represent your identity, your autonomy, your spirituality.

--Lois Vitt

Another Language

To know another language is to have a second soul.

--Charlemagne

More Than Human

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.

--Thomas Jefferson

Vanity Swells

Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain--at least in a poor country like Russia--and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.

--Leon Trotsky

Comments, Facts

Comments are free, but facts are sacred.

--Charles Prestwich Scott

The Trouble

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

--Will Durant

Take It

Take it easy, but take it.

--Anonymous

A Full Hour

Half an hour's meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed.

--St. Francis de Sales

Affects All

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sexual Orgies

I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.

--Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Understand Everything

It has taken me all my life to understand it is not necessary to understand everything.

--Rene Coty

Memory

As a protection against financial illusion or insanity, memory is far better than law. When the memory of the 1929 disaster failed, law and regulation no longer sufficed.

--John Kenneth Galbraith

Mystify

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

--Douglas Adams

Brothers and Sisters

Historians and novelists are kin, but they're more like brothers who throw food at each other than like sisters who borrow each other's clothes.

--Jill Lepore

What We Bear

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

--Victor Frankl

Mere Wealth

Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.

--John Pierpont Morgan

Introspection

People at the top need a relaxed perspective, which gives judgment and balance. Workaholism is an introspection-killing disease, the anxious disability of tunnel-vision middle managers.

--Camille Paglia

House of Cards

Banks and brokerages are a house of cards built on the confidence of clients, creditors and counterparties. If you take chunks out of that confidence, things can go awry pretty quickly. It could happen to any one of the brokers.

--David Trone (brokerage analyst)

Nothing Human

Nothing human is beneath a writer's attention.

--Garrison Keillor

Doubt and Belief

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

--Henri Poincaré

Local Group

The fully realized man does not identify with the local group.

--Abraham Maslow

Died Out

If men never succumbed to the attractions of women, then the human species would have died out a long time ago.

--Daniel Spitzer (neurosurgeon, brother of Eliot)

Modified Ape

After all, it is as respectable to be modified ape as to be modified dirt.

--T.H. Huxley

Squandered

We squandered a lot of gifts. Human beings were given a lot of great gifts. We were given the ability to reason, this extra-large brain, walking erect, having binocular vision and the opposable thumb, and all of these things, and we had such promise, but we squandered it on goods and superstition. We gave ourselves over to the high priests and the traders, and they are the ones we allow to control us.

--George Carlin

Answered Prayers

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.

--Truman Capote

What Light I Have

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.

--Abraham Lincoln

I Love Science

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

--Robert Sapolsky

Addiction

Politicians have become completely addicted to money, so trying to change the system is like trying to take heroin from a heroin addict.

--John McCain

Many Ways, Many Days

I truly feel that there are as many ways of loving as there are people in the world and as there are days in the life of those people.

--Mary S. Calderone

Doing Nothing

You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think.

--Mortimer Adler

New Knowledge, New Questions

If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions.

--Susanne K. Langer

Fair Play

The fact that we're standing here tonight, the fact that we're able to hold this, it's just proof that no matter how far out your dreams are, it's possible. And, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream, and don't give up. This song was written from the perspective of hope, and hope, at the end of the day, connects us all, no matter how different we are.

--Marketa Irglova (Oscar acceptance speech, February 24, 2008)

Thought and Language

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

--George Orwell

Good At

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

--Bertrand Russell

Hunch

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

--Frank Capra

Sobering Thought

Thar's only two possibilities: Thar is life out there in the universe which is smarter than we are, or we're the most intelligent life in the universe. Either way, it's a mighty sobering thought.

--Walt Kelly

Dance Round

We dance round in circles and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

--Robert Frost

Substitute

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

--W. Somerset Maugham

Magnificent Hunch

In a sense, the person we marry is a stranger about whom we have a magnificent hunch.

--Anonymous minister

American Character

The United States is afflicted with new eras. Let us not think for a moment that the illusion, the aberration of the 1920s was unique. It is intimately a part of the American character.

--John Kenneth Galbraith

Hell

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists--that is why they invented hell.

--Bertrand Russell

The Meaning

The meaning of events is the sum of all the consequences.

--Todd Gitlin

Chance

Did you ever observe to whom the accidents happen? Chance favors only the prepared mind.

--Louis Pasteur

A Chair

A chair is only finished when someone sits in it.

--Hans J. Wegner

Change

That's the first sign that you're having an impact--you can't change the world and not have people come after you who don't want you to change the world.

--Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Enable It

As for the future, your task is not to foresee but to enable it.

--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Like a Pebble

Your life is like a pebble dropped into a pool of water, creating ripples endlessly. You do not know the end of a word, a thought, an action.

--White Eagle

Tragedy or Comedy

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.

--Jean de La Bruyère

Abstract Happy

Money is human happiness in the abstract.

--Arthur Schopenhauer

No Meaning

Life may have no meaning. Even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.

--Blaidd Drwg

The Laws of Morning

Whoever carries into the afternoon the laws of morning must pay for it with damage to his soul.

--Carl G. Jung

Two Things

There are two things that are important in politics. The first thing is money and I can't remember what the second one is.

--Mark Hanna (William McKinley's 1896 campaign manager)

Real Glory

Real glory springs from the silent conquest of ourselves.

--Joseph P. Thompson

Not Binary

This is not a binary choice. We are not living or dying; we are living and dying.

--Susan Madrak

Nobody Fixes

Nobody fixes problems they deny they have.

--Marshall Goldsmith

Contradictory

Credit is by definition a contradictory creature. It depends on trust and confidence and yet invites the possibility of fraud or, at the very least, grave disappointment.

--Stephen Mihm

Only Love

Darkness can not drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

--Martin Luther King Jr.

God's Standards

What we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than trying to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

--Mike Huckabee

Distrust

We have to distrust each other. It's our only defense against betrayal.

--Tennessee Williams

Wholesale, Not Retail

The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.

--William James

Limited in Time and Space

A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

--Albert Einstein

More Christian, Less Likely

Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral.

--Justice Antonin Scalia

True Mystery

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

--Oscar Wilde

Tools

Most folks have figured out what a blog is--a publishing tool, in the same way that a hammer is a home-building tool--and what it isn't--some radically different communication form. It doesn't matter who's using the tool. It's what they build with it.

--Peter Kafka

Real Change

Only a crisis--actual or perceived--produces real change.

--Milton Friedman

Drift Away

Sorry to drift away from the main topic, but it's almost always about money. And when it's not about money, it's about religion.

--Kgsbca

Emotion to Reason

Emotion has taught mankind to reason.

--Marquis de Vauvenargues

The Subject of Cheese

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

--G.K. Chesterton

Loyalty

Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. We speak for earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring.

--Carl Sagan

The Great Difficulty

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

--Alexander Hamilton