Responsibility:
Everyone says that having power is a great responsibility. This is
a lot of bunk. Responsibility is when someone can blame you if something
goes wrong. When you have power you are surrounded by people whose job it
is to take the blame for your mistakes. If they're smart, that is.
-- Cerebus, "On Governing"
She was only a moonshiner's daughter, but I love her still.
-- Unix fortune
A scholars ink lasts longer than a martyrs blood.
--- Prophet Muhammad
google search
They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even
drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer
pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which
demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and
sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.
They are fools that think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought.
No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was
ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No parthenon, no Thermopylae
was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground
beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for doing these
things was itself the doing of them.
To wield onself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and
so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the
greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand
and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt
sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body
of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food
spread only for demons or for gods."
-- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"
(unix fortune)
To piss off an atheist, you tell them a lie.
To piss off a Christian, you tell them the truth.
-- Jack Ketch 2014 feb 21 (original link is broken)
on
youtube
"Being liberal means being open to new evidence."
-- Congressman George Miller
2014 Apr 30 interview, similar quote
video
at 00:29:16,
starting a few seconds early.
(2014 Apr 30)
(google:
george miller liberal new evidence)
Life isn't fair, but it's still good. Life is too short-- enjoy it.
Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone. Make peace with
your past so it won't screw up the present and the future. It's OK to
let your children see you cry. Don't compare your life to others. You
have no idea what their journey is all about. If a relationship has to
be secret, you shouldn't be in it. Take a deep breath, it calms the
mind. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. It's never too
late to be happy. But it's all up to you and no one else. When it
comes time to go after what you love in life, don't take no for an
answer. Burn the nice candles, use the nice sheets, wear the nice
lingerie, wear the nice clothes. Don't save it for a special occasion.
Today is special. Over prepare, then go with the flow. No one is in
charge of your happiness but you. Frame every so-called disaster with
these words: 'In five years will this matter?' Always choose life.
Forgive but don't forget. Time heals almost everything. Give time,
time. However good or bad a situation is, it will change. All that
truly matters in the end is that you loved. If we all threw our
problems in a pile and we saw everyone else's, we'd grab our's back.
Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have, not what you
need. Yield. Friends are the family we choose. Life isn't tied with a
bow, but it's still a gift.
--
Some google sleuthing revealed the author of these tidbits
to be Regina Brett:
www.reginabrett.com
To those who have lost a loved one in the service of our nation, I
recall a famous headstone in Ireland. And the headstone reads as
follows, "Death leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a
memory no one can steal."
--
Vice President Joe Biden,
Memorial Day May 31, 2010,
Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05
"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good
madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks
you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw
or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the
next year, you surprise yourself."
-- Neil Gaiman
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/64407-may-your-coming-year-be-filled-with-magic-and-dreams
Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.
-- Louis Brandeis
http://software.clapper.org/fortune/
We do not always
dance because
we are happy,
but we dance and
cannot help but
become happy.
Never give a sword
to a man
who can't dance
--Confucius
The Analects
Ginsberg's Theorem: 1. You can't win. 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't even quit the game. Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem: Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's Theorem. To wit: 1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win. 2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even. 3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.
FOR SALE: Parachute. Used once. Never opened. Slightly Stained.
As never before the young soldier of twenty two now realized that
if he was ever to find truth he must first reject absolutely all ideas acquired
from others and rely upon the patient questioning of his own
mortal mind to show him the way. All the knowledge he had received
from authority must be cast aside; the whole fabric of his inherited
moral and intellectual ideas must be destroyed, to be refashioned more
enduringly by the primitive, earthy strength of human reason alone.
--- Men of mathematics by E. T. Bell,
Chapter 3: Gentleman, Soldier, and Mathematician - Descartes (1596-1650),
page 40
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
--- Christopher Hitchens.
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been.
The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' "
--- Issac Asimov
"A joke told when I was a child (a while ago...):
Elephants are masters at camouflage, they like to paint the bottoms of their feet and hide in mustard jars feet up.
No elephant has ever been seen in a mustard jar, you say? Well, there you have it."
-- Bo Dan (comment on
Sagan video)
There is no real path to unity and healing that doesn't pass through
the gate of justice and accountability.
-- Kai Hagen January 9 at 8:14 PM
There's a kind of indignation I know well, when someone feels that the
wrong done them has been unrecognized, and a kind of trauma that makes
the sufferer into a compulsive storyteller of an unresolved story.
--
Rebecca Solnit
The night hath come; it is no longer day?
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite
Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear; ...
But other something, would we but begin;
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
-- An excerpt from H. W. Longfellow's Marituri Salutamus
Of course, faced with the task of constructing numbers
such as the cube root of 2 and root pi,
it's natural to just stare helplessly into space,
which is pretty much all that happened
for 2,000 years.
--
Mathologer 2019 Jun 29
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained it to
expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass stars, for
stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. I ran it assuming
the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be absent -- not because I wanted
to know the answer, but because I had developed an intuitive feel for the
answer in this particular case. Finally I got a run in which the computer
showed the pulsar's temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found
an error. I chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the
program to the point where it would not run at all.
--
George Greenstein, "Frozen Star:
Of Pulsars, Black Holes and the Fate of Stars"
--
Unix fortune
... Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I
haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected
it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between
prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"
-- Unix fortune
A magnetar's magnetic field can be so strong that approaching within
1,000 kilometers of one would disrupt your body's atomic nuclei and
electrons, causing you to effectively dissolve.
-- Adam Mann, November 22, 2021,
Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts Are Finally Coming into Focus
"ideas outlive all earthly things"
--- James A. Garfield 1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)
Source
Speech of Gen. Jas. A. Garfield delivered to the "boys in blue." New
York, August 6, 1880.
Essay by Heather Cox Richardson
Almost everybody can stay excited for 2 or 3 months. A few people can
stay excited for 2 or 3 years. But a winner will stay excited for 30
years or however long it takes to win.
-- Insurance executive and entrepreneur Art Williams on motivation
Source: "Just Do It"
google:
Art Williams "Just Do It"
"To think out of the box,
you have to know what's in the box."
--- Michael Shermer
The Michael Shermer Show # 294
Aug 23, 2022
To be scientifically literate is to empower yourself
to know when someone else is full of shit.
--- Neil deGrasse Tyson
twitter 12:00 PM May 27, 2017
I wish for once I could just spiral into control
---
Kelly Brinton Nelson
facebook September 21 at 10:36 PM
(The related quotes are hilarious!!)
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle,
stand like a rock.
---
Thomas Jefferson
brainyquote
source:
Elon Musk and Sandy Munro discuss the Cybertruck!
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But
I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin
air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which
we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the
black, curious eyes of a child-our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh,
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
goodreads
Tom Schneider's Home Page
origin: 2004 Jun 22
updated: 2024 Mar 27