Freedom, limerick, business decisions

Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters.

~ Rosa Luxemburg

There was a young fellow from Trinity,
Who took the square root of infinity.
But the number of digits,
Gave him the fidgets;
He dropped Math and took up Divinity.

~ George Gamow

Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

~ Peter Drucker

Quotes that set a compass

Don't play for safety. It's the most dangerous thing in the world.

~ Hugh Walpole

All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome.

~ Kate Sheppard

Some choices will choose you. How you face these choices, these turns in the road, with what kind of attitude, more than the choices themselves, is what will define the context of your life.

~ Dana Reeve

The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

And when you're all grown up to become your self, won't that turn out to be a wonderful thing, after all?

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

~ Raymond Chandler

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.

~ Albert Einstein

Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.

~ Douglas Adams

Fundamentals of Government

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

~ Patrick Henry

As I understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway.

~ Anne Hutchinson

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom — these are the pillars of society.

~ Henrik Ibsen

The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.

~ John C. Calhoun

Quotes, for a day when my perseverance is weak

There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.

~ Sir Francis Drake

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.

~ Washington Irving

Attitude towards Others

I'm sure w all agree that we ought to love one another, and I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings — and I hate people like that!

~ Tom Lehrer

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

~ Isaac Asimov

Do not that to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thy selfe.

~ Thomas Hobbes

A Quote for Amusement Only

Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.

~ Fulton J. Sheen

Do you know what you need?

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

~ Walt Disney

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.

~ Leo Rosten

Making Changes

Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed.
~ Tom Clancy

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
~ Thomas Edison

Liberty

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

--Thomas Jefferson

Friendship

Here is this week's quote, now that a wonderful friend has helped me recover the quotes mailing list.

Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

~ Dinah Craik

Pointers to Wisdom

Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.

~ Marcus Aurelius

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

~ William Shakespeare in As You Like It

Information Age

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.

~ Doug Larson

The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.

~ Edward R. Murrow

Adventures

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

~ Albert Einstein

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

~ Edward Gibbon

Thinking for Communication

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.

~ Carl Friedrich Gauss

Language Origins, Making Decisions

How amazing that the language of a few thousand savages living on a fog-encrusted island in the North Sea should become the language of the world.

~ Norman St. John-Stevas

A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.

~ Adm. Arthur W. Radford

Forward progress?

Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.

~ Buckminster Fuller

I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.

~ George Burns

Begin with the End in Mind

I write about people who sometime in their life have a vision or dream of something that should be accomplished and they go to work. They are beaten over the head, knocked down, vilified, and for years they get nowhere. But every time they're knocked down they stand up. You cannot destroy these people. And at the end of their lives they've accomplished some modest part of what they set out to do.

~ Irving Stone, American writer and biographer

Manipulating for College Student Diversity

Show me a college where most of the learning results from exposure to other students, and I’ll show you an institution that isn’t worth the tuition it charges.

~ Roger Clegg in
Chronicle of Higher Education

Ben, on education

Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

~ Benjamin Franklin

Definitions: Creativity, Art, Success, Happiness

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

~ Scott Adams

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

~Dale Carnegie

Trekkies and Wisdom

We're just very proud to honor Dad with this star. A lot of Star Trek fans helped us out with this.

--Chris Doohan, whose father, James Doohan--Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery Scott on the original 60's series--received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. The event was expected to be the final public appearance for the 84-year-old actor, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

--Theodore Roosevelt

How to Measure What is Worthwhile

Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.
~ Thomas Edison

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
~ Vincent Van Gogh

Talent

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.

~ Publius Syrus

(editor's note: if you get from the second one that it's foolish to be silent, you should read it again... -K)

Messing Things Up

Foolproof systems don't take into account the ingenuity of fools.

~ Gene Brown

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.

~ Theodore H. White

Wrong Way to be Right

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

~ Edward de Bono

Attitudes

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
~ Thomas Alva Edison

Friendship

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

~ Susan Ertz

A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling.

~ Arthur Brisbane

What is... And is Not

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

~ A.A. Milne

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

~ Eleanor Chaffee