Looking where? For what?

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
~ J.F. Kennedy

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.
~ Groucho Marx

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
~ Isaac Asimov

Generations, character and science

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
~ George Orwell

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
~ Kurt Vonnegut

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..."
~ Isaac Asimov

Each moment fits into eternity

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
~ P. J. O'Rourke

Never explain -- our friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
~ Elbert Hubbard

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
~ R. W. Emerson

Truth and Influence

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is.
~ Chuck Reid

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Power lasts 10 years; influence not more than a hundred.
~ Korean proverb

Mixed bag of thoughts

People demand freedom of speech to make up for freedom of thought, which they avoid.
~Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

A 2-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it.
~ Jerry Seinfeld

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.
~ Kurt Vonnegut

Life's Challenges

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
~ Seneca

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
~ Kurt Vonnegut

Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
~ Carl Sandburg

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
~ George Eliot

testing for color schemes

Having once had it perfect, I'm now on a fool's errand to recapture that.

Great things begin in small ways

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended for us to forgo their use.
~ Galileo Galilei

The energy produced by breaking down the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformations of these atoms is taking moonshine.
~ Ernest Rutherford

If you take a bale of hay and tie it to the tail of a mule and then strike a match and set the bale of hay on fire, and if you then compare the energy expended shortly thereafter by the mule with the energy expended by yourself in the striking of the match, you will understand the concept of amplification.
~ William Shockley

One of Us

Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.
~ M. Twain

Bronze is the mirror of the form; wine, of the heart.
~ Aeschylus

For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.
~ Richard Feynman

Is trivia reality?

Plans are useless, planning is essential.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.
~ Robert Heinlein

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
~ Philip K. Dick

Springtime

Dancing is a wonderful training for girls, it's the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.
~ Christopher Morley (American writer and editor 1890-1957)

Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.
~ Doug Larson

A little madness in the spring is wholesome even for a king.
~ Emily Dickinson

Seekers

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
~ Albert Einstein

Good for the body is the work of the body, and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other.
~ Henry David Thoreau

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
~ George Moore

Politics, understanding and... evolution?

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
~ Ronald Reagan

Understanding is a three-edged sword : your side, my side, and the truth in between.
~ Ambassador Kosh, "Babylon 5"

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.
~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Character

It's not true that nice guys finish last. Nice guys are winners before the game ever starts.
~ Addison Walker

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.
~ Sam Ewig

Winning is not everything, but wanting to win is.
~ Vince Lombardi

Science, Reading and Knowledge

"Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth."

~ Jules Verne

"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."

~ John Locke

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know."

~ Mark Twain

Fun Ones

Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties.

~ Doug Larson

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

~ Mark Twain

Wisdom and foolishness

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."

~ Winston Churchill

"We are always ready~even eager~to discover, from the announcement of a new product, what we have all along wanted without really knowing it."

~ Daniel J. Boorstin

Education and Growth

"Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much part of the process as the experiments that work."

~ C. Carter-Scott

 

"The entire object of true education, is to make people not merely do the right thing, but to enjoy right things; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learned, but to love knowledge."

~ John Ruskin

 

"The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't."

~ Henry Ward Beecher

 

Be More

"Great thoughts come from the heart."

~ François de La Rochefoucauld

 

"True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information."

~ Winston Churchill

 

 

Your actions build your future

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.

~ R. D. Laing

The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create.

~ Leonard I. Sweet

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

~ Thomas Jefferson