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Sunday, August 27, 2017

August 2017 Quotations (54)

"He who allows oppression, shares the crime."
~~ Erasmus Darwin [1731-1802], British physician, scientist, reformer & poet, and grandfather of Charles Darwin [1809-82]

"The Great Recession never fully ended."
~~ Ryan Cooper, in "The Week Magazine", July 2017

"If you're looking for rainbows look up to the sky / You'll never find rainbows if you're looking down."
~~ Charlie Chaplin [1889-1977], sung in the opening credits for"The circus" [1928] sound re-release in 1969

"If you are silent you are dead, / And if you speak you are dead, / So speak and die.”
~~ assassinated Algerian writer Tahar Djaout [1954-93]

"People change and forget to tell each other."
~~ playwright Lillian Hellman [1905-84]

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"Live out of your imagination, not your history."
~~ Stephen Covey [1932-2012]

"When fear is used to control us, love is how we rebel."
~~ book blurb

"Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves."
~~ William Arthur Ward [1921-94]

“Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.”
~~ Edith Wharton [1862-1937]

"Wake up! The Class War has already begun."
~~ John R. Talbott, in 2004

"Life is a game. In order to have a game, something has to be more important than something else. If what already is, is more important than what isn’t, the game is over. So, life is a game in which what isn’t, is more important than what is. Let the good times roll."
~~ Werner Erhard

"Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is devastation. Ignorance is tragedy. And ignorance is illness. It all stems from ignorance."
~~ motivational speaker Jim Rohn [1930-2009]

"Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string."
~~ Pelé, retired soccer star

"If Trump must start a nuclear war, let us finish 'Game of Thrones' first."
~~ Vincent Lee, on LinkedIn

“To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.”
~~ Thomas Watson, Jr. [1914-93], longtime CEO of I.B.M.

"Being President doesn't change who you are, it reveals who you are."
~~ Michelle Obama

"America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms. As we pray for Charlottesville, we are reminded of the fundamental truths recorded by that city's most prominent citizen in the Declaration of Independence: we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights."
~~ joint statement in August 2017 by former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise [that] they make as they go by."
~~ Douglas Adams [1952-2001]

"Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself."
~~ Thomas J. Watson, Sr. [1874-1956], founder of I.B.M.

"The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people."
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]

"There are no good Nazis."
~~ James Murdoch, executive at Fox & News Corp.

"Fear is like a disease. When it moves, it moves like wildfire. But what happens when, even in the face of that fear, you do what you've got to do? That's called courage. And just like fear, courage is contagious."
~~ Damon Davis

"We're leaving [Congress] to people who either were born with a silver spoon in their mouth . . . or couldn't get better jobs in the first place."
~~ Jerry Lewis [1926-2017]

"He's at that awkward age – too old to be cute and not dead yet."
~~ cartoonist Zanhart, in The New Yorker

"It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so [that] they can tell us what to do."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011]

“A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me."
~~ Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977], in a 1964 ‘Playboy Magazine’ Interview

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.“
~~ Dorothy Day [1897-1980]

“We do not grow old. We become old by not growing.“
~~ Ida Fisher Davidoff [1903-2001], expert on aging

"A man loves a thing, that don't mean it's got to love him back. You love a thing, you got to be grateful."
~~ character Robert E. Lee Prewitt, in "From Here To Eternity" [1951 novel] by James Jones [1921-77]

“We live in exile from the best part of ourselves.“
~~ Paul Zweig [1935-84]

"Zen meditation is a trickily simple affair, for it consists only in watching everything that is happening, including your own thoughts & breathing, without comment . . . you find that there is no self other than everything that is going on, both inside & outside the skin. ... The trick, which cannot be forced, is to be in this state of consciousness all the time.“
~~ Allan W. Watts [1915-73], in a Playboy Magazine article "Sound of Rain"

"Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation, must the unclouded face of truth suffer harm."
~~ C.P. Scott [1846-1932], editor of the Manchester Guardian newspaper

"It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."
~~ Eddie Cantor [1892-1964]

"Modern religion is the end trail of modern mythology."
~~ actor Bruce Willis

"Art is meant to disturb, science reassures."
~~ French artist George Braques [1882-1963]

"If you want to truly bear a burden, deal with reality. If you want to know true joy, succeed at dealing with reality."
~~ Sam Cottrell

"If there is no laughter inside you, there's nothing."
~~ Louis-Ferdinand Céline [1894-1961]

"The subconscious is not a grave; it is a cistern."
~~ author Rex Stout [1886-1975]

"Political correctness is merely the intellectual McCarthyism that's currently in season ... and a pernicious poison in the well of Reason."
~~ mystery author James D. Doss [1939-2012]

"Most business meetings are staged to supply people who would rather talk than work with people who would rather listen than work."
~~ columnist L.M. Boyd [1927-2007]

“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.“
~~ Sheryl Sandberg, COO at Facebook, Inc.

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see.“
~~ Chinese philosopher Confucius [551-479 B.C.E.]

“A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.“
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62]

“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.“
~~ physicist & astronomer Galileo Galilei [1564-1642]

“Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out - it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.“
~~ writer Robert W. Service [1874-1958]

“The man who is denied the opportunity of making decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to make.“
~~ Cyril Northcote Parkinson [1909-93]

“Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.“
~~ Thomas Carlyle [1795-1881]

"The way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement."
~~ investor Charles Schwab

"The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you."
~~ John E. Southard [1915-93]

"Silent gratitude isn't very much to anyone."
~~ Gertrude Stein [1874-1946]

"Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity . . . it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."
~~ Melody Beattie

"The world has enough beautiful mountains and meadows, spectacular skies and serene lakes. It has enough lush forests, flowered fields, and sandy beaches. It has plenty of stars and the promise of a new sunrise and sunset every day. What the world needs more of is people to appreciate and enjoy it."
~~ Michael Josephson

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

Friday, August 25, 2017

Replacing Statues of Confederate Generals

Some of the conversation about tearing down statues of Confederate generals is about what to do with the pedestals.

Here’s an idea: Erect statues honoring America’s progressive heroes.

The choices are many:
eco-activist Edward Abbey [1927-89]
eco-activist Rachel Carson [1907–64]
labor leader César E. Chávez [1927-1993]
labor leader Eugene V. Debs [1855–1926]
labor leader Joe Hill [1879-1915]
Dolores Huerta
labor leader Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones [1837-1930]
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929–68]
politician Robert M. 'Fighting Bob' La Follette [1855-1925]
Justice Thurgood Marshall [1908–93]
eco-activist John Muir [1838-1914]
civil rights leader Rosa Parks [1913-2005]
muckraker journalist Ida M. Tarbell [1857-1944]
U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone [1944-2002]

Wednesday, August 02, 2017

Kindle Book Contest

Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing has announced a contest for English-language books newly-published on their website. The deadline is November 2017. The contest is open to authors residing in India, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States (excluding the territories of Quebec and Tasmania).

The main prize is 10 lakh rupees (that's one million in India); today the volatile Indian rupee is trading at 64 to the U.S. dollar, so the prize converts to roughly US$16,000. Secondarily, the winner will be considered for book publication in India.

Well, there is only one winner, out of thousands or millions of applicants, but the idea got me thinking. I already have two books available in Kindle format, so what might I create as a potential entry? What I came up with is a collection of my Working Minds Philosophy essays, which I could call "Working Minds: The First 100 Essays". I could convert the essays, make a cover, tweak this and that, many hours of work, but do-able by, say, October. If completed by deadline, I could enter the contest.

But is it worth it? That is where you, the reader, comes in. Will you buy such a book? (Probably priced at eight to ten dollars.)

I am posting this survey here on my blog, on my Facebook page, and on my LinkedIn page.

Click on this email link to vote 'yes' (you can add a comment).

I will report the results at the same three places.

G.E. Nordell
author • philosopher • revolutionary
Rio Communities, New Mexico USA

ADDED August 23: It has now been three weeks, and The People have spoken:
NOT ONE SINGLE REPLY - not from this blog, not from Facebook, not from LinkedIn.
THEREFORE: The matter is closed.