"The only reason for Time is so [that] everything doesn't happen at once."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of Man."
~~ Martin Heidegger [1889-1976]
"Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries."
~~ James A. Michener [1907-97]
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility."
~~ James Thurber [1894-1961]
“There is no such thing as 'common sense': If common sense were common, things would make sense.”
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself."
~~ Wall Street arbitrageur Ivan Boesky (in a speech given at the commencement ceremony at University of California Berkeley in 1986; he later spent two years in federal prison for insider trading crimes)
"A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past."
~~ Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977]
"The optimist thinks [that] the glass is half full. The pessimist thinks [that] the glass is half empty. The engineer knows the real truth: that the glass is twice as large as it should be for optimum utilization of resources."
~~ Dale Andreatti
"The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions."
~~ Claude Lévi-Strauss [1908-2009]
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."
~~ James Joyce [1882-1941]
"The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection."
~~ Henry Ward Beecher [1813-87]
"One of the greatest tasks of my life has been to teach that the colored man can be anything."
~~ pioneer Afro-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux [1884-1951]
"Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back."
~~ Texas Bix Bender, in the book "Don't Squat With Yer Spurs On"
"I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"The devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was catastrophic. But we have to realize that the United States bombed New Mexico first."
~~ Joni Arends, anti-nuclear activist
“Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
~~ P.T. Barnum [1810-91] {see also H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]}
"Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."
~~ Winston Churchill [1864-1965]
"The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost."
~~ Arthur Miller [1915-2005]
"A book is a loaded gun."
~~ Ray Bradbury, from "Fahrenheit 451" [1953]
"Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist but also in the ability to start over."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]
"We have each other and we have the truth."
~~ David Ray Griffin
"Culture is like money, it comes easiest to those who need it least."
~~ Nero Wolfe character, as written by Rex Stout [1886-1975]
"Music is my life at the expense of everything else in my life."
~~ Stan Getz [1927-91]
"Luck is the residue of design"
~~ Branch Rickey [1881-1965]
"And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow."
~~ Jerry Chin
"The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."
~~ physicist Marie Curie [1867-1934]
"Golf, golf, golf. It's ruined more good men than whiskey."
~~ Charlie Chan character, as written by Earl Derr Biggers [1884-1933]
"Progress in physics is achieved by denying the obvious and accepting the impossible."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Reports from G.E. Nordell, author & philosopher & revolutionary, living a quiet life at his mesa-top home in New Mexico. Topics to be covered include economics, politics, cinema, local culture (rural & urban), and the adventures of a sometimes-grumpy hermit deep in The Land of Enchantment . . .
Copyright Gary Edward Nordell, all rights reserved. Powered by Blogger.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
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