October 2015 Quotations (60)

"The first Democratic Presidential Debate had adults on the stage."
~~ Dave Johnson

"Donald Trump is not the worst-case scenario for the upcoming election. There will be a comedy film called 'Bodies For It' about a zombie who runs for President."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

“This other war, the war upon destruction of natural assets is one that will never be finished. Our weakness in this vast war is largely ignorance, that most of our citizens do not realize what is going on under their very feet.”
~~ Louis Bromfield [1896-1956]

"We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards, to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life."
~~ James Earl 'Jimmy' Carter Jr., during Oprah Winfrey tv interview 9/2015

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011], co-founder of Apple, Inc. [est. 1975]

"What you see and hear depends a great deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned," spoken by Zara in Act III, Scene VIII.[2] (This is usually paraphrased as "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.")
~~ English playwright Sir Wm. Congreve [1670-1729]

"Sometimes it's the people [that] no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."
~~ British computer genius Alan Turing [1912-54]

"There should be at least one leak like the Pentagon Papers every year."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg

[re coffee:] “Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.”
~~ Charles Maurice de Talleyrand [1754-1838]

“I believe humans get a lot done, not because we're smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make coffee.”
~~ New York City artist Flash Rosenberg

“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]

"Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates."
~~ J.K. Rowling

"For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination."
~~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [1859-1930]

"The love [that] you liberate in your work is the only love [that] you keep."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

"Comedy is British, wit is French, humor is American."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

“The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day.”
~~ Haruki Murakami

"Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

"Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the center of the city."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures."
~~ Elizabeth Gilbert

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain."
~~ Vivian Greene

"The path [that] we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place."
~~ Barack Obama, in his acceptance speech at the 2012 Democratic Party Convention

"The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It's doing something that you appreciate, something [that] you believe is worthwhile."
~~ Julia Child [1912-2004]

"If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."
~~ Roald Dahl [1916-90]

"The biggest adventure [that] you can take is to live the life of your dreams."
~~ Oprah Winfrey

"How about we treat every man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion?"
~~ Boston Pete, blogger on DailyKos

"The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”
~~ Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]

"Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear."
~~ William E. Gladstone [1809-98], in 1866

"If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]

"So far, the trend seems to be toward ... most people ending up miserably poor [as] the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution ... with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
~~ paraphrase of Stephen W. Hawking

“Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”
~~ labor activist Lucy Parsons [1853-1942]

"A person's a person, no matter how small."
~~ Dr. Seuss {Theodor Geisel 1904-91}, in "Horton Hears A Who"

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me. . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."
~~ cartoonist & poet Shel Silverstein [1930-99]

"In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and the job's a game."
~~ Mary Poppins character, as written by P.L. Travers [1899-1996]

"It's no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then."
~~ Lewis Carroll [1832-98], in "Alice"

"Behind his mask, the writer is always watching; he cannot help it. He observes, analyzes, takes mental notes, stores nuggets of the talk and behavior around him for later use."
~~ English author Frederick Forsyth

"Rosa sat, so Martin could walk. Martin walked, so Obama could run. Obama is running, so our children can fly."
~~ viral email on election night 2008

"There was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages."
~~ wordmeister Richard Lederer

"The basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man's right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness - which means: man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions."
~~ Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa [1888-1935]

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

"Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on."
~~ Henry Rollins

"In Buenos Aires, mothers say to me, 'My son is 34 and he's not getting married; I don't know what to do'. So I tell them, 'Don't iron their shirts anymore'."
~~ Pope Francis

"One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the gulf between how serious we [poets] take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else."
~~ Billy Collins

"The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."
~~ Socrates [469-399 B.C.E.]

"The basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people."
~~ author Marilynne Robinson

"It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is, What are we busy about?"
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]

"What could be more beautiful than a dear old lady growing wise with age? Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it."
~~ French actress Brigitte Bardot

"What an elder sees sitting, the young can't see standing."
~~ Gustave Flaubert [1821-80]

"No one has ever become poor by giving."
~~ Anne Frank [1929-45]

"When something becomes important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor."
~~ Elon Musk

"When I see a garden in flower, then I believe in God for a second. But not the rest of the time."
~~ Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich

"Baseball is what we were, football is what we have become."
~~ Mary McGrory [ 1918-2004]

"Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity that somebody wishes they had missed."
~~ actress-comedian Lily Tomlin

"There are two kinds of writer's block. One is when you freeze up because you think [that] you can't do it. The other is when you think [that] it's not worth doing."
~~ Tom Wolfe

"All my life, my parents said, 'Never take candy from strangers'. And then they dressed me up and said, 'Now go beg for it'."
~~ comedian Rita Rudner

"Advice is judged by results, not by intentions."
~~ Marcus Tullius Cicero [106 B.C.E. – 43 B.C.E.]

"Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs."
~~ novelist Mary Gaitskill

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

News Factoids for Third Quarter 2015

On June 19th, flash floods caused collapse of two freeway bridges on I-10 near Desert Center, California; the two-way closure is longterm and traffic is being diverted; eastbound traffic goes south on Highway 86 at Indio to I-8, westbound traffic goes north on I-95 at Blythe to Highway 62 and thru High Desert. (The Federal Highway Administration lists 119 obsolete bridges and 79 structurally-deficient bridges in Riverside County, California – just another example of damage caused by Republican under-funding of infrastructure repairs for the last ten years.

Americans drank 10.9 billion gallons of bottled water in 2014, up 7.3% over 2013 (and likely to overtake sales of soda pop in 2015).

Eighteen of the 22 components in the Bloomberg Commodity Index have dropped at least 20 percent during August from recent highs, which means that there is now a bear market. The last time this happened was October 2008 {just prior to the G.O.P. Economic Meltdown}. The center of this commodity collapse is the energy market: Chevron's earnings were down a dramatic 90% from last year, and Exxon's earnings were down 51% year-over-year, the worst quarter since early 2009.
The collapse in energy shares alone adds up to $1.3 trillion and is expected to create a $4.4 trillion hole in energy company earnings over the next three years. This has caused the energy sector to be the leading sector for layoffs in the entire economy.

Billie's friend's Weed Killer Recipe
• 2 cups Epsom salts
• 1 gallon cider vinegar
• 1 cup dish soap
— cheap and non-toxic; it works best if you use a sprayer (like a handheld bug or weed sprayer)

Copyright 2015 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved