March 2016 Quotations (60)

“Time management is dead; in our day the true struggle is focus management.”
~~ Dave Crenshaw

"Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]

"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]

"Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]

"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end, then stop."
~~ Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]

"What they didn't realize is that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time."
~~ Doris Lessing [1919-2013]

"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it."
~~ Frank Herbert [1920-86]

"Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"I agree that there are things that should be kept secret."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg

“Coffee smells like freshly ground heaven.”
~~ Jessi Lane Adams

“To be at once exceedingly wealthy and good is impossible.”
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]

"The true solace for all private troubles is to lose yourself in your work."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

“Nothing has really happened until it has been described.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]

"What the billionaire class has yet to realize is that in this election, their obscene wealth is their weakness."
~~ Sen. Bernie Sanders

"American police officers are in need of mental health therapy and the entire law enforcement system is in need of reevaluation."
~~ Leslie Salzillo

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press."
~~ journalist Ida B. Wells [1862-1931]

"Never go to a doctor whose office plants are dead."
~~ Erma Bombeck [1927-96]

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
~~ Edward Irving 'Ed' Koch [1924-2013], quoting John F. Kennedy

"When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking."
~~ Gail Sheehy

"The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them."
~~ Lenny Bruce [1925-66]

"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]

"Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance."
~~ Eckhart Tolle

"The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated."
~~ William James [1842-1910]

"Religion is a primitive form of philosophy, [an] attempt to offer a comprehensive view of reality."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"You can't better the world by simply talking to it. Philosophy to be effective must be mechanically applied."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]

"I am proud that the gentleman who is head of Goldman Sachs ... said I was dangerous. And he is right, I am dangerous for Wall Street."
~~ Sen. Bernie Sanders, at the 9 March 2016 debate

”To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every cubic inch of space is a miracle.”
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]

"Confidence is 10 percent hard work and 90 percent delusion."
~~ comic actress Tina Fey

"Life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose in older people, the love of youth in others."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."
~~ Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]

"To love without knowing how to love wounds the person [that] we love."
~~ Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh

"A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe [that] the image is herself. An ugly woman knows [that] it is not."
~~ Simone Weil [1909-43]

"It is the curse of the competent not to be called upon."
~~ poet-songwriter Robert Priest

"Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability."
~~ U.C.L.A. coach John R. Wooden [1910-2010]

"To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift."
~~ Steve Prefontaine [1951-75]

"No matter how involved you are in what you do, no matter how many hours a week you devote to your career pursuits, you must always remember that your family is your primary team."
~~ 'Coach K' {Michael William Krzyzewski}

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
~~ Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890-1969]

"You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical science-fiction cowboy detective novel."
~~ Alan Moore

"Making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions."
~~ Pico Iyer, in "The Art of Stillness", 2014

"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."
~~ Jonathan Swift [1667–1745]

"Don't judge each day by the harvest [that] you reap, but by the seeds [that] you plant."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

“An empty coffee cup is full of hope. Now there’s something worth voting for.”
~~ Jarod Kintz

"I often find writer's block a sign that you're actually writing the wrong story."
~~ Mark Millar

"God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion."
~~ Pliny the Elder {Gaius Plinius Secundus [c. AD 23 – AD 79]}

"Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting."
~~ Larry Page, co-founder of Google, Inc.

"If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot."
~~ Irish playwright Samuel Beckett [1906-89]

"Time and silence are the most luxurious things today."
~~ Tom Ford

"There's no 'right' way to write a book. I simply write to find out what I have to write."
~~ Cheryl Strayed

"I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money."
~~ Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]

"Books fall open, you fall in."
~~ David McCord [1897-1997]

"All we are is a lot of talking nitrogen."
~~ playwright Arthur Miller [1915-2005]

"What are games but life reduced to symbolic rituals."
~~ mystery author D.R. Meredith

"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

"A lover of books is always in good company."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"No brains, no headaches."
~~ Steve Roach

"I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]

"Your life works to the degree [that] you keep your agreements."
~~ Werner Erhard

"I write for the same reason that I breathe – because if I did not I would die."
~~ Isaac Asimov [1920-92]

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

News Factoids for First Quarter 2016

Georgia ranks as the number one most ‘at risk’ state for corruption in the country, garnering a letter grade of “F”, per a study by The Government Integrity Institute

MARKETING IN AMERICA: The local Walgreens Drug Store has stopped selling light bulbs, period. None on the shelves. The clerk told me that they "weren't selling enough of them".

In 2014, the pharmaceutical industry spent over $250 million on lobbying and campaign contributions – far more than any other industry in America.

"The business of recycling represents nearly $106B in annual economic activity, is responsible for 471,587 direct and indirect jobs, and generates more than $4.3B in state and local revenue and another $6.76B in federal taxes." — Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, in 2015

Two oddities showed up while I was in the hospital (for 46 days): 1) After thirty days, the aspirin that I had taken at home to relieve arthritis pain in my hands wore off, and my hands began to hurt. 2) I have taken excess vitamin C to prevent colds for many years (per Dr. Linus Pauling); by the time I was released home, the C also wore off and I caught my first cold in ten years. (So Im taking 3,000 units of C three times a day for a while to rebuild my immunity.)

N.A.S.A. report released in March 2016 concludes that the Middle East is suffering its worst drought in 900 years, and that human-created climate change is a contributor.

Later in 2016, Pfizer – the country’s largest pharmaceutical company, with nearly $1 billion in annual government contracts – plans to renounce its U.S. citizenship by merging with Allergan, an Irish-based company. This would allow Pfizer to dodge the $35 billion tax bill it owes on its stash of untaxed offshore profits.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is winning delegates in the Western U.S. nowadays, so the prediction here is Sanders vs. Trump in November.

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved