April 2016 Quotations (55)

"What is needed is more, more, and always more consciousness, both in art and in life."
~~ Mabel Dodge Luhan [1879-1962]

“The true journey implies a complete change of nutrition, a digesting of the visited country – its fauna and flora and its culture (not only the different culinary practices and condiments but the different implements used to grind the flour or stir the pot).”
~~ Italo Calvino [1923-85]

"I believe that every writer needs a guide, because writing is an exploration and the exploration is not only for me, it's for the reader."
~~ New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya

"Books are the mirror in which we see ourselves."
~~ New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
~~ photographer Dorothea Lange [1895-1965]

"It's true that nothing is certain except death and taxes. Sometimes I wish that they came in that order."
~~ TV comedian Sam Levenson [1911-80]

"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf."
~~ American humorist Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"The way taxes are, you might as well marry for love."
~~ comedian Joe E. Lewis [1902-71]

"I wouldn't mind paying taxes . . . if I knew [that] they were going to a friendly country."
~~ comedian-activist Dick Gregory

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
~~ philosopher-activist Noam Chomsky

"Unnecessary noise is the most cruel absence of care that can be inflicted on sick or well."
~~ Florence Nightingale [1820-1910]

"Money, like vodka, turns a man into an eccentric."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]

"Power worship blurs political judgment. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"Human beings can get used to virtually anything, given plenty of time and no choice in the matter whatsoever."
~~ British novelist Tom Holt

"After a time, all losses are the same. One more thing lost is one thing less to lose; and we go stripped at last the way [that] we came."
~~ poet Catherine Breese Davis [1924-2002]

"The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably."
~~ novelist Julian Barnes

"Music is God's little reminder that there's something besides us in the universe, a harmonic connection between all living beings, everywhere, even the stars."
~~ comedian-actor Robin Williams [1951-2014]

"There are always people who think [that] they have a hilarious height joke [that] you haven't heard before."
~~ basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

"The value of things is not the time [that] they last, but the intensity with which they occur."
~~ Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa [1888-1935]

"A character is defined by the kinds of challenges [that] he cannot walk away from. And by those [that] he has walked away from that cause him remorse."
~~ Arthur Miller [1915-2005]

"Life is like a suitcase, you can squeeze a lot in."
~~ Yoko Ono

"Sometimes your best investments are the ones [that] you don't make."
~~ Donald J. Trump

"Who discovered [that] we could get milk from cows, and what did he think that he was doing at the time?"
~~ Scottish comedian Billy Connelly

"Poor is the man whose pleasure depends on the permission of another."
~~ singer Madonna

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

“Life must go on / I forget just why.”
~~ Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892-1950]

"Democracy has never been and can never be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
~~ Pres. John Adams [1735-1826]

"The most dangerous world view is the world view of those who have not viewed the world."
~~ naturalist Alexander von Humboldt [1769-1859]

"Most critics are educated beyond their intelligence."
~~ critic Kenneth Tynan

"Storytelling is the best way [that] we have of coming up with new ideas."
~~ Richard Branson

“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.”
~~ Jenny Han, in "The Summer I Turned Pretty", 2009

“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
~~ Henry James [1843-1916] , quoted in Edith Wharton's "A Backward Glance", 1934

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940], in "The Great Gatsby", 1925

"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60], in "The Stranger", 1942

"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
~~ Theodore Isaac Rubin

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]

"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical [world]."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"Maybe stories are just data with a soul."
~~ author Brené Brown

"The longest way is the most efficient way."
~~ American poet John Ashbery

"When a person tells you that you hurt them, you don't get to decide that you didn't."
~~ comedian Louie C.K.

"Reality is hard. It's no walk in the park, this thing called life."
~~ actress Patty Duke [1946-2016]

"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain – and most fools do."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"Create a concept, and reality leaves the room."
~~ philosopher José Ortega y Gassett [1883-1955]

"Artists are the elite of the servant class."
~~ painter Jasper Johns

"Everyone is so obsessed with themselves nowadays that they have no time for me."
~~ author Louise Rennison [1951-2016]

"[The German] educational system is like an automobile which has strong rear lights, brightly illuminating the past. But looking forward, things are barely discernible."
~~ astrophysicist Hermann Oberth [1894-1989]

"Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegatating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Evil is unspectacular and always human."
~~ W.H. Auden [1907-1973]

"Marriage is insurance for the worst years of your life. During your best years, you don't need a husband."
~~ Helen Gurley Brown [1922-2012]

"As a general rule, nobody has money who ought to have it."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]

"There is only one thing certain. That is one's own inadequacy. One must start from that."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]

"Joy, it must be remembered, is nothing like happiness, its milquetoast cousin. It is instead a vivid and extreme state of being, often arrived at in the aftermath of great pain."
~~ novelist Ayana Mathis

"If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

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

Methane Factoids

By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases.

Trace gases together traditionally compose about 0.038% of the atmosphere (or 0.043% with CO2 at the increased 2014 concentration).
0.0400% carbon dioxide / CO2
0.001818% neon/Ne
0.000524% helium/He
0.00018% methane/CH4 - the main component of natural gas
0.000114% krypton/Kr
0.000055% hydrogen/H2

The Earth's atmospheric methane concentration has increased by about 150% since 1750, from approximately 0.00007.2% by volume. The current rapid methane increase that is already started from melting of ocean-bottom methane crystals could begin killing forest biomass and food crops in as little as five or ten years.
Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved