Copyright Gary Edward Nordell, all rights reserved. Powered by Blogger.

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

April 2018 Quotations (57)

"We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say 'It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.' Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes."
~~ children's TV host Fred Rogers [1928-2003]

"Old age is a privilege. There are 14 teenagers and three teachers in Parkland, Florida who do not get to go there."
~~ G.E. Nordell

“Live the Life of Your Dreams: Be brave enough to live the life of your dreams according to your vision and purpose instead of the expectations and opinions of others.”
~~ Roy T. Bennett

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."
~~ Peter F. Drucker [1909-2005]

"The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style."
~~ Dr. Maya Angelou [1928-2014]

"Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy."
~~ Plato [427-347 BCE]

"There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice."
~~ Montesquieu [1689-1755]

"The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."
~~ Maximilien Robespierre [1758-94]

"Change requires more than righteous anger. It requires a program, and it requires organizing."
~~ Barack Obama, on 7 May 2016

"If you correct the mind, the rest of your life will fall into place."
~~ Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu [IVth Century B.C.E.]

“Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
~~ St. Francis of Assisi [1181?-1226]

"With guns you can kill terrorists. With education, you can kill terrorism."
~~ Malala Yousafzai

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]

“It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
~~ Dale Carnegie [1888-1965]

"If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp [that] it was written on."
~~ ethnobotanist Terrence McKenna [1946-2000]

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.”
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking [that] you’re Facebook’s customer, you’re not – you’re the product. Its customers are the advertisers.”
~~ Bruce Schneier, quoted in TIME Magazine 11/2010

"Google Users - You're The Product, Not The Customer"
~~ article in Forbes Magazine 12/2013

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”
~~ Nobel-laureate André Gide [1869-1951]

'found' slogans for back of T-shirts:
         message and data rates may apply
         BACK - by popular demand

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."
~~ Chief Seattle [c. 1786-1866]

"When I let go of who I am, I become what I might be."
~~ Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu [IVth Century B.C.E.]

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
~~ Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.]

"He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4? B.C.E. - 65 A.D.]

"It does not require many words to speak the truth."
~~ Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Tribe [1840-1904]

"All that zoos actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement,
compared to which a visit to a penetentiary, or even to a state legislature in session, is informing, stimulating, and ennobling."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work."
~~ Stephen King

"Hope is the ability to hear the melody of the future. Faith is the willingness and the courage to dance to it today."
~~ Pastor Peter Kuzmic of Croatia

“Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.”
~~ Brasilian author Paulo Coelho

"If we really think children are our future, shouldn’t the people who mold their minds make more than the night manager at GameStop?"
~~ TV host Bill Maher

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82], essay "Self-Reliance" [1841]

"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions."
~~ Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519]

"Surround yourself with people who make you hungry for life . . . touch your heart and nourish your soul."
~~ salesman & speaker Zig Ziglar [1926-2012]

"Hate mail is far more entertaining than valentines."
~~ columnist Gustavo Arellano

"The use of force is proof of the absence of Reason."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Our chief want (lack) in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"Decide who you're not before you decide who you are."
~~ musician Questlove

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt."
~~ Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519]

"Families are about love overcoming emotional torture."
~~ cartoonist Matt Groening

"All love is doomed, seen in the light of death."
~~ novelist Anita Shreve [1946-2018]

"You need someone who believes in this country, again, to begin to change it."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]

"Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country."
~~ journalist & columnist Molly Ivins [1944-2007]

hoist on his own petard, as it were: “Anyone being investigated by the F.B.I. is not qualified to be the president of the United States.”
~~ tweeted by @realDonaldTrump on 8/3/2016, 9/7/2016, 10/15/2016, 10/20/2016, 10/21/2016, 10/25/2016, 10/30/2016

"Let the world know why you're here, and do it with passion."
~~ Dr. Wayne W. Dyer [1940-2015]

"I guess if someone is going to threaten to shoot liberals I’m glad it’s Ted Nugent, he hasn’t had a hit in years."
~~ Jean Little, on Twitter

"While the Lord will sometimes provide, He may be busy looking after somebody else when you need Him most."
~~ anonymous article writer in the August 1965 The Atlantic Magazine

"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity."
~~ Kahlil Gibran [1883-1931]

“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.”
~~ Thomas Moore [1779-1852]

“If you wish to be out front, then act as if you were behind.”
~~ Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu [IVth Century B.C.E.]

“No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissastifaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
~~ American choreographer Martha Graham [1894-1991]

“Making judgments under severe stress is the most difficult thing there is. The more preparation you have prior to the conflict, the more you can do in a clinical situation, the better off you will be.”
~~ Bill Walsh [1931-2007], coached the San Francisco 49ers

“Don't let someone else's opinion of you become your reality.”
~~ motivational speaker Leslie C. 'Les' Brown

“The older I get, the more I realize that arguing on the basis of facts and logic only gets you labeled as someone who is out of step with the times, if not lacking in compassion."
~~ Thomas Sowell

"Insulting people is one of the few things for which Trump possesses a genuine talent."
~~ John Cassidy, columnist in The New Yorker Magazine

"Be open enough to see opportunities. Be wide enough to be grateful. Be courageous enough to be happy."
~~ motivational speaker Dr. Steve Maraboli

"By being yourself, you put something wonderful in[to] the world that was not there before."
~~ Edwin Elliot

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

Wednesday, April 04, 2018

News Factoids for First Quarter 2018

== ECONOMICS ===

Global debt surpassed $230 trillion last year. (Global G.D.P. was $79.28 trillion.)

Last year, the economic losses from natural and man-made disasters reached $306 billion, almost double the previous year’s cost.
~~~ according to Swiss Re

Announced late January 2018: The U.S. economy grew at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter. The mark was underwhelming after 3.2 percent {Obama carryover} growth in the third quarter raised expectations. Overall, American G.D.P. grew by 2.3 percent in 2017. Troublingly, consumer spending has risen faster than disposable income, and individual saving is at a near-record low.
~~~ per Washington Post and New York Times

As of 2017, almost 64 percent of all foreign exchange reserves were American currency. The euro was in second place at a mere 20 percent. The Japanese yen was way back in third, with less than 5 percent. China's renminbi was just 1.1 percent.


== POLITICS ===

F.B.I. officials James B. Comey, Andrew McCabe, Robert S. Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, and Christopher Wray are all (or were until recently) life-long registered Republicans – the right-wing fantasy about a 'liberal F.B.I. conspiracy' has no basis in fact.

Vladimir Putin received 77% of the votes in the presidential election in March – some say that that result was due to Russian meddling in the election process.

March for Our Lives organizers say that 800,000 marchers showed up in Washington, DC on March 24th – a bigger crowd than Trump's inauguration.

Greyhound Bus Lines around the USA are allowing armed I.C.E. Border Patrol agents to use racial profiling to harass passengers without a warrant.

73 Teens Shot To Death In The 37 Days Since The Parkland Massacre
(per Yahoo News)


== OTHER STUFF ===

Cape Town, South Africa reduced consumption enough so that the 'Zero Day' when they run out of water is pushed back to 2019.

Already over-worked nurses in America have to stand and administer some medicines very slowly by syringe because there are no more IV bags in the U.S A.: the only manufacturer was in Puerto Rico and the factory has not been repaired – six months after Hurricane Maria.

In January 2018, Hasbro announced the release of a new 'Cheaters Edition' of the Monopoly™ board game that cheerfully caters to 'sordid reality'; release is planned for Fall 2018 and in addition to the community chest and chance cards, this version includes 15 cheat cards. Other rules changes include rotating the banker function as each player takes his/her turn, making it easier to cheat.

Netflix is producing 700 original series episodes and movies in 2018.

Copyright 2018 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved