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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 7, 2011 17:13:36 GMT -5
Qoutes for Today
Robert Maynard Pirsig was born at Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1928. With an IQ of 170 at age nine he skipped several grades and entered the University of Minnesota at age 15. He left school to serve with the US Army in South Korea, earning his BA in 1950. He studied philosophy and journalism at Banaras Hindu University in India, at the University of Chicago, became a professor at Montana State University in 1958, and had a nervous breakdown after two years. He was in and out of hospital for three years, then took a motorcycle vacation with his son, traveling from Minnesota to California. Planning to write an essay on motorcycling he ended up with 800,000 words of philosophy, a volume that was rejected by 121 editors before being edited to become Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
QUOTES:
"Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster."
"To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow."
"When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt."
"Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not."
"That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. There's no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone's mind."
"The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite."
"The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling."
All from Robert M. Pirsig
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 9, 2011 14:04:33 GMT -5
Quotes for Today: Richard Plantagenet was born at Oxfordshire, England on Sept 8thy in 1157. His mother was Eleanor of Aquitaine and his father Henry II of England. Although he eventually became King Richard I of England, he didn't much care for the job, didn't speak the language, and spent almost none of his life in England - despite the Robin Hood and Ivanhoe stories. As a young soldier his French subjects called him "Coeur de Lion" - we call him Richard the Lionhearted. Here are some quotes on Lions. There are, as far as I know, no quotes by Richard. QUOTES: Fainthearted animals move about in herds. The lion walks alone in the desert. Let the poet always walk thus. - Alfred Victor Vigny, 1797 - 1863
It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier. - Robert A. Heinlein, 1907 - 1988
An optimist is someone who gets treed by a lion but enjoys the scenery. - Walter Winchell, 1897 - 1972
An army of stags led by a lion is more to be feared than an army of lions led by a stag. - Chabrias, ca 410 - 357 BCE
The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. - Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469 - 1527
There may come a time when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, but I am still betting on the lion. - Josh Billings, 1818 - 1885
Thought of the Day: "Beauty I have learned from the ugly, charity from the unkind, and peace from the turmoil of the world." --Frederick Ward Kates, rector, Old St Paul's Church, Baltimore, Md.
Quote of the Day: "Even in America, the Indian summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad...but never hustled." --Henry Adams, historian & novelist (1838-1918)
sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img] Quote of the Moment: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire, French philosopher (1694-1778)[/size][/color][/font]
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Post by soflamom on Sept 9, 2011 15:48:02 GMT -5
"A lie is a lie, even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if no one believes it."
-source unknown
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 10, 2011 13:39:19 GMT -5
Quotes for Today: Cyril Vernon Connolly was born at Coventry, Warwickshire, England on Sept. 10th in 1903. His youth was divided between South Africa with his father, a British army officer, Dublin with his mother's family, and England with his paternal grandparents. He was educated at St Cyprian's, Eton, and Balliol College at Oxford. He was secretary to Logan Pearsall Smith who introduced him to the world of British literature. He went on to write short stories and essays for magazines and, in 1939, cofounded the literary magazine Horizon, which he edited for ten years. QUOTES: "All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others."
"Our memories are card indexes — consulted and then put back in disorder, by authorities whom we do not control."
"When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow more loyal to situations and to types."
"In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?"
"The secret of happiness (and therefore of success) is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm, always lucid . . . to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore."
"Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm." All from Cyril Connolly, 1903 - 1974
Thought of the Day: "The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of other; it is in yourself alone." --Orison Swett Marden, founder of Success magazine (1850-1924)
Quote of the Day: "The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." --Mark Twain, author (1835-1910)
sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img] Quote of the Moment: "To oppose something is to maintain it." -- Ursala K. LeGuin, sci-fi writer & poet (b. 1929) [/size][/color][/font]
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 12, 2011 11:29:11 GMT -5
Quotes of the Day Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on the Yasnaya Polyana estate near Tula, Russia on Sept. 9th in 1828. Raised by other family members after his parents died, his school teachers found him "both unable and unwilling to learn". He devoted himself to women, drinking, and gambling until his brother suggested he join the army. Action in the Crimean and witnessing an execution at Paris led him to an intense pacifist Christianity, his works influenced Mohandas Gandhi. QUOTES: "All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
"He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation."
"I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it."
"If you look for perfection, you'll never be content."
"Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here."
History would be a wonderful thing — if it were only true. All from Leo Tolstoy, 1828 - 1910
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Post by a on Sept 12, 2011 11:30:57 GMT -5
Ain't that the truth!
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 12, 2011 11:34:25 GMT -5
IIF--as a historian (of sorts) I must protest. It's as true as possible when being written by people who didn't live in the time or place.
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 12, 2011 11:47:09 GMT -5
Thought of the Day: "Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous." — Thornton Wilder, American playwright (1897-1975).
Quote of the Day: "I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. --Plato, Classical Greek philosopher (429–347 B.C.E.)
sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img] Quote of the Moment: "The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." --H.L. Mencken, ssocial critic & journalist (1880-1956) [/size][/color][/font]
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Post by a on Sept 12, 2011 11:52:42 GMT -5
IIF--as a historian (of sorts) I must protest. It's as true as possible when being written by people who didn't live in the time or place.
The problem I see is that what is true for some writers of history seems to be more opinion than fact. Sort of like reading Dick Cheney's version of events compared to others.
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 12, 2011 12:34:15 GMT -5
Ah, but Cheney was a participant and has an ax to grind and a reputation to protect. Just like Henry Kissinger's "memories" or Nixon's memoirs.
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Post by a on Sept 12, 2011 13:02:17 GMT -5
Ah, but Cheney was a participant and has an ax to grind and a reputation to protect. Just like Henry Kissinger's "memories" or Nixon's memoirs.
The question is, what will make it into the history books? Who will decide what is truth, the actual history as opposed to opinion? What is in the Japanese, Chinese or Russian history books about WWII compared to what is in ours?
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 12, 2011 15:27:39 GMT -5
Who you are is bound to have some effect on what a historian writes, what he/she choses as important. But the sources that are usually used, for more modern history, are the newspapers and such things. Memoirs and autobiographies are used to get insight into what a participant was thinking, doing, etc. but not acccepted as fact unless corraborated by outside sources. For instance, when I did a major paper on the women's rights movement of the 19th century, I used micro copies of the NY Times and NY Herald available at the local college library.
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 13, 2011 12:28:19 GMT -5
Quotes of the Day: Judith Sylvia Perlman was born at Washington City on Sept 13th in 1938. She grew up there and in various foreign capitals, her father was an economist with the United Nations. She graduated from Wellesly College, and went to work for the Washington Post. She started as a reporter, then became a theatre and movie critic, and after becoming Judith Martin was a founding member of the Post's Style section. In 1978 she started taking questions from readers on the subject of etiquette under the byline Miss Manners, responding with elegance, wit, and a no tolerance for nonsense. QUOTES: "The invention of the teenager was a mistake, in Miss Manners' opinion.... Once you identify a period of life in which people have few restrictions and, at the same time, few responsibilities - they get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, nobody wants to live any other way."
"Chaperons, even in their days of glory, were almost never able to enforce morality; what they did was to force immorality to be discreet. This is no small contribution."
"If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached."
"It's far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help."
"When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can't live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed."
"Traditionally, a luncheon is a lunch that takes an eon." All from Judith Martin
Thought of the Day: "'Be yourself' is about the worst advice you can give to some people." — J.B. Priestley, British novelist (1894-1984).
Quote of the Day: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye." --Miss Piggy.
sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img] Quote of the Moment: "Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves." J .M. Barrie, Scottish writer & creator of Peter Pan (1860-1937) [/size][/color][/font]
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 14, 2011 14:22:54 GMT -5
Quotes for Today: This day, Sept 14, 1752, was a bit odd in England and all her colonies. It was a Thursday. The day before had been a Wednesday, but the date had been 2 September - 11 days had vanished. There were riots as those who missed the chance to work those days realized they had to pay their landlords a full month's rent. And that wasn't the only problem with 1752. As always, the new year had started on 25 March, but the year would end on 31 December. Twenty percent of the days in the year vanished in changes to the calendar. If there's a point here, I think it's that we need to attend to each day for itself, lest the months and years be disappointing. QUOTES: "There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination." - Laurence Durrell, English writer (1912-1990)
"The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed." - Sabastien-Roch Nicholas de Chamfort (1741-1794)
"Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others." - Winston Churchill, British statesman (1874-1965)
"There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I." - John Steinbeck, Nobel-winning novelist (1902-1968)
"Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It's been that way all this year. It's been that way so many times. All of war is that way." - Ernest Hemingway, Nobel-winning author (1899-1961)
"Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend — or a meaningful day." - Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
Thought of the Day: ""What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print." — Isadora Duncan, dancer (1877-1927).
Quote of the Day: "The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself." --John Ciardi, author (1916-1986)
sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img] Quote of the Moment: "Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting." -- Karl Wallenda, high-wire artist (1905-1978) [/size][/color][/font]
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 15, 2011 19:27:16 GMT -5
Quotes for Today: François, duc de La Rochefoucauld was born at Paris on Sept. 15th in 1613. From a noble family, he was destined to make an impact and was trained in Latin, mathematics, fencing, dancing, heraldry, and etiquette. He was in command of a regiment at age fifteen. He took issue with certain powerful persons, specifically Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, which meant he was banished on several occasions and made his home in the Bastille briefly. Later in life he joined a salon in which the goal was to carefully hone observations on human character in one sentence. He turned out to be both prolific and skilled in this, endearing him to quotation collectors ever since. QUOTES: "Few things are needful to make the wise man happy, but nothing satisfies the fool; - and this is the reason why so many of mankind are miserable."
"Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed."
"Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example."
"It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills."
"It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit."
"Love, like fire, cannot subsist without constant impulse; it ceases to live from the moment it ceases to hope or to fear."
"Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them." All from François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, 1613 - 1680
Thought of the Day: ""You cannot survive if you do not know the past." — Oriana Fallaci, Italian journalist (1929-2006).
Quote of the Day: "Son, always tell the truth. Then you'll never have to remember what you said the last time." --Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House (1882-1961)
sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img] Quote of the Moment: "The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer (1749-1832) [/size][/color][/font]
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 16, 2011 14:31:52 GMT -5
Quotes for TodayAlbert von Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt was born at Budapest, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on Sept. 16th in 1893. A fourth-generation scientist, he had difficulty in school, attending quite a few for short periods and finally, getting bored in 1914, he left to serve as an army medic. Disgusted with war, he shot himself in the arm and was sent home on medical leave, spending the rest of the war in his uncle's lab. He worked productively on a range of molecular reactions in the body, he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1937 for identifying the role of Vitamin C in the body. (A good Hungarian, he extracted the vitamin from paprika rather than from citrus fruits.) He was active in the Hungarian resistance, was considered a likely prospect to become president of Hungary after WW II, then came to the US and studied muscles at the molecular level and researched cancer in the same way. QUOTES: "A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind." "Here we stand in the middle of this new world with our primitive brain, attuned to the simple cave life, with terrific forces at our disposal, which we are clever enough to release, but whose consequences we cannot comprehend." "Life is water, dancing to the tune of macro molecules." "Research is four things: brains with which to think, eyes with which to see, machines with which to measure and, fourth, money." "The real scientist is ready to bear privation and, if need be, starvation rather than let anyone dictate to him which direction his work must take." "Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water." All from Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893-1986) Thought of the Day: "'As a matter of fact' is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn't." — Laurence J. Peter, Canadian writer (1919-1990) Quote of the Day: "Freedom of the press is limited to those wh own one." -- A.J. Liebling, New Yorker writer (1904-1963) Quote of the Moment: "Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles and all the years you have lived." -- Helen Keller, author (1880-1968)
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 17, 2011 16:37:21 GMT -5
Quotes for Today Henry Louis Mencken was born at Baltimore on Sept 12th in 1880. The son of a cigar merchant, he worked for his father's company but gave it up for journalism when his father died, although he never gave up cigars. I started to pick Mencken quotes on politics but it was too depressing. I then considered his comments on religion but feared it would upset too many. I settled on a few of his thoughts on men and women and their relationships. Equally insightful on all three subjects, I thought these were the best bet for ending the week. QUOTES: "A man may be a fool and not know it — but not if he is married."
"A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition."
"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."
"In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft."
"Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't they'd be married, too."
"A woman usually respects her father, but her view of her husband is mingled with contempt, for she is of course privy to the transparent devices by which she snared him." All from [Henry Louis] H. L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956
Thought of the Day: "I dream, therefore I become." --Cheryl Grossman, Congresswoman (R-Ohio)
Quote of the Day: "I'm not worried about the bullet with my name on it...just the thousands out there marked 'Occupant.'" --Anonymous.
Quote of the Moment: "The easiest kind of relationshihp for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one." --Joan Baez, folk singer (b. 1941)
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 18, 2011 14:57:14 GMT -5
Quotes for Today Iowa's Elmer Maytag was born on Sept. 18th in 1883, and went on to develop the first home washing machine. Tomorrow we observe the birth of William Hesketh Lever in 1851. With his brother he developed the first soap made from vegetable oils and created the Lever Brothers empire (now Unilever). Today's theme: Cleanliness. QUOTES: "Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749 - 1832
"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward." - Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007
"There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough." - Mother Teresa, 1910 - 1997
"I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble, if there were only one in the world." - Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910
"Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1804 - 1881
"The Rose Bowl is the only bowl I've ever seen that I didn't have to clean." - Erma Bombeck, 1927 - 1996
Thought of the Day: ""If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow." — Chinese proverb.
Quote of the Day: "The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work." --Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)
Quote of the Moment: "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." --Albert Camus, French writer (1913-1960)
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moxie
Not so new Crapster
SF Shades of Blues
Posts: 205
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Post by moxie on Sept 19, 2011 11:01:01 GMT -5
“Every day may not be good, but there’s something good in every day.” ~Unknown
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Post by Flying Horse on Sept 19, 2011 14:15:12 GMT -5
Quotes for Today Michael E. DeBakey was born on Sept 7th in 1908 at Lake Charles, Louisiana. In 1932 he developed the pump that made the heart-lung machine possible, and has been a pioneer in heart surgery and implant technology ever since. Dr DeBakey has performed over 60,000 surgeries, a third of which he estimates involved touching someone's Heart in a way the rest of us never can. QUOTES: "Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will." - Aiden Wilson Tozer, 1897 - 1963
"In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another." - François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, 1613 - 1680
"The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the color, and show its food in every ... minutest fiber." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772 - 1834
"A loving heart carries with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and sows with flowers the gray desolation of rock and mosses." - John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807 - 1892
"We must not stop with the cultivation of a tough mind. The gospel also demands a tender heart." - Martin Luther King, Jr, 1929 - 1968
"I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell, their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ." - W. Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965
Thought of the Day: "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof." --John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-born economist (1908-2006)
Quote of the Day: "Making duplicate copies and computer printouts of things no one wanted even one of in the first place is giving America a new sense of purpose." --Andy Rooney, radio/tv writer & commentator (b. 1919)
Quote of the Moment: "We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it." --Dave Barrry, humorist writer (b. 1947)
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