Bretty always says....
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
On Criticism and its effect upon Abraham Lincoln
“Some years ago,” said he, “a couple of ‘emigrants,’ fresh from the Emerald Isle, seeking labor, were making their way toward the West. Coming suddenly one evening upon a pond of water they were greated with a grand chorus of bull-frogs – a kind of music they had never before heard. “B-A-U-M! B-A-U-M!
Overcome with terror they clutched their ‘shillelahs,’ and crept cautiously forward, straining their eyes in every direction to catch a glimpse of the enemy but he was not to be found!
At last a happy idea seized the foremost one – he sprang to his companion and exclaimed, ‘And sure, Jamie! It is my opinion
it’s nothing but a noise!’”
On having a long memory...
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
-Karl Marx
Saturday, February 18, 2006
On self inspection...
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
-Mark Twain
Friday, February 17, 2006
On the importance of knowing your brother...
It may be long before the law of love will be recognised in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another.
- Gandhi
You're great....
Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
On struggle making greatness...
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
-William Blake
On propogating greatness...
Great people are those who can make others feel that they, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain
On becoming great.
Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.
- Truman Capote
On forgiving hubris in greatness...
The great man who thinks greatly of himself, is not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire.
- Isaac D'Israeli
Source: Literary Character of Men of Genius (ch. XV)
On recognizing greatness...
Few great men could pass personnel.
-Paul Goodman
Thursday, February 16, 2006
On seizing greatness....
We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT (32nd president of U.S. 1882 - 1945)
On the state we're in...
cui bono
"Who benefits?" An adage in criminal investigation which suggests that considering who would benefit from an unwelcome event is likely to reveal who is responsible for that event (cf.
cui prodest).
On brainwashing...
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
-FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
American 32nd president of U.S.
(1882 - 1945)
Monday, February 13, 2006
On letting it go...
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
-William James
On breaking the barriers to communication...
One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.
- William James
On feeling good and good feelings...
If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
- William James
On potential...
If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
-William James
On hacking genius...
Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
- William James
On the barriers to understanding...
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
- William James
On window dressing...
An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
- William James
On personal responsibility...
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
- William James
Saturday, February 11, 2006
On Arrested Development's cancelation...
I got you a wedding ring... Tone.
-George Michael Bluth (After feigning disinterest in his new accidental marriage with/to his potential cousin Maeby Fünke)
On elected office....
When Quimby is met with demands to bring in a prohibition enforcer, he scoffs at the women.
Quimby: Demand? Who are you to demand anything? I run thistown. You're just a bunch of low-income nobodies!
Assistant:[sotto voce] Uh, election in November. Election in November...
Quimby: What?? Again?? This stupid country.
Via SNPP.com
"Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment"
Friday, February 10, 2006
On sugar coating...
I treat people who write me the way my friends and I treat each other
when we go to each other for advice, which is sometimes with supreme
cruelty. I think that's what helps the advice sink in. If somebody comes
at you with both barrels, the first shot opens your head and the second
shot allows the advice to get lodged inside.
-Dan Savage (The Onion interview)
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
On anger...
Why should I give them my mind as well?
-Dalai Lama when asked if he wasn't angry at the Chinese for taking
over his country.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
On the bland pleasantries of the cantidates....
My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball, but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.
- Kodos gives a speech,
"Treehouse of Horror VII"
On freaks and the love of freaks...
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."
-- Jack Kerouac, "On The Road”
Via
Courtney in a birthday Card...
Friday, February 03, 2006
On honing your craft....
If I don't practice one day, I know it. If I don't practice two days,
my critics know it. If I don't practice three days, everyone knows it.
-Jascha Heifitz
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Simpson's Quotes: Main Finger?
Marge: Why don't we do something to take our minds off the storm?
[looks through a box]
Oooh, a Rubik's Cube! Let's all work it together.
Lisa: Okay, start with diagonal colors.
[Marge turns the cube]
Homer: Use your main finger on the yellow side and your other finger on
the orange side and turn it.
Marge: My main finger?
[the family begins to start all talking at the same time]
Bart: [simultaneously] Orange to orange!...
Lisa: [simultaneously] Now you have to turn it back, Mom...
Homer: [simultaneously] You gotta start backwards!
Bart: [simultaneously] Mom, Mom!
Lisa: [simultaneously] No, not so fast! No, ignore the red!
Bart: [simultaneously] No, no, no!
Homer: [simultaneously] Alternate corners!
Marge: One at a time!
Bart: Spin the middle side topwise. Topwise!
Marge: Now I remember why I put this down here in the first place!
From episode [4F07] - Hurricane Neddy
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/4F07.html
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