Random Quotes

[Tom]

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be. - Sydney J. Harris

[Captain Jack Wolfe]

"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."

~ H.L. Mencken

[Monsignor de Beaumanoir]

Let evil swiftly befall those who have wrongly condemned us - God will avenge us.
~Jacques de Molay  18 March 1314

[maelstrom0370]

Have you ever considered a world with no hypothetical situations?

[Molden]

I saw this on Greg and Dharma recently where Dharma was talking to her Native American guide... he says -

So you are having a conversation with the Great Spirit...
   
             the maker of all things...

and you're doing all the talking...?

[Anna Iram]

  Now *that* is a good thought for the day. 

[Welsh Wench]

'Got tickets for Steely Dan. Let's face it, Mom--Becker and Fagan aren't getting any younger.'

~~my son, on buying his concert tickets

[Jack Daw at Work]

"While shooting elephants in Africa, I found the tusks very difficult to remove.  But, in Alabama, the Tuscaloosa."  Groucho Marx.  (I'm in Birmingham on business all week.)

[Rani Zemirah]

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
~Carl Jung

[Demetrius]

I'm talking about death- and you've never experienced
that. And you cannot act it. You die a thousand casual
deaths- with none of that intensity which squeezes
out life... and no blood runs cold anywhere. Because
even as you die you know that you will come back
in a different hat. But no one gets up after death- there is
no applause- there is only silence and some second-hand
clothes, and that's- death-

If we have a destiny, then so had he- and if this is ours,
then that was his- and if there are no explanations for us,
then let there be none for him-

-Guildenstern, in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard

[Molden]

     Today I came across two quotes my Mom had written down while I was going through some stuff she had set aside:

"Why should we try to move mountains with our own strength alone when faith, 'even as a grain of mustard seed', can help us achieve what seemed impossible?"

     The next is one that she had said to us kids - in many different ways, both as we grew up - and many times after we reached adulthood:

"Make the most of yourself...for that is all there is to you.

You are always yourself, never someone else. You are always faced with yourself, there is no escape, no hiding, no evasion of that self you will forever be with. You either put yourself all together and make the most of what you have, or slide along disregarding what you could become.

I and I alone am responsible for what I am and what I shall do. I shall not blame you for my weaknesses or failures. The challenge to make my life a successful, meaningful experience is not yours, it is mine. That is the lifesaving attitude I must kindle right now!!!"

[Rani Zemirah]

In real love you want the other person's good.
In romantic love you want the other person.

~Margaret Anderson~

[Welsh Wench]

Anyone who thinks they're important is usually just a pompous moron who can't deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential.

~~William Thomas

[Demetrius]

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, The individual mind and spirit of a [person]. Nothing was ever created by two [people]. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a [person].

-John Steinbeck

[John]

People have power over you only if they have something you think you need.  The more you experience inner peace, the less you need and the more power you retain.

~Dr. Dean Ornish