Quotations:
see also http://worldtraining.net/Quotations2.htm
Term of art: a word or phrase with a precise meaning in a specific context (usually in field or discipline); often differs in meaning from common usage. Terms of art abound in the law. For example, the phrase, “double jeopardy” can be used in common parlance to describe any situation that poses two risks. In the law, “double jeopardy” refers specifically to an impermissible second trial of a defendant for the same offense that gave rise to the first trial. Conspiracy, but not collusion, is another term of art in criminal law with a broader and vaguer usage in the general population. [ More ]
Pronunciation
Guides for Proper Names and Technical
Terms
(Note well: mispronouncing a term may undermine
your credibility!)
Proverbs: truth or piece of advice, based on common sense or experience.
Motivational
Quotations: People
often say that motivation doesn’t last.
Well, neither does
bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily.” –Zig
Ziglar
-==--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-------------------
Quotations relevant to Communication Studies
“It’s
easier to fool people than to
convince them they’ve been fooled.” Mark Twain.
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge - even to ourselves - that we’ve been so credulous."-- Carl Sagan
“The
Supreme Court is always right, because it is final; it is not final
because it is right.”
Justice Thurgood Marshall, SCOTUS
"The
ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill
the world with fools."
-- Herbert Spencer, English
Philosopher (1820-1903)
"A
tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the
people may require a leader."
-- Plato,The Republic (circa
380 B.C.)
"It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair, author
"He
is a barbarian and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island
are the laws of nature."-
George Bernard Shaw, Caesar
and Cleopatra
Hannah Arendt, a philosopher who recognized the importance of exercising language as a key to developing a conscience said: “Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”
“Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”-- Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859), French scientist, author of “Democracy in America”
"In a Democracy, the people get the government they deserve. If the citizenry do not hold their officials to standards, then any government gets out of hand. So the question goes beyond taxation, and becomes how can we ever have a sound government, and the answer is by a principled populace." ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
We sleep peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -- George Orwell
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
"It's not the people Who vote that count; it's the people Who count the votes."-- Joseph Stalin
“According
to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number
two is death.
Death is number two. Does that sound right?
This means to the average person,
if you go to a funeral, you're
better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” Jerry
Seinfeld quote
“At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization.”— Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
Chinese
Proverb
?
When someone shares something of value with you and you benefit from
it,
you have a moral obligation to share it with others.
No
Democracy can exist Unless Each Of Its Citizens Is As Capable
Of
Outrage At Injustice To Another As He Is Of Outrage At Injustice To
Himself. Aristotle
``Who can protest an injustice but does not is an accomplice to the act.'' -The Talmud
“The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” – President Harry Truman, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (1974) by Merle Miller, pg. 26.
the famous LBJ quote “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
I used to say to our audiences: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935), Upton Sinclair
''The public have
an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth
knowing.
Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like
habits, supplies their demands.'' -Oscar
Wilde
``And remember,
where you have a concentration of power in a few hands,
all too
frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History
has proven that.
All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts
absolutely.'' -Lord Acton
“If we have
truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation.
If we have not
truth, it ought to be harmed.” — Reuben
Clarke
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire
George Bernard Shaw noted that, “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.”
Reporter:
"Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?"
Mr.
Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea !"
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” - George Orwell
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” - Aristotle
“Give
me six lines written by the most honorable of men,
and I will
find an excuse in them to hang him.”
Cardinal
Richelieu
The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. Either you think – or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you. -F. Scott Fitzgerald, author Great Gatsby
...lines from The Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” (for Harry Potter readers, consider Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy)
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald) “Yes, they have more money.” (Classic reply from Ernest Hemingway)
“Anti-intellectualism
has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and
cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that
'my
ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac
Asimov (author,
I, Robot
, Foundation, et al.
“All governments are, more or less, well-disguised oligarchies.”
"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." ~John Erhlichman, one of Nixon's chief advisors.
“You have to understand most of the people are not ready to be unplugged, and many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on that system, that they will fight to protect it.” Morpheus in the Matrix
“When
you’re born into the world, you get a ticket to the freak show.
But if you’re born in the United States, you get a front row
seat!” —George Carlin
“The
ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea
itself.”
Bernard
Baruch [BTW,
Baruch College is named after him.]
“Le
secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié,
parce qu' il a été proprement fait.”
http://ancilla.unice.fr/~brunet/BALZAC/Go/Go254678.htm
An English translation: “The secret of a great success, for
which you are at a loss to account, is a crime that has never been
found out, because it was properly executed.” Epigraph for The
Godfather, Mario Puzo
*George W. Bush famously said of Vladimir Putin: "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. He's a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship."
Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. - Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII
“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”― Tennessee Williams
Patterns of a growing historical conspiracy from four selected quotes in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries:
Less cited quotations from the father of modern economics... “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”― Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)
Adam Smith laid down the guiding principle of regulatory policy 241 years ago. He wrote in “The Wealth of Nations”: “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.”
AND, a less cited quote from a complex president... “The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its REIGN by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” - President Abraham Lincoln after the National Banking Act of (1863) was passed
AND a less cited quote from an architect of corporate public relations and social propaganda (also Sigmund Freud's nephew)... "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. . . We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons . . . who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. . ." Edward C. Bernays, Propaganda (1928)
and, a less cited quote from a chief global conspirator... “For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” - David Rockefeller, Memoirs (2002
“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” Woody Allen
“If God didn’t want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.” [referring to poor Mexican farmers] Calvera, bandit leader in the movie “The Magnificent Seven” (1960).
“Democracy
must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to
have for dinner.”
—
James
Bovard’s 1994 book Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty
(p. 333). The origin of this saying is not known; earlier
versions appeared on the Internet.
An improved version: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is the lamb contesting the vote with a loaded gun.” Benjamin Franklin.
“They’ll talk about change, about politics, about reform, about corruption, but they will never talk about war unless they mean something happening far away. Because to admit the existence of the war waged against us is to admit that we are combatants, and if we see that we are not fighting back, then we would have to admit that we have surrendered. That we have already been defeated.”—The Arctic Circle Collective
“God offers to everyone his choice between truth and repose. Take which you please—you can never have both”. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it’s because in addition to the fact that the sea changes and the light changes, and ships change, it’s because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have, in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it we are going back from whence we came. John Kennedy See Thallassa
Stanley Milgram: "Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority."
“…If you pollute when you DO KNOW there is NO safe dose with respect to causing extra cases of deadly cancers or heritable effects, you are committing premeditated random murder.” – John W. Gofman, Ph.D., M.D. (1918-2007), associate director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 1963-1969) — Comments on a Petition for Rule making to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, May 21, 1994.
Albert Einstein’s alleged response when he was asked, “What do you, Mr. Einstein, consider to be man’s greatest invention?” He didn’t reply the wheel or the lever. He is reported to have said, “Compound interest.” ... to be the most powerful force in the universe answered: Compound interest! ... It was that the greatest danger to the world is not the bad people but it's the interest.” http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/31/compound-interest/
An anonymous advertising copywriter probably initiated the idea that compound interest was the world’s greatest invention or man’s greatest invention. However, 1916 is not necessarily the origin of this hyperbolic statement, and future researchers may locate earlier citations. ... unable to find any support for the attachment to Einstein, and... it is very unlikely that Einstein made this remark. Sometimes a comment is attributed to a famous individual to increase the prestige and believability of the comment. Also, a quotation from a famous person is often considered more interesting and entertaining. Inaccurate attributions are readily propagated.
“Bankers
own the earth; take it away from them but leave them with the power
to create credit; and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough
money to buy it back again... If you want to be slaves of bankers and
pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers control money
and control credit.”
- Sir
Josiah Stamp,
Director, Bank of England, 1940.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." - Thomas Jefferson
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” - President Woodrow Wilson
Abraham
Lincoln, “Most people can tolerate adversity without
lowering their morals, if you really want to test someone's
character, give them power.”
A related line from a
Russell Brand interview: My new rule for when I
fancy doing a bit of the old condemnation is: “Do
the people I’m condemning have any actual power?”
Similar
observation: “A useful measure of a person’s character is how
they treat a powerless person.” [ … or pets, children, the
elderly, etc. ]
“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.” H.L Mencken
Philip
K. Dick:
“Reality
is that which, once you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
...
“There
will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my
phone’ anymore.
Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on
me.’” ― Philip
K. Dick
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” — Attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan
"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. " Video: Military Industrial Complex speech of Dwight D. Eisenhower
"For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government” and that it had become a government all of its own and all secret. They don’t have to account to anybody." Harry S. Truman former president who initially created the CIA (stated a month after the JFK assassination)
Speaking for our rulers (Left & Right), Karl Rove explains their more dynamic view: ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” — From “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush” by Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine, 17 October 2004
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein
“Thoughts without (intentional) content (Inhalt) are empty (leer), intuitions without concepts are blind.” Kant, Critique of Judgment
(Sign
hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)
"Not
everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be
counted counts."
(Sign
inside hangar door at FAA Test Center, Pomona, N. J.)
“There
are bold pilots, and there are old pilots, but there are no old and
bold pilots.”
Media expert Hal Becker once said: “I know the secret of making the average American believe anything I want him to. Just let me control television… You put something on the television and it becomes reality. If the world outside the TV set contradicts the images, people start trying to change the world to make it like the TV set images.”
Epicurus: “Impiety does not consist in destroying the gods of the crowd but rather in ascribing to the gods the ideas of the crowd.”’
We must learn that any person, who will not accept what he knows to be true, for the very love of truth alone, is very definitely undermining his mental integrity. - Luther Burbank
The task of philosophy as defined in the eleventh Thesis, in what are perhaps Marx’s [Karl] most-quoted words: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.’
“ hypocrisy does not consist in not practicing what you preach. By that standard all but open moral anarchists and the greatest of saints would be hypocrites. It consists in not believing what you preach. It consists in condemning others for conduct which you consider to be permissible and even virtuous when you do it.” [ Think US foreign policy.]
the natural state mankind would be in, were it not for political community: In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. — "Chapter XIII.: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery.". Leviathan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes
"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
διαίρει καὶ βασίλευ. ‘Divide and rule’, attributed to Philip II of Macedon (332-386 BC).
Divide
et impera
—
Divide
and rule, a maxim that served Rome well
as well as the .001%
today . .
.http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/04/16/The-US-is-not-a-democracy-but-an-oligarchy-study-concludes/2761397680051/
William Carr Consultant, The Trim Shop @Thomas Weaver "They are making money they don't deserve? Can you explain that? “ That’s easy. Microsoft had direct access to the prototype Macintosh. Bill Gates insisted he needed a license for the Mac OS in order to write Word and Excel. He directly copied the Mac OS, allegedly using ACTUAL code stolen from Apple. Windows was first announced one year after the Mac was released. Since then, they’ve stifled innovation, copied competitors, stolen code AGAIN from Apple, settled for $150 Million, and begun losing market share after being slapped down. (See Pirates of Silicon Valley on Vimeo) Trailer: https://vimeo.com/86230461 Full length video: Famous IBM/Gates meeting.
"Life
is not about waiting for the storms to pass ... it's about learning
how to dance in the rain!"
-- Patrick
H. Hughes
“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.
“Control food and you control the people.”
" HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Harris_Jones "
Mother" Mary Jones was once quoted as saying “My business is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
As the physicist Steven Weinberg [ http://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_weinberg.cfm ] once said of religion, “With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, . . . that takes religion.”
Mayer Amschel Rothschild had uttered his infamous “Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws.”
To quote Thomas Jefferson: “When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself a public property”.
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” – Thomas Jefferson
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and money system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” – Henry Ford
"Facts need testimony to be remembered and trustworthy witnesses to be established in order to find a secure dwelling place in the domain of human affairs." Hannah Arendt, Lying in Politics
A line from a Russell Brand interview: “My new rule for when I fancy doing a bit of the ol’ condemnation is: Do the people I’m condemning have any actual power?”
Albert Einstein said: A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of the truth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axU9ngbTxKw Uploaded on Sep 9, 2006
“The
central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that
determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is
that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”
—
Daniel
Patrick Moynihan,
Family and nation: the Godkin lectures, Harvard University, 1985
"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people....Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
One example of a rather smart person: "In Amundsen’s own words: I may say that this is the greatest factor—the way in which the expedition is equipped—the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck. — from The South Pole, “discovered” by Roald Amundsen"
“It is enough to say there was an election. Those who cast the ballots decide nothing. Those who count the ballots decide everything.” – Joseph Stalin
Via http://www.ideachampions.com
1. “If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” – Albert Einstein
2. “If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.” – Rollo May
3. “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” – Oscar Wilde
5. “The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.” – Linus Pauling
6. “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo
7. “A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.” – Ovid
9. “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” – Lee Iacocca
10. “No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
13. “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.” – Emile Chartier
16. “Why is it I always get my best ideas while shaving?” – Albert Einstein
17. One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
18. “The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it, and go about your business. Suddenly, the idea will come through. It was there all the time.” – Henry Ford
19. “Capital isn’t that important in business. Experience isn’t that important. You can get both of these things. What is important is ideas.” – Harvey Firestone
20. “A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.” – Mary Kay Ash
21.“We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.”- Friedrich Nietzsche
25.“Right now it’s only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.” – Woody Allen
27.“New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done; 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing; 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!” – Arthur C. Clarke
30. “If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.” – Alfred Noble
“Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money.” – William J. Cameron
“No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered.” – Winston Churchill
``You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.'' -Anne Lamot
“Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” - J.B.S. Haldane
33.“If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.” – Thomas Mann
Ortega y Gasset famous maxim: "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am I and my circumstance") (Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914
``We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.'' -Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962
Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government --- when it deserves it: Mark Twain
38. “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” – John Cage
39.“The new idea either finds a champion or it dies. No ordinary involvement with a new idea provides the energy required to cope with the indifference and resistance that change provokes.” – Tom Peters
40. “Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward: they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” – Goethe
“Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” Man's Search for Meaning 1946 book by Viktor Frankl
As the comic strip Pogo pointed out, "we have met the enemy, and the enemy is us".
"We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." Leona Helmsley, deceased owner of Helmsley Palace
“You should never wear your best trousers when you are going out to fight for freedom and truth.” Ibsen, Enemy of the People ( stated by Dr. Stockmann )
``The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners.'' -Ernst Jan Plugge, Dutch network security consultant
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. - Mark Twain "Chronicle of Young Satan"
50 Greatest Film Quotations of all time [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6UsZSGRw6Y ]
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Interview
Questions Sampler
What do you typically pay someone with my
skills, education, and experience to fill the type of job opening you
have available?
I’m looking to be compensated fairly based on my skills, education, and experience.
What do you have budgeted to pay someone to fill the position I am being offered?
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Responding
to Colonel Lewis Nicola, a Frenchman who served on the American side
during the Revolutionary War and suggested Washington assume the
crown, Washington retorted: “Let me conjure for you,
then, if you have any regard for your Country, concern for yourself
or for posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from
your mind and never communicate, as from yourself or any one else, a
sentiment of the like nature.” In short, Washington wasn’t so
keen on the idea. But it makes for an intriguing question: Who would
be sitting on America’s throne today if Washington had been king?
"The
last words of this revisionary history of the American West come from
an anonymous Indian: '
They made us many promises, more than I
can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our
land and they took it.' " -- "An anonymous chief
suggested to one Congressional commission sent West to keep the peace
(to steal land) a nice solution to the white man's logistical
difficulties: 'I think you had better put the Indians on wheels, and
you can run them about as you wish.' " -- Geoffrey Wolff,
Newsweek
http://worldtraining.net/HempMyths.htm http://worldtraining.net/hemp2.htm
The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin . . . Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again . . . Take this great power away from them, and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. . . . But, if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit. - Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England, 1927
"Men tend to have the beliefs that suit their passions. Cruel men believe in a cruel God, and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case." -Bertrand Russell in London Calling (1947), p. 18
Talis...mihi uidetur, rex, vita hominum praesens in terris, ad conparationem eius, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum te residente ad caenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio, et calido effecto caenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniens unus passeium domum citissime pervolaverit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore, quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidue praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit, merito esse sequenda videtur.
Translation: The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed. Book II, chapter 13 This, Bede tells us, was the advice given to Edwin, King of Northumbria by his follower Coifi, when the king proposed to convert to Christianity.
“ In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons. This marvelous force of Life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness.” -- George Bernard Shaw, "The Devil and Don Juan."
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“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts.” Read more: http://whatreallyhappened.com/#ixzz3NOog8N7e
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Douglas Adams said it best when describing the President of the Universe in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: “Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. … the President is very much a figurehead - he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.”
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``The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.'' -from article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, 1796, unanimously approved by the United States Senate, presumed to have been authored by treaty negotiator Joel Barlow (a friend of Thomas Jefferson)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZpPQvxO-gY
from
“Major
Barbara” by George Bernard Shaw
(1906),
Act III. The speaker is Andrew Undershaft, co-owner of the vast
munitions company Undershaft and Lazarus.
“The
government of your country! I am the government of your
country; I, and Lazarus.
Do
you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a
row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus?
No, my friend; you will do what pays us. You will make war when
it suits us, and keep peace when it does not. You will find out
that trade requires certain measures when we have decided on those
measures....... When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you
will discover that my want is a national need. When other
people want something to keep my dividends down, you will call out
the police and military. And in return you shall have the support and
applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you are
a great statesman. Government of my country! Be
off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading
articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions
and the rest of your toys. I am going back to my counting house
to pay the piper and call the tune.” [
AKA, the other
Golden
Rule ]
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The Magna Carta 800 years -- June 15, 1215
(38) In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.
+ (39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. (Show a warrant or go away).
"Quemadmoeum gladis nemeinum occidit, occidentis telum est." (“A sword is never a killer; it is a tool in the killer's hands.”) -- Seneca (Lucius Annaes Seneca “the younger”, ca. 4 BC - 65 AD)
The
Roman
poet Juvenal asked, Quis
custodiet
ipsos custodes?
( “Who will guard us from the the guardians?”
)
Oct 19, 2021 : I think Ayn Rand's popularity was always artificial. I remember when the Atlas Shrugged movie came out. Libertarians were stoked, thinking this was going to transform society. But the movie didn't just bomb, it nothinged. It had a total of $4,627,375 in ticket sales. Viewers weren't disappointed, they'd have to have seen it to be disappointed. No one was interested in seeing it in the first place. If you make a movie adaptation from any popular book, you're going to do a lot better than $4.6 million, just from the demand for the title. You might get a big drop off if people are disappointed, but $4.6 tells me no one was interested. . . .It wouldn't be the first book that was propped up beyond it's actual popularity. . . . You had all kinds of excuses. They said it didn't play in enough theaters - but the theaters it did play in were mostly empty. They said that Hollywood didn't promote it. But it's not Hollywood's job to promote it for them, it's the producer's job. The whole idea of Atlas Shrugged is that there are these superior beings who are supposed to be able to do anything and everything. Apparently, except for making a movie that people wanted to see and marketing it.
Oct 18, 202 : Two obligatory quotes: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” — John Rogers aka Kung Fu Monkey
(Re: Atlas Shrugged) “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” — Dorothy Parker (allegedly, but disputed) Anyone reading Atlas Shrugged needs to read Adam Lee’s blog dissecting it, chapter by chapter. He wrote it over a period of three years and it is brilliant. Read it along with the book; you won’t regret it.