History I yield to no one in my admiration for heroism and ability, no matter which side of the line a man was

born or fought on when the war broke out. -- Shelby Foote "History ought never to be confused with nostalgia. It's written not to revere the dead, but to inspire the living. It is part of our cultural bloodstream, the secret of who we are. And it tells us to let go of the past, even as we honour it; to lament what ought to be lamented; and to celebrate what should be celebrated." -- Simon Schama, "A History of Britain" In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have promised, not just instruction but pleasure. -- Simon Schama, "History of Britain" Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. -- George Santayana In its Greek origins, historia meant inquiry, and from Thucydides onwards, the past has been studied to understand its connections with the present. -- Simon Schama When Cromwell instructed his portraitist to paint him warts and all, he meant both halves of that equation. To teach the warts alone is morbid and unhealthy. -- Mark Steyn, "The Spectator" Time's glory is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood, and to bring truth to light. -- Oedipus Rex No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read. -- David McCullough We must not look at the past with the enormous condescension of posterity. -- EP Thompson "History is written by the winners." George Orwell At the bidding of a Peter the Hermit millions of men hurled themselves against the East; the words of a hallucinated enthusiast such as Mahomet created a force capable of triumphing over the Graeco-Roman world; an obscure monk like Luther bathed Europe in blood. The voice of a Galileo or a Newton will never have the least echo among the masses. The inventors of genius hasten the march of civilization. The fanatics and the hallucinated create history. -- Gustave Le Bon

In Italy under the Borgias, they had 30 years of warfare, terror, murder & bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, DaVinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The Cuckoo Clock. -- Orson Welles as Harry Lime in "The Third Man" History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up. --Voltaire "A great man represents a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists of his being there." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history. -- A.J.P. Taylor Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. -- Mignon McLaughlin HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary Well behaved women rarely make history. -- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich K is for KENGHIS KHAN. He was a very nice person. History has no record of him. There is a moral in that, somewhere. -- Harlan Ellison, "From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet" "The real story of our times is seldom told in the horse-puckey-filled memoirs of dopey, selfserving presidents or generals, but in the outrageous, demented lives of guys like Lenny Bruce, Giordano Bruno, Scott Fitzgerald and Paul Krassner. The burrs under society's saddle. The pains in the ass." -- Harlan Ellison I against my brother, I and my brother against our cousin, I, my brother and our cousin against the neighbors, all of us against the foreigner. -- Bedouin proverb I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. -- John Adams

The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reaches us. So it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiations of their personalities. -- Kahlil Gibran "The tyrant dies, his rule ends. The martyr dies, and his rule begins." -- Sren Kierkegaard History is a lie agreed upon. -- Napoleon Bonaparte "I don't think we poisoned him. That's not the way we do things. We stifle people, we blow them up, but we don't poison them." -- Alistair Horne, on the mysterious death of Napoleon "Of course history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." -- Winston Churchill Politics The great of this world are often blamed for not doing what they could have done. They can reply: Just think of all the evil that we could have done and have not done. -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred of something. -- Anton Chekhov, "Notebooks" Boundary, n : In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another. Alliance, n : In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third. Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" Draft : The White people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from red people. -- James Rado Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. -- Niccolo Machiavelli The great nations have always acted like gangsters and the small nations like prostitutes. -- Stanley Kubrick No character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.

-- Alexander Hamilton If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. -- John Stuart Mill "In Attack of the Clones, the president of the Republic uses the threat of a powerful foreign enemy, which he was secretly in league with, to start a war. He then uses that war to expand his own powers and create a massive military machine that will eventually oppress the galaxy as a fascist regime. I mean, do I have to spell it out for you dummies? Think!" Huey Freeman, The Boondocks Religion A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. -- Albert Einstein People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us.... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us that you have to be wary of. Boq, Wicked Conscience : The inner voice which warns us that someone might be looking -- HL Mencken Moral indignation is in most cases 2% moral, 48% indignation and 50% envy. -- Vittorio De Sica I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us the sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use. Galileo The most precious gift God gave humans is reason. Its best use is the search for knowledge. To know the human environment, to know the earth and galaxies, is to know God. Knowledge (science) is the best form of prayer. -- Fatima Mernissi 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. -- George Bernard Shaw Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. -- Ambrose Bierce

Faith : Not wanting to know what is true. -- Friedrich Nietzsche Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. -- Buddha I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. -- Thomas Paine Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. -- Thomas Jefferson If God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good, whence evil? If God wills to prevent evil but cannot, then He is not omnipotent. If He can prevent evil but does not, then he is not good. In either case he is not God. -- David Hume, 18th century Scottish philosopher Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction. -- Bertrand Russell All religions must be tolerated...for...every man must get to heaven in his own way. -- Frederick II Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisss and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire. -- George Santayana, "The Life of Reason" "I am treated as evil by those who feel persecuted because they are not allowed to force me to believe as they do." - Unknown Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. -- Seneca the Younger (4 B.C. - 65 A.D.)

"I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance." -- Christopher Marlowe "Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought." -- Graham Greene "Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent: slimy, sneaking and abominable." -- H. L. Mencken It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton "You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend." -- Rich Jeni, on religious wars "Heaven for climate. Hell for society." -- Mark Twain on the afterlife alternatives You'll never be quite the same again after that Bible you've been thumping all these years finally has enough and beats the living shit out of you. -- Horoscope seen in "The Onion" "Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" "I'm not sure that man needs the help." -- Calvin & Hobbes No efficiency. No accountability. I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a universe. -- Calvin, "Calvin & Hobbes" It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning. -- Calvin, "Calvin & Hobbes" A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vainthen have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system? -- Robert A. Heinlein, "Job: A Comedy of Justice" The Bible is the greatest hoax in all history. The leading characters of the Old Testament would today be in the penitentiary and those of the New would be under observation in psychopathic wards. -- Charles Smith

That man says women can't have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn't a woman. Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him. -- Sojourner Truth If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be: A Christian. -- Mark Twain It is as respectable to be a modified monkey as modified dirt. -- Thomas H. Huxley It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry. -- H. L. Mencken God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen. It had become obvious that he was never going to do a thing I said. -- Quentin Crisp The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum. -- Havelock Ellis "The President said that Gold told him to invade Iraq. You see that's what happens when you mix New Testament and Old Milwaukee." -- Bill Maher, at the 2006 Emmys Pray : To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. -- Ambrose Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. -- George Santayana "Do you remember, Abelard...Once I told you that ecstasy was better than being God." "I remember." "I was wrong, darling. Being God is better." -- Bruce Sterling, "Schismatrix" I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter. -- Winston Churchill Heaven doesn't want me and hell is scared I am going to take over. -- Eve Toth I must find a truth that is true for me. -- Soren Kierkegaard

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times. -- Voltaire Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you. -- Voltaire Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth. -- Voltaire Ambition When I was young, all I wanted was to be ruler of the universe. Now that isn't enough. -- Alex P. Keaton, "Family Ties" Tis better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven. -- John Milton, "Paradise Lost" Which would you rather be, a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors? -- Homer We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars. -- Oscar Wilde Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not. -- George Bernard Shaw Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. -- Marianne Williamson In every person there is the capacity to do something really special. -- Colm O'Rourke The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. -- Ben Franklin It is the greatest ability to be able to conceal one's ability. -- Duc de la Rochefoucauld

Money cant buy happiness. But it helps you look for it in a lot more places. -- Editorial, "The London Times" The grand essentials of life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for. -- Joseph Addison One's religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is Success. -- Joseph Addison Sensible people find nothing useless. -- Jean de la Fontaine, "Fables" A good life is not always a happy one. People are often justified in being unhappy about their circumstances and surroundings. Discontent and ambition have driven humanity to confront and overcome the challenges they faced. -- Frank Furedi, "The Telegraph" No profit grows where is no pleasure taken; In brief, sir, study what you most affect. -- Shakespeare, "Taming Of The Shrew": 1.1 Find a job that you love, and you will never work a day in your life -- Confucius Every man loves what he is good at. -- Thomas Shadwell Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do. With such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling. -- Vincent Van Gogh. I can think of nothing more soul destroying in life than to persist in trying to do a thing you want desperately to do well, and to know that you are at the best second rate. -- Agatha Christie Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth. -- Oscar Wilde It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. -- Somerset Maugham Greatness is never appreciated in youth, called pride in midlife; it is dismissed in old age and reconsidered in death because we cannot tolerate greatness in our midst, we do all we can to destroy it. -- Lady Morella, in "Babylon 5"

Ability is of little account without opportunity. -- Napoleon A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions. -- James Russell Lowell Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy torrents of the world. -- Goethe It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuitslike becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying thought the stratosphere or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, a Roosevelt can feel themselves to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, a Blake. Understanding is for ever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention. -- Malcolm Muggeridge Superior ability breeds superior ambition. -- Spock, "Space Seed", Star Trek Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. -- TS Eliot He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous. -- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that all the dunces are all in confederacy against him. -- Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects Education Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines. -- R. Buckminster Fuller They're all so highly educated, you know. Education is a great shield against experience. It offers so much, ready-made and all from the best shops, that there's a temptation to miss your own life in pursuing the lives of your betters. It makes you wise in some ways, but it can make you a blindfolded fool in others. - Robertson Davies, "World Of Wonders"

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad. -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt To accuse others for one's misfortunes is a sign of want of education; to accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun; to accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete. -- Epictetus, "The Encheiridon" "A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body." -- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty" Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought. -- Ludwig Von Mises Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. -- Bertrand Russell A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. -- George Santayana The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together. -- Eric Hoffer To create a community of radical scholars, men and women who recognize that rules and social conventions are arbitrary, but have mastered them nonetheless, a community which shares such a scorn and disrespect for the present society that it can embrace the whole bundle of rules and subvert them thereby, that should be our goal. -- Howard Adelman, "In Search of a University", The University Game Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. --John Milton Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is increasingly turning out people who have never heard enough conflicting arguments to develop the skills and discipline required to produce a coherent analysis, based on logic and evidence. The implications of having so many people so incapable of confronting opposing arguments with anything besides

ad hominem responses reach far. -- Thomas Sowell Childhood "Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." -- Antoine De Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, Some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests, and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder that was ours, before we were wise and unhappy. -- H.P. Lovecraft, "Celephais" I got a fortune cookie that said, "To remember is to understand." I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child. -- Anna Quindlen, "Thinking Out Loud" There is a certain kind of teenager who always seems to be waiting for something. Some live in the moment, but these others these waiting ones seem to be the victims of time. It stretches before them in long, empty hours. You can look at them and almost literally see the need in their eyes. It is a need to be someone else, somewhere else. -- Roger Ebert, reviewing "Smooth Talk", "Chicago Sun Times" "My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it." -- Quentin Crisp "The young always have the same problem how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another." -- Quentin Crisp Knowledge & Genius The kind of intelligence a genius has is a different sort of intelligence. The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically. It leaps with great ellipses. It pulls knowledge from God knows where. Dorothy Thompson "A weak mind isn't strong enough to hurt itself. Stupidity has saved many a man from going mad. -- Doctor Frank Reeves, "A Matter of Life and Death"

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call our great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman. -- Abigail Adams, letter to her son and future President, John Quincy Adams Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humour was provided to console him for what he is. --Oscar Wilde Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. -- Ludwig Borne Minds, like parachutes, work only when open. --Sir James Dewar, Scottish scientist, Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. -- Leonardo Da Vinci I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt. Simply put - I think, therefore I am. -- Rene Descartes The secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that, a hundred years after he is dead and forgotten, men who never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius. -- Henri-Frederic Amiel Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can. -- Owen Meredith Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence. -- Henrik Tikkanen Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without. -- Confucius, Analects Some faults are so closely allied to qualities that it is difficult to weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue. --Oliver Goldsmith

Inarticulate wretches have been behind most of the major advances in civilization. If Vincent Van Gogh had been able to get on with his neighbors, then he might have become an excellent painter-decorator, and received a big turn out at his funeral, and that would be that. But the genes wouldn't let him. -- Declan Lynch, The Irish Independent "Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity." -- James Gleick Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. -- Albert Einstein In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. -- William Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night" Life Try to be nice to people, get a bit of exercise now and again and read a few good books. -- The Meaning Of Life, from Monty Python A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -- Robert A. Heinlan, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -- Mark Twain Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. -- Benjamin Disraeli To be nobody-but-yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. -- EE Cummings, "A Poet's Advice" "Why don't they make more science fiction movies?" The answer to any question starting, "Why don't they-" is almost always, "Money." -- Robert Heinlein, "Shooting Destination Moon"

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first. -- David H. Comins "My new catchphrase is: 'Pull yourself together.' I've done the inner child, I've had analysis, I've decided that unless you're mentally ill and need support, it's up to you." -- Sheila Hancock Dont wish me happiness - I dont expect to be happy its gotten beyond that somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all. -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh Sometimes, it is not enough to do your best. Sometimes, you must do what is required. Winston Churchill People People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway. The Paradoxical Commandments "I have ever hated all nations, professions and communities, and all my love is toward individuals... principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth." -- Jonathan Swift Never appeal to man's "better nature". He may not have one. (Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.)

-- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own. -- H.L. Mencken Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling in them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used. -- Richard E. Byrd There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet. -- William F. Halsey "Who am I? I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all that I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am everything that happens after I've gone that would not have happened if I had not come.... to understand me you must swallow a world." -- Salman Rushdie, "Midnight's Children" It is a love/hate relationship I have with the human race. I am an elitist, and I feel that my responsibility is to drag the human race along with me, that I will never pander to, or speak down to, or play the safe game. -- Harlan Ellison "We dump toxic waste in our oceans and air to weed out the weak! We detonate atomic devices in our only biosphere! We nailed our God to a tree! We are the Human Race! Don't fuck with us!" Internet quote The philosopher can even discover how permanent carnage is provided for and ordained in the grand scheme of things. But will this law stop at man? Undoubtedly not. Yet who will kill him who kills everything else? Man! It is man himself who is charged with slaughtering man. But how can he accomplish this law, he who is a moral and merciful being, who is born to love, who weeps for others as for himself, who finds pleasure in weeping and who even invents fiction to make himself weep, and finally, to whom it has been said that whoever sheds blood unjustly, by man shall his blood be shed? -- Joseph de Maistre, St. Petersburg Dialogues I am not going to talk about religious beliefs, but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them. I believe in my neighbors.

I know their faults and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults. Take Father Michael down our road a piece --I'm not of his creed, but I know the goodness and charity and lovingkindness that shine in his daily actions. I believe in Father Mike; if I'm in trouble, I'll go to him. My next-door neighbor is a veterinary doctor. Doc will get out of bed after a hard day to help a stray cat. No fee -- no prospect of a fee. I believe in Doc. I believe in my townspeople. You can knock on any door in our town say, 'I'm hungry,' and you will be fed. Our town is no exception; I've found the same ready charity everywhere. For the one who says, 'To heck with you -- I got mine,' there are a hundred, a thousand, who will say, 'Sure, pal, sit down.' I know that, despite all warnings against hitchhikers, I can step to the highway, thumb for a ride and in a few minutes a car or a truck will stop and someone will say, 'Climb in, Mac. How how far you going?' I believe in my fellow citizens. Our headlines are splashed with crime, yet for every criminal there are 10,000 honest decent kindly men. If it were not so, no child would live to grow up, business could not go on from day to day. Decency is not news; it is buried in the obituaries --but it is a force stronger than crime. I believe in the patient gallantry of nurses...in the tedious sacrifices of teachers. I believe in the unseen and unending fight against desperate odds that goes on quietly in almost every home in the land. I believe in the honest craft of workmen. Take a look around you. There never were enough bosses to check up on all that work. From Independence Hall to the Grand Coulee Dam, these things were built level and square by craftsmen who were honest in their bones. I believe that almost all politicians are honest. For every bribed alderman there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true, we would never have gotten past the thirteen colonies. I believe in Rodger Young. You and I are free today because of endless unnamed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River. I believe in -- I am proud to belong to -- the United States. Despite shortcomings, from lynchings to bad faith in high places, our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history. And finally, I believe in my whole race. Yellow, white, black, red, brown --in the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability....and goodness.....of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth, that we always make it just by the skin of our teeth --but that we will always make it....survive....endure. I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure --will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets, to the stars, and beyond, carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage --and his noble essential decency. This I believe with all my heart. --Robert A. Heinlein, This I Believe, 1952

The World

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it. -- Henry Emerson Fosdick Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has something for every age to investigate. Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all. -- Seneca, "Natural Questions", first century There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can't poke his nose into - that's the way we're built and I assume there's some reason for it. -- Robert A. Heinlein, "Methuselah's Children" I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. -- Etienne de Grellet We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it. -- Unknown Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature. -- Tom Robbins, "Still Life With Woodpecker There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books. -- George Santayana The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good, and the very gentle, and the very brave, impartially. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time or even knew selflessness or courage or literature but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less. Annie Dillard, For The Time Being Cynicism & Idealism

A pessimist is what an idealist calls a realist." Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes, Minister "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true." James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion. "Sometimes cynicism is the last refuge of the idealist." L.E. Modesitt, Jr., The Ethos Effect Good & Evil "If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster... when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil" "Ten percent of the human race are always going to be boors or horrors. You can't make everybody nice." -- Maureen Charlton "There is good, and there is evil. There are those who commit crimes and those who stop them. The two sides are opposite, as different as day and night, and the line between them is clear. Or at least, it's supposed to be..." Robin, Teen Titans "No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks." -- Mary Wollstonecraft Heroism "We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves." -- Tom Robbins Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed? -- Solomon Short

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others. -- Sir Winston Churchill Heroism consists in hanging on one minute longer. -- Norwegian proverb Only a true weakling is capable of true courage. -- Funkakoshi Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. -- Ambrose Redmoon Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. -- Mark Twain A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears. Michel de Montaigne It is an exaggeration to say we have nothing to fear but fear itself, but correct to say that we have lots to fear from cowardice. -- Brendan Keenan Badasses, much like the Goonies, never say die. To that end, they never say diet, and their color recognition vocabulary is limited to just six words. They don't flinch, cry, hesitate, show fear, or act like they notice when it's raining. Even if it's raining really, really hard. Nothing bothers them, nobody stands in their way, and they refuse to yield when the situation is ten light-years beyond hopeless. No matter what the odds are, they won't accept anything less than victory at all costs. BADASS: The Book Books & Reading What did I want? I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and to eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be the way they had promised me it was going to be, instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is. I had had one chance for ten minutes yesterday afternoon. Helen of Troy, whatever your true name may be and I had known it and I had let it slip away. Maybe one chance is

all you ever get. -- Robert A. Heinlein, "Glory Road" "I live in two worlds. One is a world of books. I've been a resident of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina, and strolled down Swann's Way. It's a rewarding world." -- Rory Gilmore, "The Gilmore Girls" Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. -- Charles Kinglsey A surprising number of people including many students of literature will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children. -- AS Byatt It will be my birthday on Tuesday. Last year, I reached the painful conclusion that there wasnt enough time left to read every book ever written. This year, my gloomy realization is even more painful I will not be able to correct everyones mistakes before I depart. -- Daniel Finkelstein, "The Times" "A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking." -- Jerry Seinfeld Visits to the local library are among my earliest memories. I recall its smell vividly -- the fustiness -- and its scale, the towering check-out desk and the shelves I couldn't reach... Today is World Book Day, in the middle of Library Ireland Week. Sometimes I still feel like that small girl of seven who pinches herself at the largesse on offer in libraries; at the worlds we can access through the pages of a book. I was mesmerized by it and, to be honest, there's not much I find as enthralling today as I did at seven. But libraries continue to captivate me. -- Martina Devlin, "The Irish Independent" Plunge into a book as you would a pool of clear water. -- Ancient Egyptian scribal text He that studies books alone will know how things ought to be; and he who studies men will know how they are. -- Charles Caleb Colton Today a reader tomorrow a leader. -- W Fusselman

With books we stand on the shoulders of giants. -- John Locke Reading furnishes the mind only with materials for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. - - John Locke Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. -- Almansor Heinrich Heine: A Tragedy You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. -- Ray Bradbury "The English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Lord of the Rings and those who are going to read it." -- The London Times in their original review of the Rings novels "If you don't think that Tolkien is the greatest writer there ever was when you are 13 then there's something wrong with you." -- Terry Pratchett Random And what this indicates to me, it means that at some point, some person said to himself, "Gee, I sure would like to set those people on fire over there. But I'm way too far away to get the job done. If only I had something that would throw flame on them." George Carlin on the flamethrower