“Don’t start chasing applause and acclaim, that way lies madness.”
– Ron Swanson (from Parks and Rec, played by Nick Offerman)
More Dangerous than Standing Armies
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. 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 the banks will deprive the people of all property – until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Personal Trauma
“Comedy can be a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma.”
– Robin Williams
Strong Body, Strong Mind
“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Dependence
“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Man of Value
Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.
– Albert Einstein
Specialization
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. Heinlein
Sense, Reason, and Intellect
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
– Galileo Galilei
The Greatest Fallacy of the Human Race
The greatest fallacy of the human race is the absurd notion that man is capable of making a Utopia or Shang-Gra-La or a Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth. The liberal lost his faith in Heaven above, so he’s trying to make one on Earth. He turned to Russia, China, Cuba, San Salvador, but they all have failed him. He is the man without a cause. An infallible society cannot be made by fallible men under ideal conditions. It is non sequitur. Poems are made by men like me, but only God can make a tree. And only God can make a good society. The condition of man is so critical, that God has no program to renovate the old nature. His program is to give to man a new nature, you must be born again. At the same time, he does not remove the old nature. The old nature should keep man humble; the presence of the old nature is there to remind man continually of right and wrong.
– Dr. J. Vernon McGee