William James: Quote for August 31, 2009

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, "This is the real me," and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

-- William James

Categories: William James

Niels Bohr: Quote for August 30, 2009

When searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.

-- Niels Bohr

Categories: Niels Bohr

Carl Jung: Quote for August 29, 2009

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

-- Carl Jung

Categories: Carl Jung

Carl Sagan: Quote for August 28, 2009

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

-- Carl Sagan

Categories: Carl Sagan

Ted Kennedy: Quote for August 27, 2009

The more our feelings diverge, the more deeply felt they are, the greater is our obligation to grant the sincerity and essential decency of our fellow citizens on the other side. . . .

In short, I hope for an America where neither "fundamentalist" nor "humanist" will be a dirty word, but a fair description of the different ways in which people of good will look at life and into their own souls.

I hope for an America where no president, no public official, no individual will ever be deemed a greater or lesser American because of religious doubt -- or religious belief.

I hope for an America where the power of faith will always burn brightly, but where no modern inquisition of any kind will ever light the fires of fear, coercion, or angry division.

I hope for an America where we can all contend freely and vigorously, but where we will treasure and guard those standards of civility which alone make this nation safe for both democracy and diversity.

-- Ted Kennedy

Categories: Ted Kennedy

Robert G. Ingersoll: Quote for August 26, 2009

The real searcher after truth will not receive the old because it is old, or reject the new because it is new. He will not believe men because they are dead, or contradict them because they are alive. With him an utterance is worth the truth, the reason it contains, without the slightest regard to the author. He may have been a king or serf -- a philosopher or servant, -- but the utterance neither gains nor loses in truth or reason. Its value is absolutely independent of the fame or station of the man who gave it to the world.

-- Robert G. Ingersoll

Categories: Robert G. Ingersoll

David Sarnoff: Quote for August 25, 2009

Work and live to serve others, to leave the world a little better than you found it and garner for yourself as much peace of mind as you can. This is happiness.

-- David Sarnoff

Categories: David Sarnoff

Edward Rickenbacker: Quote for August 24, 2009

If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.

-- Edward Rickenbacker

Categories: Edward Rickenbacker

John Pilger: Quote for August 23, 2009

Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what Orwell called the official truth. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as functionaires, functionaries, not journalists.

Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words "impartiality" and "objectivity" is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over. "Impartiality" and "objectivity" now mean the establishment point of view. Whenever a journalist says to me, "Oh, you don't understand, I'm impartial, I'm objective," I know what he's saying. I can decode it immediately. It means he channels the official truth. Almost always. That protestation means he speaks for a consensual view of the establishment. This is internalized. Journalists don't sit down and think, "I'm now going to speak for the establishment." Of course not. But they internalize a whole set of assumptions, and one of the most potent assumptions is that the world should be seen in terms of its usefulness to the West, not humanity. This leads journalists to make a distinction between people who matter and people who don't matter. The people who died in the Twin Towers in that terrible crime mattered. The people who were bombed to death in dusty villages in Afghanistan didn't matter, even though it now seems that their numbers were greater. The people who will die in Iraq don't matter. Iraq has been successfully demonized as if everybody who lives there is Saddam Hussein. In the build-up to this attack on Iraq, journalists have almost universally excluded the prospect of civilian deaths, the numbers of people who would die, because those people don't matter.

It's only when journalists understand the role they play in this propaganda, it's only when they realize they can't be both independent, honest journalists and agents of power, that things will begin to change.

-- John Pilger

Categories: John Pilger

Margaret Chase Smith: Quote for August 22, 2009

My creed is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly. It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned, not bought.

-- Margaret Chase Smith

Categories: Margaret Chase Smith

Michael Jackson: Quote for August 21, 2009

I'm trying to imitate Jesus in the fact that he said to be like children, to love children, to be as pure as children and to make yourself as innocent and to see the world through eyes of wonderment and the whole magical quality of it all.

-- Michael Jackson

Categories: Michael Jackson

Noam Chomsky: Quote for August 20, 2009

From a comparative perspective, the United States is unusual if not unique in the lack of restraints on freedom of expression. It is also unusual in the range and effectiveness of methods employed to restrain freedom of thought... Where the voice of the people is heard, elite groups must insure their voice says the right things.

-- Noam Chomsky

Categories: Noam Chomsky

George Burns: Quote for August 19, 2009

Personally I stay away from natural foods. At my age I need all the preservatives I can get.

-- George Burns

Categories: George Burns

Black Elk: Quote for August 18, 2009

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.

-- Black Elk

Categories: Black Elk

Melinda Gates: Quote for August 17, 2009

Everyone agrees that the failure of our high schools is tragic. It's bad business, and it's bad policy. But we act as if it can't be helped. It can be helped. We designed these high schools; we can redesign them.

-- Melinda Gates

Categories: Melinda Gates

Dr. Miles Bennell: Quote for August 16, 2009

Listen to me. Please listen. If you don't. If you won't. If you fail to understand. Then the same incredible terror that's menacing me will strike at you!

-- Dr. Miles Bennell

from: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Kevin McCarthy acted as Dr. Miles Bennell

Could it be that the "incredible terror" Dr. Bennell is referring to is the menace of ever growing socialism and rampant bureaucracy?

Categories: Dr. Miles Bennell, Kevin McCarthy, Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Jim Collins: Quote for August 15, 2009

The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline - a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place. Most companies build their bureaucratic rules to manage the small percentage of wrong people on the bus, which in turn drives away the right people on the bus, which then increases the percentage of wrong people on the bus, which increases the need for more bureaucracy to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, which then further drives the right people away, and so forth.

-- Jim Collins

Categories: Jim Collins

Jerry Maguire: Quote for August 14, 2009

SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!

-- Jerry Maguire

from: Jerry Maguire (1996)

Tom Cruise acted as Jerry Maguire

Cuba Gooding Jr. appears in this clip acting as Rod Tidwell.

Categories: Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise, Jerry Maguire

Elvis Presley: Quote for August 13, 2009

I learned very early in life that: 'Without a song, the day would never end; without a song, a man ain't got a friend; without a song, the road would never bend - without a song.' So I keep singing a song.

-- Elvis Presley

Categories: Elvis Presley

Robert S. McNamara: Quote for August 12, 2009

There were total misunderstandings as a result. They believed that we had simply replaced the French as a colonial power and we were seeking to subject South and North Vietnam to our colonial interests. Which was absolutely absurd. And we, we saw Vietnam as an element of the cold war not what they saw it as: a civil war.

-- Robert S. McNamara

from: The Fog of War (2003)

Robert McNamara was the U. S. Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968.

Categories: Robert S. McNamara, The Fog of War

John Steinbeck: Quote for August 11, 2009

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly re-spawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

-- John Steinbeck

Categories: John Steinbeck