Herman Melville: Quote for March 31, 2010

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

-- Herman Melville

Categories: Herman Melville

Denzel Washington: Quote for March 30, 2010

I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me, spiritually and financially.

-- Denzel Washington

Categories: Denzel Washington

Walter Bagehot: Quote for March 29, 2010

A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.

-- Walter Bagehot

Categories: Walter Bagehot

Thomas Moore: Quote for March 28, 2010

Man's folly hath enhanced the value of gold and silver because of their scarcity; whereas nature, like a kind parent, hath freely given us the best things, such as air, earth, and water, but hath hidden from us those which are vain and useless.

-- Thomas More

Categories: Thomas More

Suze Orman: Quote for March 27, 2010

If the boss is a jerk, get over it. First of all, don't you think there's a good chance that your boss's boss knows what's going on? If so, just keep your head down and do the work. Usually, if you put in maximum effort and produce excellent results, someone in the company is going to take notice. Either you will get promoted or your jerky boss will get the heave-ho. It happens all the time.

-- Suze Orman

Categories: Suze Orman

David Mamet: Quote for March 26, 2010

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder "censorship," we call it "concern for commercial viability."

-- David Mamet

Categories: David Mamet

Albert Camus: Quote for March 25, 2010

More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.

-- Albert Camus

Categories: Albert Camus

Martin Luther King: Quote for March 24, 2010

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ... That would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

-- Martin Luther King

Categories: Martin Luther King

Robert Browning: Quote for March 23, 2010

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven -
All's right with the world!

-- Robert Browning

Categories: Robert Browning

Christopher Reeve: Quote for March 22, 2010

We live in a time when the words impossible and unsolvable are no longer part of the scientific community's vocabulary. Each day we move closer to trials that will not just minimize the symptoms of disease and injury but eliminate them.

-- Christopher Reeve

Categories: Christopher Reeve

William Wilberforce: Quote for March 21, 2010

I take courage — I determine to forget all my other fears, and I march forward with a firmer step in the full assurance that my cause will bear me out, and that I shall be able to justify upon the clearest principles, every resolution in my hand, the avowed end of which is, the total abolition of the slave trade.

-- William Wilberforce

It took this caring politician over forty years of campaigning before his efforts finally paid off and slavery was abolished in Great Britain in 1833.

The life of William Wilberfoce is portrayed in the 2006 film "Amazing Grace." Here is a clip from that film.

Categories: William Wilberforce

Frederic Bastiat: Quote for March 20, 2010

Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.

-- Frederic Bastiat

Categories: Frederic Bastiat

Captain Bligh: Quote for March 19, 2010

Now don't mistake me. I'm not advising cruelty or brutality with no purpose. My point is that cruelty with purpose is not cruelty - it's efficiency. Then a man will never disobey you once he's watched his mate's backbone laid bare. He'll remember those white ribs staring at him, he'll see the flesh jump, and hear the whistle of the whip for the rest of his life.

-- Captain Bligh

from: Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)

Trevor Howard acted as Captain Bligh

Marlon Brando appears in this clip acting as Fletcher Christian.
Tim Seely appears in this clip acting as Midshipman Ned Young.

Categories: Captain Bligh, Trevor Howard, Mutiny on the Bounty

John Adams: Quote for March 18, 2010

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

-- John Adams

Categories: John Adams

Robert G. Ingersoll: Quote for March 17, 2010

Age after age, the strong have trampled upon the weak; the crafty and heartless have ensnared and enslaved the simple and innocent, and nowhere, in all the annals of mankind, has any god succored the oppressed.

-- Robert G. Ingersoll

Categories: Robert G. Ingersoll

Ben Harper: Quote for March 16, 2010

I robbed that bank 'cause I got tired of seein' children roamin' the woodlands without food, children roamin' the highways in this here Depression, children sleepin' in old abandoned car bodies in junk heaps. I promised myself that I'd never see the day when my young-uns had want.

-- Ben Harper

from: The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Peter Graves acted as Ben Harper

Robert Mitchum appears in this clip acting as Harry Powell.

Categories: Ben Harper, Peter Graves, The Night of the Hunter

Ezra Pound: Quote for March 15, 2010

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing–the rest is mere sheep-herding.

-- Ezra Pound

Categories: Ezra Pound

Arthur Schopenhauer: Quote for March 14, 2010

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer

Categories: Arthur Schopenhauer

Dr. Alex Brulov: Quote for March 13, 2010

Now, here's where dreams come in. They tell you what you are trying to hide, but they tell it to you all mixed up like pieces of a puzzle that don't fit. The problem of the analyst is: to examine this puzzle, and put the pieces together in the right place, and find out what the devil you are trying to say to yourself.

-- Dr. Alex Brulov

from: Spellbound (1945)

Michael Chekhov acted as Dr. Alex Brulov

Gregory Peck appears in this clip acting as John Ballantine.

Categories: Dr. Alex Brulov, Michael Chekhov, Spellbound

Salvador Dali: Quote for March 12, 2010

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

-- Salvador Dali

Categories: Salvador Dali

Oprah Winfrey: Quote for March 11, 2010

Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.

-- Oprah Winfrey

Categories: Oprah Winfrey