William E. Simon: Quote for February 15, 2012

The bureaucrat's first objective, of course, is preservation of his job – provided by the big-government system, at the taxpayer’s expense. … Whether real world problems get solved or not is of secondary importance. It doesn't take much cynicism, in fact, to see that the bureaucrats have a vested interest in not having problems solved. If the problems did not exist (or had been invented), there would be no reason for the bureaucrat to have a job.

-- William E. Simon

Categories: William E. Simon

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Quote for February 14, 2012

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Categories: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lord Byron: Quote for February 13, 2012

The poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master's own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonour'd falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth.
While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

-- Lord Byron

Categories: Lord Byron

Joyce Carol Oates: Quote for February 12, 2012

And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.

-- Joyce Carol Oates

Evil has a tendency to attract modern politicians.

Categories: Joyce Carol Oates

Edgar Allan Poe: Quote for February 11, 2012

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

-- Edgar Allan Poe

Categories: Edgar Allan Poe

Shakti Gawain: Quote for February 10, 2012

The people we are in relationship with are always a mirror, reflecting our own beliefs, and simultaneously we are mirrors, reflecting their beliefs. So... relationship is one of the most powerful tools for growth....If we look honestly at our relationships, we can see so much about how we have created them.

-- Shakti Gawain

Categories: Shakti Gawain

George Carlin: Quote for February 9, 2012

The owners of this country know the truth, it's called "The American Dream," because you have to be asleep to believe it.

-- George Carlin

Categories: George Carlin

Hermann J. Muller: Quote for February 8, 2012

There is no permanent status quo in nature; all is the process of adjustment and readjustment, or else eventual failure. But man is the first being yet evolved on earth which has the power to note this changefulness, and, if he will, to turn it to his own advantage, to work out genetic methods, eugenic ideas, yes, to invent new characteristics, organs, and biological systems that will work out to further the interests, the happiness, the glory of the God-like being whose meager foreshadowings we the present ailing creatures are.

-- Hermann J. Muller

Categories: Hermann J. Muller

Neal Donald Walsch: Quote for February 7, 2012

It is religion which has filled the hearts of men with fear of God, where once man loved that which is in all its splendor. It is religion which has ordered men to bow down before God where once man rose up in joyful outreach. It is religion which has burdened man with worries about God's wrath where once man sought God to lighten his burden. It is religion which told man to be ashamed of his body and its most natural functions where once man celebrated those functions as the greatest gifts of life.

-- Neal Donald Walsch

Categories: Neal Donald Walsch

Roy Rogers: Quote for February 6, 2012

If there were no valleys of sadness and death, we could never really appreciate the sunshine of happiness on the mountain top.

-- Roy Rogers

Categories: Roy Rogers

Carl Zuckmayer: Quote for February 5, 2012

One-half of life is luck; the other half is discipline – and that's the important half, for without discipline you wouldn't know what to do with luck.

-- Carl Zuckmayer

Categories: Carl Zuckmayer

Robert G. Ingersoll: Quote for February 4, 2012

Don't you know that if people could bottle the air they would? Don't you know that there would be an American Air-bottling Association? And don't you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for want of breath, if they could not pay for air? I am not blaming anybody. I am just telling how it is.

-- Robert G. Ingersoll

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George Bernard Shaw: Quote for February 3, 2012

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

-- George Bernard Shaw

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Bill Vaughn: Quote for February 2, 2012

The groundhog is like most other prophets; it delivers its prediction and then disappears.

-- Bill Vaughn

Categories: Bill Vaughn

Jane Austen: Quote for February 1, 2012

If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to Yes, she ought to say No, directly.

-- Jane Austen

Categories: Jane Austen