Thought for Today

Failures are divided into two classes – those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.

~~~~~ John Charles Salak

Thought for Today

"What experience and history teach is this – that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it."

~~~~~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Thought for Today

“It takes a lot more integrity, character, and courage to be a conservative than it does to be a liberal. That’s because at its most basic level, liberalism is nothing more than childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues.”

~~~~~ John Hawkins

Thought for Today

"Civilization ceases when we no longer respect and no longer put into their correct places the fundamental values, such as work, family and country; such as the individual, honor and religion."

~~~~~ R. P. Lebret

Thought for Today

"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure."

~~~~~ William Saroyan

Thought for Today

“The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts.”

~~~~~ Anatole France

Thought for Today

Imhoff's Law:

The organization of any bureaucracy is very much like a septic tank ... The really big chunks always rise to the top.

Thought for Today

"There are individuals in society whom no great crisis can lift from the deep ruts of egoism in which they are sunk."

~~~~~ Piotr Kropotkin

Thought for Today

"We fought too long and too hard to make people stop saying blacks looked alike – but I say it is a far greater evil that many people say blacks think alike."

~~~~~ Clarence Thomas, 1983

Thought for Today

"There aren't any great men. There are just great challenges that ordinary men like you and me are forced by circumstances to meet."

~~~~~ Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey

Thought for Today

"I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers. We must make our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy."

~~~~~ Thomas Jefferson

Thought for Today

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"

~~~~~ Thomas Jefferson

Thought for Today

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other alternatives."

~~~~~ Abba Eban

Thought for Today

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."

~~~~~ Patrick Henry

Thought for Today

"He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything."

~~~~~ Samuel Johnson

Thought for Today

"Idiot, n: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling."

~~~~~ Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary

Thought for Today

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury."

~~~~~ Alexander Tyler, 18th century Scottish historian

Thought for Today

"God never made His work for man to mend."

~~~~~ John Dryden

Thought for Today

"Problems are only opportunities in work clothes."

~~~~~ Henry J. Kaiser

Thought for Today

"We must beware of the dangers that lie in our most generous wishes. Some paradox of our nature leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion."

~~~~~ Lionel Trilling

Thought for Today

"There is good news from Washington today. Congress is deadlocked and can't act."

~~~~~ Will Rogers

Thought for Today

"Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible."

~~~~~ François de La Rochefoucauld

Thought for Today

"One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference."

~~~~~ Robert Fulghum

Thought for Today

"You may think that the Constitution is your security – it is nothing but a piece of paper. You may think that the statutes are your security – they are nothing but words in a book. You may think that elaborate mechanism of government is your security – it is nothing at all unless you have sound and uncorrupted public opinion to give life to your Constitution, to give vitality to your statutes, to make efficient your machinery."

~~~~~ Charles Evans Hughes

Thought for Today

"Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to."

~~~~~ Alfred A. Montapert

Thought for Today

"I am certain that, however great the hardships and the trials, which loom ahead, our America will endure and the cause of human freedom will triumph."

~~~~~ Cordell Hull

Thought for Today

"But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences."

~~~~~ John Stuart Mill

Thought for Today

"The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil."

~~~~~ Thomas A. Edison

Thought for Today

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

~~~~~ Henry Brooks Adams

Thought for Today

"No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence, or whose attitude is patronizing."

~~~~~ E. B. White

Thought for Today

"Lawyer: One skilled in the circumvention of the law."

~~~~~ Ambrose Bierce