Thought for Today

"One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time."

~~~~~ Gioachino Rossini

Thought for Today

"The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will."

~~~~~ Michel de Montaigne

Thought for Today

Longfellow on Obama:

"Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit."

~~~~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thought for Today

"When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide."

~~~~ Victor Hugo

Thought for Today

"Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence."

~~~~ John Foster Dulles

Candidate for Quote of the Century

“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age."

~~~~~ Richard S. Lindzen

Thought for Today

"God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless."

~~~~~ Chester W. Nimitz

Thought for Today

"You can tell by looking at me that I've got more miles behind me than I've got in front of me. When you reach that point, if you've got some good years left, you want to make sure that you use them wisely."

~~~~~ Tom Osborne

Thought for Today

"The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves."

~~~~ George Washington

Thought for Today

"I've had three wives and three guitars. I still play the guitars."

~~~~~ Andres Segovia

Thought for Today

"A happy home is one in which each spouse grants the possibility that the other may be right, though neither believes it."

~~~~~ Don Fraser

Thought for Today

"To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."

~~~~ Nicolaus Copernicus

Thought for Today

"A man who trims himself to suit everybody will soon whittle himself away."

~~~~~ Charles M. Schwab

Thought for Today

"Some people think that doctors and nurses can put scrambled eggs back into the shell."

~~~~~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ Henry Adams

Thought for Today

"Common sense is genius in homespun."

~~~~~ Alfred North Whitehead

Thought for Today

"Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote."

~~~~ George Jean Nathan

Thought for Today

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act."

~~~~~ Robert Jackson

Thought for Today

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."

~~~~~ Abraham Lincoln

Deliberate or Inadvertent?

Six of the nine justices of the Supreme Court are Roman Catholic, including Obama's appointee Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. In addition to Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Sonia Sotomayor all are Catholic. Particularly considering that the Supreme Court is presently deciding the constitutionality of ObamaCare, I've been wondering whether Obama's thumb in the eye to all Catholics, obviously including those six Justices, was deliberate or inadvertent.

I'm inclined to think Obama knew exactly what he was doing. After all, he deliberately insulted the Supreme Court right to its members' faces during last year's State of the Union address. Consider, too, that in implementing this new policy, he disregarded the advice of Vice President Joe Biden and former White House Chief of Staff Bill Dailey, both Catholics, then coldly put Catholic HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius out front to announce it – much as the Nazis put the Jewish kapos in charge of loading the rest of the Jews into the cattle cars.

This summer, when the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, let's hope they remember this egregious insult and return the favor in kind.

Thought for Today

"Be courageous. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has emerged from these stronger and more prosperous. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!"

~~~~~ Thomas A. Edison

Thought for Today

"As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth."

~~~~~ Boris Pasternak

Thought for Today

"There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power."

~~~~ William Henry Harrison

Thought for Today

"Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort."

~~~~~ John Ruskin

Thought for Today

"There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth."

~~~~~ Charles Dickens

Thought for Today

"We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."

~~~~~ Ronald Reagan

Thought for Today

"It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own."

~~~~~ James Otis

Thought for Today

"When truth is no longer free, freedom is no longer real: the truths of the police are the truths of today."

~~~~~ Jacques Prevert

Thought for Today

"Though everything else may appear shallow and repulsive, even the smallest task in music is so absorbing, and carries us so far away from town, country, earth, and all worldly things, that it is truly a blessed gift of God."

~~~~~ Felix Mendelssohn

On the occasion of Mendelssohn's 203rd birthday, enjoy this phenomenal performance of his Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 49 by The Claremont Trio.

Thought for Today

"I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven."

~~~~~ Jascha Heifetz

Thought for Today

"Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one."

~~~~~ Richard Whately