Thought for Today

"In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it."

~~~~~ Alexander Smith

Thought for Today

"There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike – information and wit."

~~~~~ Stephen Leacock

Thought for Today

"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal."

~~~~~ Albert Pike

Thought for Today

"Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men."

~~~~~ Mortimer Adler

Thought for Today

"Fortune favors the prepared mind."

~~~~~ Louis Pasteur

Thought for Today

"The public character of every public servant is legitimate subject of discussion, and his fitness or unfitness for office may be fairly canvassed by any person."

~~~~~ Charles Babbage

Thought for Today

"Hard work keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and spirit."

~~~~~ Helena Rubinstein

Thought for Today

"Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us."

~~~~~ Dr. Benjamin Rush

Thought for Today

"Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it."

~~~~~ Samuel Smiles

Thought for Today

"When we are afraid we ought not to occupy ourselves with endeavoring to prove that there is no danger, but in strengthening ourselves to go on in spite of the danger."

~~~~~ Hale White

The Comedian Harmonists

[Originally published 7/8/08. Updated 12/21/13.]

Here's a treat for those who enjoy close harmony. If you've never heard The Comedian Harmonists before, prepare to be amazed.

The group was formed in Germany in 1927, and quickly became enormously popular throughout Europe and the rest of the Western world. Unfortunately, though, their meteoric rise coincided with the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. Since three of the group's six members happened to be Jewish and another had a Jewish wife, they were forced to stop performing in 1934.

For a brief summary of their sad history, take a look at this Wikipedia article, Comedian Harmonists, and click on its associated links.

Meanwhile, though, listen to this brilliant 1932 Electrola recording of a German song, "In einem kühlen Grunde" ("In a Cool Valley"). It will give you goose bumps (and will be a special treat for those of my readers who understand German – which I, unfortunately, do not).

Comedian Harmonists – In einem kühlen Grunde [take 1]

(Sorry, but embedding has been disabled on this video.)

The lyrics are the first, second, and fifth verses of a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff:

In einem kühlen Grunde
In einem kühlen Grunde,
da geht ein Mühlenrad.
Mein Liebchen ist verschwunden,
das dort gewohnet hat.

Sie hat mir Treu versprochen,
gab mir ein'n Ring dabei.
Sie hat die Treu gebrochen,
das Ringlein sprang entzwei.

Ich möcht als Spielmann reisen
wohl in die Welt hinaus
und singen meine Weisen
und gehn von Haus zu Haus.

Ich möcht als Reiter fliegen
wohl in die blut'ge Schlacht,
um ferne Feuer liegen
im Feld bei dunkler Nacht.

Hör ich das Mühlrad gehen,
ich weiß nicht, was ich will.
Ich möcht am liebsten sterben,
da wär's auf einmal still.

The Comedian Harmonists (from left: Robert Biberti, Erich Collin, Erwin Bootz, Roman Cycowski, Harry Frommermann, Ari Leschnikoff)

MEMBERS:

• Harry Frommermann (1906 - 1975), buffo-tenor
• Ari Leschnikoff (1897 - 1978), first tenor
• Erich Collin (1899 - 1961), second tenor
• Roman Cycowski (1901 - 1998), baritone
• Robert Biberti (1902 - 1985), bass
• Erwin Bootz (1907 - 1982), pianist

Thought for Today

"He who overcomes himself is divine. Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it."

~~~~~ Leopold Von Ranke

Thought for Today

"When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable."

~~~~~ Max Lerner

Thought for Today

"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions."

~~~~~ Carter G. Woodson

Thought for Today

"If you elect a matinee idol mayor, you're going to have a musical comedy administration."

~~~~~ Robert Moses

Thought for Today

John Greenleaf Whittier on Barack Hussein Obama:

"When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead."

Thought for Today

"Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief."

~~~~~ Jane Austen

Thought for Today

"The public knows that human beings are fallible. Only people blinded by ideology fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility."

~~~~~ Freeman Dyson
[Arguably the smartest living human. MAG]

Thought for Today

"When people conclude that all is futile, then the absurd becomes the norm."

~~~~~ Stanley Crouch

Thought for Today

"When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on."

~~~~~ Heinrich Heine

Thought for Today

"The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead."

~~~~~ William Lloyd Garrison

Thought for Today

"A few years' experience will convince us that those things which at the time they happened we regarded as our greatest misfortunes have proved our greatest blessings."

~~~~~ George Mason

Thought for Today

"It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellow men."

~~~~~ George MacDonald

Thought for Today

"One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well."

~~~~~ Louis Kronenberger

Thought for Today

"Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more."

~~~~~ James Thurber

Thought for Today

"A technical objection is the first refuge of a scoundrel."

~~~~~ Heywood Broun

Thought for Today

"While the river of life glides along smoothly, it remains the same river; only the landscape on either bank seems to change."

~~~~~ Max Muller

Thought for Today

"Repression will provoke rebellion."

~~~~~ Hugh Williamson

Thought for Today

"There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon."

~~~~~ Samuel Butler

Thought for Today

"The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat oneself."

~~~~~ Gamaliel Bailey

Thought for Today

"Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air."

~~~~~ Henry Anatole Grunwald

Thought for Today

"The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place."

~~~~~ Robert W. Welch, Jr.

Thought for Today

"Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of."

~~~~~ Jonathan Swift

Thought for Today

"Two kinds of men generally best succeed in political life; men of no principle, but of great talent; and men of no talent, but of one principle – that of obedience to their superiors."

~~~~~ Wendell Phillips

Thought for Today

"It would be foolhardy to count on the conscience of the world."

~~~~~ Stefan Zweig

Thought for Today

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."

~~~~~ Charles A. Beard

Thought for Today

"Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble that it knows no more."

~~~~~ William Cowper

Thought for Today

"There is little success where there is little laughter."

~~~~~ Andrew Carnegie

Thought for Today

"Every man has three characters – that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has."

~~~~~ Alphonse Karr

Thought for Today

"Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion."

~~~~~ Franklin Pierce

Thought for Today

"Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult."

~~~~~ George Eliot

Thought for Today

"The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice."

~~~~~ Voltaire

Thought for Today

"Admitting Error clears the Score,
And proves you Wiser than before."

~~~~~ Arthur Guiterman

Thought for Today

"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable."

~~~~~ James A. Garfield

Thought for Today

"If you wish in this world to advance
Your merits you're bound to enhance;
You must stir it and stump it,
And blow your own trumpet,
Or, trust me, you haven't a chance."

~~~~~ William Gilbert

Thought for Today

"Discipline strengthens the mind so that it becomes impervious to the corroding influence of fear."

~~~~~ Bernard Law Montgomery

TSP (Trisodium Phosphate) in Your Dishwasher

In recent years, many of us who use automatic dishwashers have been disappointed with the results. Instead of coming out gleaming and spotless, as they used to do years ago, our dishes and silverware come out with a dull film all over them. In hard water areas, the machine itself builds up a mineral film over time.

It turns out that the reason is a political decision based on pseudoscience. In a well-intentioned effort to prevent algal blooms in water which can result in fish kills, governments have restricted or forbidden the use of phosphates in automatic dishwasher detergents. So now, we are forced to use ineffective phosphate-free detergents which do a poor job of cleaning food residue off our dishes and leave a dull film behind. We're not really doing the fish any good, either, because by far the greatest source of phosphate in water is agricultural runoff, both from chemical fertilizer (the P in N-P-K fertilizer is phosphate) and from animal manure. The amount we add by using a small amount of TSP in our dishwashers is negligible.

The solution is very simple. Go to the nearest store with a paint department and pick up a box of TSP (trisodium phosphate). Get the smallest size, which is a 1-lb box. It'll last you a long time, and it's easy to store. Also pick up a box of 1-quart ziplock bags if you don't already have some. The TSP box has no spout, so you'll need to cut the corner off for easy dispensing. Then, since you'll want to protect the contents, you can store the opened TSP box in a closed 1-quart ziplock bag between uses. When you run your dishwasher, fill both cups in the detergent dispenser with your favorite detergent -- powder or gel -- as you normally do, then pour approximately 1/4 teaspoonful of TSP on top of the detergent in each cup. Close the cups and start the machine normally. That's all there is to it.

Before washing any dishes, I ran one cycle with an empty machine in order to clean out the mineral residue which had built up inside. I won't say that step is strictly necessary, but if you have a noticeable film inside the machine, it's certainly a good idea. Let it go through all the rinse cycles, but stop it before it starts to dry.

Now put in a load of dishes and run another cycle with TSP-fortified detergent.

When the dishwasher completes its cycle, compare the results with those you were getting without the TSP. You should see a dramatic difference.

In an area with extremely hard water, you may need to add as much as 1/2 teaspoonful of TSP to each cup, but certainly no more than that. Our water in this area comes from the Cumberland River, and is fairly hard because of dissolved calcium salts. Even so, I find that 1/4 teaspoon per dispenser cup does an excellent job.

Remember that TSP is a powerful chemical, so don't get it on your skin, and keep it away from children. If you should get any on your skin, wash it off immediately with large quantities of water. There's no need to be concerned about any residue on your dishes, though. TSP is highly water-soluble, so every bit of it will be rinsed down the drain along with the detergent.

Thought for Today

"If you do things well one at a time, you end up in a really good place. Don't get ahead of yourself. Control the things you can."

~~~~~ Ron Johnson

Thought for Today

"When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people."

~~~~~ Edmund Burke

Thought for Today

"Don't look at the downside of everything that comes along. It helps life move along so much smoother and nicer."

~~~~~ George Smathers

Thought for Today

"You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us."

~~~~~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Thought for Today

"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt."

~~~~~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Thought for Today

"We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way."

~~~~~ George S. Patton

Thought for Today

"It does not prove a thing to be right because the majority say it is so."

~~~~~ Friedrich Schiller

Thought for Today

"I know why most people never get rich. They put the money ahead of the job. If you just think of the job, the money will automatically follow. This never fails."

~~~~~ Hedy Lamarr

Thought for Today

"Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false."

~~~~~ Richard Cecil

Thought for Today

"There is no sense in making statements that will not continue to be true after they are made."

~~~~~ Frank Knight

Thought for Today

"Be strong in body, clean in mind, lofty in ideals."

~~~~~ James Naismith

Thought for Today

"'Tis easy enough to be pleasant,
When life flows along like a song;
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong."

~~~~~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Thought for Today

"Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far."

~~~~~ Will Rogers

Thought for Today

"Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger."

~~~~~ William Cullen Bryant

Thought for Today

"Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things; and I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatever state he is."

~~~~~ Daniel Boone

Thought for Today

"The sediments of the past are many miles in collective thickness: yet the feeble silt of the rivers built them all from base to summit."

~~~~~ John Joly

Thought for Today

"Right is right, even if no one else does it."

~~~~~ Juliette Gordon Low

Thought for Today

"While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill – little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago."

~~~~~ John Adams

Thought for Today

"A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself."

~~~~~ James Boswell

Thought for Today

"Your actions, and your actions alone, determine your worth."

~~~~~ Evelyn Waugh

Thought for Today

"I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear."

~~~~~ Benjamin F. Wade

Thought for Today

"Television? The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it."

~~~~~ C. P. Scott

Thought for Today

"The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime."

~~~~~ Max Stirner

Thought for Today

"I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another."

~~~~~ Brenda Ueland

Thought for Today

"There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious as of the extent and strength of his prejudices."

~~~~~ Francis Jeffrey

Thought for Today

"Real men are sadly lacking in this world, for when they are put to the test they prove worthless."

~~~~~ Franz Liszt

Thought for Today

"But I have learned a thing or two;
I know as sure as fate,
When we lock up our lives for wealth,
The gold key comes too late."

~~~~~ Will Carleton

Thought for Today

"Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another."

~~~~~ Thomas Hughes

Thought for Today

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

~~~~~ George Adam Smith

Thought for Today

"Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds."

~~~~~ Logan Pearsall Smith

Thought for Today

"What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small."

~~~~~ Richard Mentor Johnson

Thought for Today

"When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country."

~~~~~ Noah Webster

Thought for Today

"The state of Israel must, from time to time, prove clearly that it is strong, and able and willing to use force, in a devastating and highly effective way. If it does not prove this, it will be swallowed up, and perhaps wiped off the face of the earth."

~~~~~ Moshe Sharett

Thought for Today

"There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure."

~~~~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Thought for Today

"The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important."

~~~~~ Albert J. Nock

Thought for Today

"It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny."

~~~~~ Jean Nidetch

Thought for Today

"Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality."

~~~~~ Harlan Stone

Thought for Today

"Never stop because you are afraid - you are never so likely to be wrong."

~~~~~ Fridtjof Nansen

Thought for Today

"The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the right."

~~~~~ Lord Hailsham

Thought for Today

"Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared."

~~~~~ Eddie Rickenbacker

Thought for Today

"He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity."

~~~~~ William Samuel Johnson

Thought for Today

"In an ideal world, nobody's work would be just about the money. People could pursue excellence in what they do, take pride in achievement, and derive meaning from knowing that their work improved the lives of others."

~~~~~ Barry Schwartz

Thought for Today

"Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control."

~~~~~ Denis Diderot

Thought for Today

"The President of the United States should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves his country best."

~~~~~ President Rutherford B. Hayes

Thought for Today

"Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect."

~~~~~ George Bancroft

Thought for Today

"I endeavor to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended and patient when there be no redress."

~~~~~ Elizabeth Montagu

Thought for Today

"Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading."

~~~~~ Rufus Choate

Thought for Today

"Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference."

~~~~~ Sydney J. Harris

Thought for Today

"The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster."

~~~~~ Ludwig von Mises

Thought for Today

"A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed - I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself."

~~~~~ Georges Clemenceau

Thought for Today

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks."

~~~~~ Samuel Adams

Thought for Today

"Music is an art that expresses the inexpressible. It rises far above what words can mean or the intelligence define. Its domain is the imponderable and impalpable land of the unconscious."

~~~~~ Charles Munch

Thought for Today

"Some things you'll never know, and some things you'll wish you never knew."

~~~~~ Eric Williams

Thought for Today

"We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second."

~~~~~ Horace Walpole

Thought for Today

"Though man a thinking being is defined, Few use the grand prerogative of mind. How few think justly of the thinking few! How many never think, who think they do!"

~~~~~ Jane Taylor

Thought for Today

"The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."

~~~~~ Michael Faraday

Thought for Today

"Some people bear three kinds of trouble - the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have."

~~~~~ H. G. Wells

Thought for Today

"Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route."

~~~~~ Sister Elizabeth Kenny

Thought for Today

"And if you cannot remain indifferent, you must resolve to throw your weight into that balance in which the fate and condition of man is weighed."

~~~~~ Lajos Kossuth

Thought for Today

"Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified."

~~~~~ Samuel Johnson

Thought for Today

"Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another."

~~~~~ Marquis de Condorcet

Thought for Today

"I never trust an executive who tends to pass the buck. Nor would I want to deal with him as a customer or a supplier."

~~~~~ James Cash Penney

Thought for Today

"Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person."

~~~~~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Thought for Today

"The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency – the belief that the here and now is all there is."

~~~~~ Allan Bloom

Thought for Today

"The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men."

~~~~~ Julius Charles Hare

Thought for Today

"The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor."

~~~~~ H. L. Mencken

Thought for Today

"The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate."

~~~~~ O. Henry

Thought for Today

"Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?"

~~~~~ Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Thought for Today

"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us."

~~~~~ Leo Tolstoy

Thought for Today

"If more politicians in this country were thinking about the next generation instead of the next election, it might be better for the United States and the world."

~~~~~ Claude Pepper

Thought for Today

"Take risks. Ask big questions. Don't be afraid to make mistakes; if you don't make mistakes, you're not reaching far enough."

~~~~~ David Packard

Thought for Today

"When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties."

~~~~~ Marquis de Lafayette

Thought for Today

"Too oft is transient pleasure the source of long woes."

~~~~~ Christoph Martin Wieland

Thought for Today

"Don't leave inferences to be drawn when evidence can be presented."

~~~~~ Richard Wright

Thought for Today

"We've really got to stop looking to Washington to fix our problems. It obviously doesn't have the ability to do that. People who are successful are not successful because of the president."

~~~~~ Dave Ramsey

Thought for Today

"The first casualty when war comes is truth."

~~~~~ Hiram Johnson

Thought for Today

"It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed."

~~~~~ Kin Hubbard

Thought for Today

"The true portrait of a man is a fusion of what he thinks he is, what others think he is, what he really is and what he tries to be."

~~~~~ Dore Schary

Thought for Today

"It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat. It is a philosophical animal... one that does not place its affections thoughtlessly."

~~~~~ Theophile Gautier

Thought for Today

"The discipline of desire is the background of character."

~~~~~ John Locke

Thought for Today

"There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables."

~~~~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (expressing his opinion of Obama?)

Thought for Today

"The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many."

~~~~~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Thought for Today

"Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance."

~~~~~ John Ruskin

Thought for Today

"Here is the secret of inspiration: Tell yourself that thousands and tens of thousands of people, not very intelligent and certainly no more intelligent than the rest of us, have mastered problems as difficult as those that now baffle you."

~~~~~ William Feather

Thought for Today

"Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere and produce its hundredfold."

~~~~~ Theodore Parker

Thought for Today

"The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage."

~~~~~ Mark Russell

Thought for Today

"Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We've been so busy damning ourselves for years. We've done it all, and yet we don't take credit for it."

~~~~~ Ray Bradbury

Thought for Today

"Reputation is rarely proportioned to virtue."

~~~~~ Saint Francis de Sales

Thought for Today

"The bud of victory is always in the truth."

~~~~~ Benjamin Harrison

Thought for Today

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn."

~~~~~ John Cotton Dana

Thought for Today

"A man with a surplus can control circumstances, but a man without a surplus is controlled by them, and often has no opportunity to exercise judgment."

~~~~~ Marshall Field

Thought for Today

"I would rather be beaten, and be a man, than to be elected and be a little puppy dog."

~~~~~ Davy Crockett

Thought for Today

"In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to whom the idea first occurs."

~~~~~ Francis Darwin

Thought for Today

"Cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young when deprived of them; and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet creatures."

~~~~~ Thomas de Quincey

Thought for Today

"Self-justification is a treacherous servant."

~~~~~ Wellington Mara

Thought for Today

"There is nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever."

~~~~~ Alfred Hitchcock

Thought for Today

"Do not be fooled into believing that because a man is rich he is necessarily smart. There is ample proof to the contrary."

~~~~~ Julius Rosenwald

Thought for Today

"I don't see democracy getting better. I see democracy diminishing. More rules, more legislation. Eventually governments will see everything."

~~~~~ Taki Theodoracopulos

Thought for Today

"When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned."

~~~~~ Herbert Hoover

Thought for Today

"The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping."

~~~~~ Izaak Walton

Thought for Today

"Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup."

~~~~~ Sara Teasdale

(Sadly, the same poet who wrote that joyful, sunny verse later chose to take her own life at the age of 48.)

Thought for Today

"Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients."

~~~~~ Alan Keyes

Thought for Today

"The mechanical and social achievements of our day must not blind our eyes to the fact that, in all that relates to man, his nature and aspirations, we have added little or nothing to what has been so finely said by the great men of old."

~~~~~ James Loeb

Thought for Today

"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance."

~~~~~ Bruce Barton

Thought for Today

"Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay."

~~~~~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thought for Today

"I would rather be respected than elected."

~~~~~ Charles Edison

Thought for Today

"To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself."

~~~~~ Francis Marion Crawford

Thought for Today

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."

~~~~~ Herman Melville

Thought for Today

"Happiness is like a cat. If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you, it will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap."

~~~~~ William Bennett

Thought for Today

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government."

~~~~~ John Sharp Williams

Thought for Today

"The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens."

~~~~~ Alexis de Tocqueville

Thought for Today

"Don't ever dare to take your college as a matter of course – because, like democracy and freedom, many people you'll never know have broken their hearts to get it for you."

~~~~~ Alice Duer Miller

Thought for Today

"The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day."

~~~~~ C. S. Forester

Thought for Today

"The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly."

~~~~~ Aldous Huxley

Thought for Today

"Every friend to the liberty of his country is bound to reflect, and step forward to prevent the dreadful consequences which shall result from a government of events."

~~~~~ Henry Knox

Thought for Today

"In this administration, a place can be found for every bad man."

~~~~~ John Philpot Curran

Thought for Today

"It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked."

~~~~~ Haile Selassie

Thought for Today

"What's done to children, they will do to society."

~~~~~ Karl A. Menninger

Thought for Today

"It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way."

~~~~~ Ernest Hemingway

Thought for Today

"The aged love what is practical while impetuous youth longs only for what is dazzling."

~~~~~ Petrarch

Thought for Today

What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient but restless mind, of sacrificing one's ease or vanity, or uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.

~~~~~ Victor Cherbuliez

Thought for Today

"In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish."

~~~~~ S. I. Hayakawa

Thought for Today

"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."

~~~~~ Elbridge Gerry

Thought for Today

"It is but a poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk."

~~~~~ Joshua Reynolds

Thought for Today

"Journalism: A profession whose business is to explain to others what it personally does not understand."

~~~~~ Lord Northcliffe

Thought for Today

"We Americans are a peculiar people. We are for the underdog, no matter how much of a dog he is."

~~~~~ A.B. "Happy" Chandler

Thought for Today

"Reading is a means of thinking with another person's mind; it forces you to stretch your own."

~~~~~ Charles Scribner, Jr.

Thought for Today

"Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert."

~~~~~ Dr. William Osler

Thought for Today

"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people."

~~~~~ John Quincy Adams

Thought for Today

"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality."

~~~~~ Nikola Tesla

Thought for Today

"It is easier to get into something than to get out of it."

~~~~~ Donald Rumsfeld

Thought for Today

"A man desires praise that he may be reassured, that he may be quit of his doubting of himself; he is indifferent to applause when he is confident of success."

~~~~~ Alec Waugh

Thought for Today

"I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

~~~~~ Robert A. Heinlein

Thought for Today

"An offensive war, I believe to be wrong and would therefore have nothing to do with it, having no right to meddle with another man's property, his ox or his ass, his man servant or his maid servant or anything that is his."

~~~~~ Daniel Morgan

Thought for Today

"Everything is more complicated than it looks to most people."

~~~~~ Frederick Lewis Allen

Thought for Today

"The right thing to do never requires any subterfuge, it is always simple and direct."

~~~~~ Calvin Coolidge

Thought for Today

"A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was."

~~~~~ Joseph Hall

Thought for Today

"The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."

~~~~~ Frederic Bastiat

Thought for Today

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

~~~~~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Thought for Today

"Anyone can be heroic from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time."

~~~~~ Luigi Pirandello

Thought for Today

"The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled."

~~~~~ Ross Perot

Thought for Today

"Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women."

~~~~~ Lord Kelvin

Thought for Today

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book – I'll waste no time reading it."

~~~~~ Moses Hadas

Thought for Today

"No man surely has so short a memory as the American."

~~~~~ Rebecca Harding Davis

Thought for Today

"A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy."

~~~~~ Edward P. Morgan

Thought for Today

"I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves."

~~~~~ Wilhelm von Humboldt

Thought for Today

"Human nature is the same now as when Adam hid from the presence of God; the consciousness of wrong makes us unwilling to meet those whom we have offended."

~~~~~ Matthew Simpson

Thought for Today

"Lead from the front."

~~~~~ Audie Murphy

Thought for Today

"People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others."

~~~~~ Blaise Pascal

Thought for Today

"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur."

~~~~~ Red Adair

Thought for Today

"As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not."

~~~~~ Carl Van Vechten

Thought for Today

"Well I just figure any man who risks his neck to save a dog's life isn't going to kill someone for gold teeth."

~~~~~ Alvin Adams

Thought for Today

"People don't ever seem to realize that doing what's right is no guarantee against misfortune."

~~~~~ William McFee

Thought for Today

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."

~~~~~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Thought for Today

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

~~~~~ William Butler Yeats

Thought for Today

"What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honorable, than that of teaching?"

~~~~~ Harriet Martineau

Thought for Today

"Success demands singleness of purpose."

~~~~~ Vince Lombardi

Thought for Today

"You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write."

~~~~~ Saul Bellow

Thought for Today

"Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it."

~~~~~ Bertha von Suttner

Thought for Today

"The possibility of bringing white-collar criminals to justice is ever receding over the horizon."

~~~~~ Sara Paretsky

Thought for Today

"Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways."

~~~~~ Samuel McChord Crothers

Thought for Today

"We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form."

~~~~~ William Ralph Inge

Thought for Today

"Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience."

~~~~~ Adam Smith

Thought for Today

"The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech."

~~~~~ Justice Anthony Kennedy

Thought for Today

"Never be haughty to the humble or humble to the haughty."

~~~~~ Jefferson Davis

Thought for Today

"I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition."

~~~~~ Martha Washington

Thought for Today

"It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past."

~~~~~ Karl Von Clausewitz

Thought for Today

"I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well."

~~~~~ Johann Sebastian Bach

Thought for Today

"One learns in life to keep silent and draw one's own confusions."

~~~~~ Cornelia Otis Skinner

Thought for Today

"How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win."

~~~~~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Thought for Today

"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

~~~~~ Walker Percy

Thought for Today

"We shall never have more time. We have, and always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until tomorrow. Keep going... Concentrate on something useful."

~~~~~ Arnold Bennett

Thought for Today

"No nation ever yet found any inconvenience from too close an inspection into the conduct of its officers, but many have been brought to ruin and reduced to slavery by suffering gradual impositions and abuses."

~~~~~ Edward Livingston

Thought for Today

"One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth."

~~~~~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Thought for Today

"He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles."

~~~~~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

Thought for Today

"Bedside manners are no substitute for the right diagnosis."

~~~~~ Alfred P. Sloan

Thought for Today

"Leadership appears to be the art of getting others to want to do something you are convinced should be done."

~~~~~ Vance Packard

Thought for Today

"In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

~~~~~ Alexander Pope

Thought for Today

"Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself."

~~~~~ Honore de Balzac

Thought for Today

"All anger is not sinful, because some degree of it, and on some occasions, is inevitable. But it becomes sinful and contradicts the rule of Scripture when it is conceived upon slight and inadequate provocation, and when it continues long."

~~~~~ Wilson Mizner

Thought for Today

"Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it."

~~~~~ Josephus Daniels

Thought for Today

"Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth."

~~~~~ Anna Jameson

Thought for Today

"For him to have understood me would have meant reorganizing his thinking... giving up his intellectual ballast, and few people are willing to risk such a radical move."

~~~~~ Edward T. Hall

Thought for Today

"Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity."

~~~~~ L. Frank Baum

Thought for Today

"It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn."

~~~~~ B. C. Forbes

Thought for Today

"I respect my limitations, but I don't use them as an excuse."

~~~~~ Stephen R. Donaldson

Thought for Today

"Strong, generous, and confident, she has nobly served mankind. Beware how you trifle with your marvellous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin."

~~~~~ Henry Cabot Lodge

Thought for Today

"The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation."

~~~~~ Isaac D'Israeli

Thought for Today

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."

~~~~~ Ariel Durant

Thought for Today

"I make progress by having people around me who are smarter than I am and listening to them. And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am."

~~~~~ Henry J. Kaiser

Thought for Today

"Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals."

~~~~~ Edmund Wilson

Thought for Today

"Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth."

~~~~~ Joseph Joubert

Thought for Today

"The difference between Liberty and liberties is as great as God and gods."

~~~~~ Ludwig Borne

Thought for Today

"The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you."

~~~~~ Soren Kierkegaard

Thought for Today

"The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron."

~~~~~ Horace Mann

Thought for Today

"I'd look at one of my stonecutters hammering away at the rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I knew it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."

~~~~~ Jacob August Riis

Thought for Today

"It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do."

~~~~~ Jerome K. Jerome

Thought for Today

"He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young."

~~~~~ Joseph Addison

Thought for Today

"You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length."

~~~~~ Carl Friedrich Gauss

Thought for Today

"Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house."

~~~~~ Henri Poincaré

Thought for Today

"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty."

~~~~~ James Monroe

Thought for Today

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools."

~~~~~ Herbert Spencer

Thought for Today

"Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself."

~~~~~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Thought for Today

"The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

~~~~~ Edward Grey

Thought for Today

"There is no human bliss equal to twelve hours of work with only six hours in which to do it."

~~~~~ Anthony Trollope

Thought for Today

"For all your days be prepared, and meet them ever alike. When you are the anvil, bear – when you are the hammer, strike."

~~~~~ Edwin Markham

Thought for Today

"Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from Hell."

~~~~~ Philip James Bailey

Thought for Today

"Refuse to be average. Let your heart soar as high as it will."

~~~~~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

Thought for Today

"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions."

~~~~~ Robert Wilson Lynd

Thought for Today

"A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way."

~~~~~ Fisher Ames

Thought for Today

"America is hungry for people who believe in something."

~~~~~ Henry Hyde

Thought for Today

"A mob is the method by which good citizens turn over the law and the government to the criminal or irresponsible classes."

~~~~~ Ray Stannard Baker

Thought for Today

"Men become wise just as they become rich, more by what they save than by what they receive."

~~~~~ Wilbur Wright

Thought for Today

"The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have."

~~~~~ Henry James

Thought for Today

"I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think."

~~~~~ Anne Sullivan

Thought for Today

"No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it."

~~~~~ Thomas Jefferson

Thought for Today

"The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity – unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity."

~~~~~ Henry Clay

Thought for Today

"Publicity is a great purifier because it sets in action the forces of public opinion, and in this country public opinion controls the courses of the nation."

~~~~~ Charles Evans Hughes

Thought for Today

"A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will in time produce a people as base as itself."

~~~~~ Joseph Pulitzer

Thought for Today

"Integrity is the first step to true greatness. Men love to praise, but are slow to practice it. To maintain it in high places costs self-denial; in all places it is liable to opposition, but its end is glorious, and the universe will yet do it homage."

~~~~~ Charles Simmons

Thought for Today

"Standardization of our educational systems is apt to stamp out individualism and defeat the very ends of education by leveling the product down rather than up."

~~~~~ Dr. Harvey Cushing

Thought for Today

"A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor."

~~~~~ William Wordsworth

Thought for Today

"If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it, to take their money by force for your own needs, then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you."

~~~~~ Neal Boortz

Thought for Today

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed."

~~~~~ Booker T. Washington

Thought for Today

"Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience."

~~~~~ James Freeman Clarke

Thought for Today

"A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles."

~~~~~ Washington Irving

Thought for ALL Days

"The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men."

~~~~~ Emile Zola (April 2, 1840 - September 29, 1902)

Thought for Today

"As citizens we have to be more thoughtful and more educated and more informed. I turn on the TV and I see these grown people screaming at each other, and I think, well, if we don't get our civility back, we're in trouble."

~~~~~ Emmylou Harris

Thought for Today

"False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing."

~~~~~ Joseph de Maistre

Thought for Today

"It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived."

~~~~~ Rene Descartes

Thought for Today

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

~~~~~ Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides)

Thought for Today

"One measure of your success will be the degree to which you build up others who work with you. While building up others, you will build up yourself."

~~~~~ James E. Casey

Thought for Today

"It's not so much about what you ask as what you don't ask."

~~~~~ Michael Parkinson

Thought for Today

"Never underestimate the capacity of another human being to have exactly the same shortcomings you have."

~~~~~ Leigh Steinberg

Thought for Today

"The last of human freedoms – the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances."

~~~~~ Viktor E. Frankl

Norman Borlaug Answers His Critics

Today would have been Dr. Norman Borlaug's 99th birthday. His long and fruitful life came to a end on September 2, 2009 at the age of 95.

Toward the end of his life, Dr. Borlaug, justifiably called "The Father of the Green Revolution" and "The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives," was the target of vicious and unrelenting criticism from a gaggle of radical "greens" – so-called "environmentalists" who long to return the earth to a state of nature and would, if they had the power, eliminate humanity, except, of course, for themselves.

Here is Dr. Borlaug's reply to his critics:

"Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things."

Thought for Today

"For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished freedom is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while there was still time."

~~~~~ George Sutherland

Thought for Today

"There are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage."

~~~~~ Joel Barlow

Thought for Today

"In life, particularly in public life, psychology is more powerful than logic."

~~~~~ Ludwig Quidde

Thought for Today

"My idea of an educated person is one who can converse on one subject for more than two minutes."

~~~~~ Robert Millikan

Thought for Today

"Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart."

~~~~~ Phyllis McGinley

Thought for Today

"Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt."

~~~~~ Henrik Ibsen

Thought for Today

"Who bravely dares must sometimes risk a fall."

~~~~~ Tobias Smollett

Thought for Today

"Beware the wrath of a patient adversary."

~~~~~ John C. Calhoun

Thought for Today

"Courage is just fear, plus prayers, plus understanding."

~~~~~ Edward Albert

Thought for Today

"The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare."

~~~~~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Thought for Today

"Leaders get out in front and stay there by raising the standards by which they judge themselves – and by which they are willing to be judged."

~~~~~ Frederick W. Smith

Thought for Today

"It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed."

~~~~~ Albert Einstein

Thought for Today

"In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last."

~~~~~ Hugh Walpole

Thought for Today

"He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave."

~~~~~ George Berkeley

Thought for Today

"The day of fortune is like a harvest day, We must be busy when the corn is ripe."

~~~~~ Torquato Tasso

Thought for Today

"Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss."

~~~~~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Thought for Today

"All legislative experiments in the way of making forcible distribution of the wealth produced in any country have failed."

~~~~~ Leland Stanford

Thought for Today

"I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected."

~~~~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Thought for Today

"Little deeds are like little seeds, they grow to flowers or to weeds."

~~~~~ Daniel D. Palmer

Thought for Today

"Let us tell our legislators in advance, that this is a right, restraints on which, we will not, cannot bear; and that every attempt to restrain it is a palpable wrong on God and man."

~~~~~ Gerrit Smith

Thought for Today

"The People have a right to the Truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

~~~~~ Frank Norris

Thought for Today

"Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian."

~~~~~ Robert Orben

Thought for Today

"Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open."

~~~~~ Alexander Graham Bell

Thought for Today

"For the cause that lacks assistance, the wrong that needs resistance, for the future in the distance, and the good that I can do."

~~~~~ George Linnaeus Banks

Thought for Today

"I never use a score when conducting my orchestra. Does a lion tamer enter a cage with a book on how to tame a lion?"

~~~~~ Dimitri Mitropoulos

Thought for Today

"Of all afflictions, the worst is self-contempt."

~~~~~ Berthold Auerbach

Thought for Today

"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

"Nobody understood better than Mr. Lincoln the obvious truth that in politics it does not suffice merely to nominate candidates. Something must also be done to elect them."

~~~~~ John George Nicolay

Thought for Today

"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year."

~~~~~ John Foster Dulles

Thought for Today

"The test of civilization is its estimate of women."

~~~~~ George William Curtis

Thought for Today

"You don't have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream."

~~~~~ Michael Dell

Thought for Today

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."

~~~~~ George Washington

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ Andres Segovia

Thought for Today

"Every man should make up his own mind that if he expect to succeed, he must give an honest return for the other man's dollar."

~~~~~ Edward H. Harriman

Thought for Today

"'Thou shalt not get found out' is not one of God's commandments; and no man can be saved by trying to keep it."

~~~~~ Leonard Bacon

Thought for Today

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

~~~~ Charles M. Schwab

Thought for Today

"If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work."

~~~~~ Thomas J. Watson

Thought for Today

"Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic."

~~~~~ Henry Adams

Thought for Today

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

~~~~~ Susan B. Anthony

Thought for Today

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."

~~~~~ Frederick Douglass

Thought for Today

"When the Supreme Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions."

~~~~~ Justice Robert Jackson

Thought for Today

"A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the result of sudden impulse and accident than of that reason of which we so much boast."

~~~~~ Peter Cooper

Thought for Today

"If you want to succeed in the world, you don't have to be much cleverer than other people. You just have to be one day earlier."

~~~~ Leo Szilard

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

"When the tempest rages, when the thunders roar, and the lightnings blaze around us it is then that the truly brave man stands firm at his post."

~~~~~ Luther Martin

Thought for Today

"The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it."

~~~~~ 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

"I know of no higher fortitude than stubbornness in the face of overwhelming odds."

~~~~~ Louis Nizer

Thought for Today

"The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country."

~~~~~ James Otis

Thought for Today

"A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece."

~~~~~ Ludwig Erhard

Thought for Today

"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

~~~~~ Walter Bagehot

Thought for Today

"I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep."

~~~~~ Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Thought for Today

"Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise."

~~~~~ Alexander Meiklejohn

Thought for Today

"Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation."

~~~~~ Gouverneur Morris

Thought for Today

"Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend."

~~~~~ Walter Savage Landor

Thought for Today

"In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest."

~~~~~ William McKinley

Arthur Rubinstein

Today, January 28, 2013, is the 126th birthday of Arthur Rubinstein. Here he is in 1975, 88 years old and nearly blind, performing Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Alexander Schneider conducting. Yes, the sound quality is not the greatest, but who cares?

Thought for Today

"Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life."

~~~~~ Jose Marti

Thought for Today

"I can't go back to yesterday – because I was a different person then."

~~~~~Lewis Carroll

Thought for Today

"I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within."

~~~~~ Douglas MacArthur

Thought for Today

"You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences."

~~~~ W. Somerset Maugham

Thought for Today

"It is nearly always the most improbable things that really come to pass."

~~~~~ E. T. A. Hoffmann

Thought for Today

"Abortion is inherently different from other medical procedures because no other procedure involves the purposeful termination of a potential life."

~~~~~ Justice Potter Stewart

Thought for Today

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions – it only guarantees equality of opportunity."

~~~~~ Irving Kristol

Thought for Today

"There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool."

~~~~~ Francis Bacon

Thought for Today

"Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success."

~~~~~ Mark Skousen

Thought for Today

"Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or to keep one."

~~~~~ Robert E. Lee

Thought for Today

"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."

~~~~~ Daniel Webster

Thought for Today

"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."

~~~~~ Robert M. Hutchins

Thought for Today

"It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe."

~~~~~ Robert W. Service

Thought for Today

"Say what you know, do what you must, come what may."

~~~~~ Sofia Kovalevskaya

Thought for Today

"Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives."

~~~~ Andy Rooney

Thought for Today

"Those who actually hate animals to the point of being cruel to them are outcasts to the rest of us, no matter where in the world they live."

~~~~~ Nick Clooney

Thought for Today

"People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous."

~~~~~ Edmund Burke

Thought for Today

"When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation."

~~~~~ Alexander Hamilton

Thought for Today

"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses."

~~~~~ George Washington Carver

Thought for Today

"Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse."

~~~~~ Arthur Baer

Thought for Today

"Those who insist on the dignity of their office show they have not deserved it."

~~~~~ Baltasar Gracian

Thought for Today

"May God save the country, for it is evident that the people will not."

~~~~~ Millard Fillmore

Thought for Today

"From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned."

~~~~~ Charles Sumner

Thought for Today

"An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured."

~~~~~ Konrad Adenauer

Thought for Today

"But the basic difficulty still remains: It is the expansion of Federal power, about which I wish to express my alarm. How easily we embrace such business."

~~~~~ Everett Dirksen

Thought for Today

"Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them... they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight."

~~~~~ Orison Swett Marden

Thought for Today

"You can be deprived of your money, your job and your home by someone else, but remember that no one can ever take away your honor."

~~~~ William Lyon Phelps

Thought for Today

"How can I know what I think till I see what I say? "

~~~~~ E. M. Forster