Thought for Today

"A farmer travelling with his load
Picked up a horseshoe on the road,
And nailed it fast to his barn door,
That luck might down upon him pour;
That every blessing known in life
Might crown his homestead and his wife,
And never any kind of harm
Descend upon his growing farm."

~~~~~ James Thomas Fields

Thought for Today

"Men of authority have employed all the destructive agents around them to promote their own personal interests at the sacrifice of every just, honorable, and lawful consideration."

~~~~~ John White Geary

Thought for Today

"Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects."

~~~~~ Andrew Johnson

Thought for Today

"We should not permit prayer to be taken out of the schools; that's the only way most of us got through."

~~~~~ Sam Levenson

Thought for Today

"I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses."

~~~~~ Johannes Kepler

Thought for Today

"I think you need people of principle, of character, that are leaders, that take stands on important tough issues that will affect the future of this country."

~~~~~ Sean Hannity

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

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."

~~~~~ Sydney J. Harris

Thought for Today

"We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them."

~~~~~ Abigail Adams

Thought for Today

"You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life."

~~~~~ Benjamin Disraeli

Thought for Today

"It is a simple but sometimes forgotten truth that the greatest enemy to present joy and high hopes is the cultivation of retrospective bitterness."

~~~~~ Robert Menzies

Thought for Today

"The way to an American economic comeback, the way to help those out of work today find a paycheck, is to unleash the forces of job creation in America. The source of new jobs isn't going to be the bureaucracies of Washington, but rather the creativity, ingenuity, and hard work of the American people."

~~~~~ Rob Portman

Thought for Today

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."

~~~~~ Hector Hugh Munro ("Saki")

Thought for Today

"This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble."

~~~~~ Ludwig van Beethoven

Thought for Today

"It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases."

~~~~~ George Santayana

Thought for Today

"For reasons that are both fair and foul – but mostly for fair reasons – we have come under the domain of a scientific-management system whose ambitions are endless. They want to manage every second of our lives, every expenditure that we make. And the schools are the training ground to create a population that's easy to manage."

~~~~~ John Taylor Gatto

Thought for Today

"If we should have to fight, we should be prepared to so so from the neck up instead of from the neck down."

~~~~~ Jimmy Doolittle

Thought for Today

"Communism possesses a language which every people can understand – its elements are hunger, envy, and death."

~~~~~ 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

"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

"You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward."

~~~~~ James Thurber

Thought for Today

"The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young."

~~~~~ Willa Cather

Thought for Today

"The want of education and moral training is the only real barrier that exists between the different classes of men."

~~~~~ Susanna Moodie

Thought for Today

"You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you."

~~~~~ Walt Disney

Thought for Today

"If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do."

~~~~~ Samuel Butler

Thought for Today

"True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions."

~~~~~ Cleveland Abbe

Thought for Today

"Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence."

~~~~~ Russell Lynes

Thought for Today

"We have seen a central government taking more and more control over public education, over communications, over transportation, over every detail of our daily lives."

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

Thought for Today

"One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!"

~~~~~ Winston Churchill

Thought for Today

"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."

~~~~~ C. S. Lewis

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ Stefan Zweig

Thought for Today

"All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."

~~~~~ Charles A. Beard

Thought for Today

"For those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, we are grateful that such men and women were among us. For those who continue to serve, we honor their commitment. For those who return to civilian life, we honor their service."

~~~~~ Steve Buyer

Thought for Today

"I do beseech you to direct your efforts more to preparing youth for the path and less to preparing the path for the youth."

~~~~~ Judge Ben Lindsey

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

"Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table."

~~~~~ George Schultz

Thought for Today

"For the man sound of body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every day has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously."

~~~~~ George Gissing

Thought for Today

"We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their acts."

~~~~~ Harold Nicolson

Thought for Today

"Don't tell your friends about your indigestion.
'How are you' is a greeting, not a question."

~~~~~ Arthur Guiterman

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ James A. Garfield

Thought for Today

"It is pure illusion to think that an opinion that passes down from century to century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false."

~~~~~ Pierre Bayle

Thought for Today

"The activists will not stop in trying to impose their extreme views on the rest of us, and they have now plotted out a state-by-state strategy to increase the number of judicial decisions redefining marriage without the voice of the people being heard."

~~~~~ Sen. Jim Bunning

Thought for Today

"The imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere."

~~~~~ Terence McKenna

Thought for Today

"The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time."

~~~~~ Franklin Pierce Adams

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

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."

~~~~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Thought for Today

"Creeds made in Dark Ages are like drawings made in dark rooms."

~~~~~ Joseph McCabe

Thought for Today

"Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad."

~~~~~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Thought for Today

"A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished."

~~~~~ Friedrich Schiller

Thought for Today

"It would be stupid tameness, and unaccountable folly, for whole nations to suffer one unreasonable, ambitious and cruel man, to wanton and riot in their misery."

~~~~~ Jonathan Mayhew

Thought for Today

"He is a great simpleton who imagines that the chief power of wealth is to supply wants. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it creates more wants than it supplies."

~~~~~ William Wirt

Thought for Today

"Old is authentic. Old is genuine. Old is valuable."

~~~~~ Billy Graham

Billy Graham was born on November 7, 1918. Happy 96th Birthday, Rev. Graham!

Thought for Today

"A library is thought in cold storage."

~~~~~ Herbert Samuel

Thought for Today

"Chicago is known for good steaks, expensive stores and beautiful architecture. Unfortunately, the Windy City also enjoys a reputation for corrupt politics, violent crime, and some of the strictest gun control laws anywhere in the country."

~~~~~ Bob Barr

Thought for Today

"Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it."

~~~~~ Will Rogers

Thought for Today

"Stick with the optimists. It's going to be tough enough even if they're right."

~~~~~ James Reston

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

"Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers – not governments – to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially our poorest citizens."

~~~~~ Charles Koch

Thought for Today

"If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird."

~~~~~ Katherine Paterson

Thought for Today

"Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order."

~~~~~ John Adams

Thought for Today

"There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth."

~~~~~ Jean Giraudoux

Thought for Today

"Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in 'Old Maid'; the player who is finally left with it has lost."

~~~~~ Evelyn Waugh

Thought for Today

"Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again."

~~~~~ James Cook

Thought for Today

"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other."

~~~~~ Desiderius Erasmus

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ Max Stirner

Thought for Today

"There is a point at which the law becomes immoral and unethical. That point is reached when it becomes a cloak for the cowardice that dares not stand up against blatant violations of justice."

~~~~~ Kurt Huber

Thought for Today

"It is inevitable that many ideas of the young mind will later have to give way to the hard realities of life."

~~~~~ Felix Bloch

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

"Worm or beetle – drought or tempest – on a farmer's land may fall,
Each is loaded full o' ruin, but a mortgage beats 'em all."

~~~~~ Will Carleton

Thought for Today

"Money will never make you happy and happy will never make you money."

~~~~~ Morrie Ryskind

Thought for Today

"The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing."

~~~~~ Leigh Hunt

Thought for Today

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph."

~~~~~ Haile Selassie

Thought for Today

"There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic."

~~~~~ Zig Ziglar

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

"Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea."

~~~~~ Mikhail Lermontov

Thought for Today

"It's a sign of your own worth sometimes if you are hated by the right people."

~~~~~ Miles Franklin

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

"To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success."

~~~~~ Henry J. Heinz

Thought for Today

"Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself."

~~~~~ Walter Anderson

Thought for Today

"People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do."

~~~~~ Lewis Cass

Thought for Today

"It would be stupid tameness, and unaccountable folly, for whole nations to suffer one unreasonable, ambitious and cruel man, to wanton and riot in their misery."

~~~~~ Jonathan Mayhew

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ William Samuel Johnson

Thought for Today

"A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way."

~~~~~ Caroline Gordon

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

"Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times."

~~~~~ President Rutherford B. Hayes

Thought for Today

"If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed. If he uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he uses the whole of it, he has succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men ever know."

~~~~~ Thomas Wolfe

Thought for Today

"In whatever position you find yourself determine first your objective."

~~~~~ Ferdinand Foch

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

"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor."

~~~~~ Truman Capote

Thought for Today

"Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water."

~~~~~ Miguel de Cervantes

Thought for Today

"Begin to free yourself at once by doing all that is possible with the means you have, and as you proceed in this spirit the way will open for you to do more."

~~~~~ Georges Clemenceau

Thought for Today

"To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius."

~~~~~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Thought for Today

"That every person is desirous to obtain, with as little sacrifice as possible, as much as possible of the articles of wealth."

~~~~~ Nassau William Senior

Thought for Today

"Any number of scoundrels, having money enough to start with, can establish themselves as a 'government'; because, with money, they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general obedience to their will."

~~~~~ Lysander Spooner

Thought for Today

"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is."

~~~~~ 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

"Minds are like parachutes, they only function when they are open."

~~~~~ James Dewar

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

"No section of the American populace has been more completely deceived by the forces interested in keeping the truth from the people than America's youth."

~~~~~ Francis Parker Yockey

Thought for Today

"What strikes the historian surveying anti-Semitism worldwide over more than two millennia is its fundamental irrationality. It seems to make no sense, any more than malaria or meningitis makes sense."

~~~~~ Paul Johnson

Thought for Today

"The wealth of the country, its capital, its credit, must be saved from the predatory poor as well as the predatory rich, but above all from the predatory politician."

~~~~~ James J. Hill

Thought for Today

"It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills."

~~~~~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Thought for Today

"Dictators are rulers who always look good until the last ten minutes."

~~~~~ Jan Masaryk

Thought for Today

"Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people."

~~~~~ J. B. Priestley

Thought for Today

"The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."

~~~~~ H. L. Mencken

Thought for Today

"Ten years have passed since a perfect blue sky morning turned into the blackest of nights. Since then we've lived in sunshine and in shadow, and although we can never unsee what happened here, we can also see that children who lost their parents have grown into young adults, grandchildren have been born and good works and public service have taken root to honor those we loved and lost."

~~~~~ Mayor Michael Bloomberg

              September 11, 2011

Thought for Today

"There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority."

~~~~~ Charles Kuralt

Thought for Today

"I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means – except by getting off his back."

~~~~~ Leo Tolstoy

Thought for Today

"What you think about when you don't have to think, shows what you really are."

~~~~~ David O. McKay

Thought for Today

"Learning should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life's greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of the noble and the learned."

~~~~~ Taylor Caldwell

Thought for Today

"Watching a baby being born is a little like watching a wet St. Bernard coming in through the cat door."

~~~~~ Jeff Foxworthy

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ Christoph Martin Wieland

Thought for Today

"Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence."

~~~~~ Daniel Burnham

Thought for Today

"The reality is that zero defects in products plus zero pollution plus zero risk on the job is equivalent to maximum growth of government plus zero economic growth plus runaway inflation."

~~~~~ Dixie Lee Ray

Thought for Today

"Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power."

~~~~~ Henry George

Thought for Today - Monday, September 1, 2014

"There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."

~~~~~ Kin Hubbard

Thought for Today

"Happiness must be cultivated. It is like character. It is not a thing to be safely let alone for a moment, or it will run to weeds."

~~~~~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Thought for Today

"If you are worthy of its affection, a cat will be your friend but never your slave."

~~~~~ Théophile Gautier

Thought for Today

"A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy fame is proud to win them:
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!"

~~~~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Thought for Today

"The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation."

~~~~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thought for Today

"While you're saving your face, you're losing your ass."

~~~~~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Thought for Today

"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts – a child – as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."

~~~~~ Mother Teresa

Thought for Today

"Temporary success can be achieved in spite of lack of other fundamental qualities, but no advancements can be maintained without hard work."

~~~~~ William Feather

Thought for Today

"Don't let the opinions of the average man sway you. Dream, and he thinks you're crazy. Succeed, and he thinks you're lucky. Acquire wealth, and he thinks you're greedy. Pay no attention. He simply doesn't understand."

~~~~~ Robert G. Allen

Thought for Today

"It is the artist's function not to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle, irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate and immortal."

~~~~~ William Ernest Henley

Thought for Today

"Words are also seeds, and when dropped into the invisible spiritual substance, they grow and bring forth after their kind."

~~~~~ Charles Fillmore

Thought for Today

"Work will win when wishy washy wishing won't."

~~~~~ Thomas S. Monson

Thought for Today

"I knew that my staying up would not change the election result if I were defeated, while if elected I had a hard day ahead of me. So I thought a night's rest was best in any event."

~~~~~ Benjamin Harrison

Thought for Today

"Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are."

~~~~~ Malcolm Forbes

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

"Unless a man undertakes more than he possibly can do, he will never do all he can do."

~~~~~ Henry Drummond

Thought for Today

"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting."

~~~~~ Charles Bukowski

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

"An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious – just dead wrong."

~~~~~ Russell Baker

Thought for Today

"No matter how skillful you are, you can't invent a product advantage that doesn't exist. And if you do, and it's just a gimmick, it's going to fall apart anyway."

~~~~~ William Bernbach

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

"Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed."

~~~~~ Robert Green Ingersoll

A Thought on the Disappearance of Freedom

"The past shows unvaryingly that when a people’s freedom disappears, it goes not with a bang, but in silence amid the comfort of being cared for. That is the dire peril in the present trend toward statism. If freedom is not found accompanied by a willingness to resist, and to reject favors, rather than to give up what is intangible but precarious, it will not long be found at all."

~~~~~ Richard M. Weaver, 1962
(Cited in Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change )

Thought for Today

"Lotteries, a tax upon imbeciles."

~~~~~ Camillo di Cavour

Thought for Today

"I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning."

~~~~~ Izaak Walton

Thought for Today

"Modern diplomats approach every problem with an open mouth."

~~~~~ Arthur Goldberg

Thought for Today

"One has a greater sense of degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience."

~~~~~ Alice James

Thought for Today

"The most absurd and reckless aspirations have sometimes led to extraordinary success."

~~~~~ Luc de Clapiers

Thought for Today

"Conceit is God's gift to little men."

~~~~~ Bruce Barton

Thought for Today

"You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren."

~~~~~ William Henry Hudson

Thought for Today

"We always love those who admire us; we do not always love those whom we admire."

~~~~~ Rupert Brooke

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ Francis Marion Crawford

Thought for Today

"If we ever hope to rid the world of the political AIDS of our time, terrorism, the rule must be clear: One does not deal with terrorists; one does not bargain with terrorists; one kills terrorists."

~~~~~ Meir Kahane

Thought for Today

"Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie; that one party can gain only at the expense of another."

~~~~~ Milton Friedman

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 greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults."

~~~~~ Alexis de Tocqueville

Thought for Today

"Wake the power within thee slumbering, trim the plot that's in thy keeping, thou wilt bless the task when reaping sweet labour's prize."

~~~~~ John Stuart Blackie

Thought for Today

"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, But his books were read."

~~~~~ Hilaire Belloc

Thought for Today

"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."

~~~~~ 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

"We need not worry so much about what man descends from – it's what he descends to that shames the human race."

~~~~~ Hal Boyle

Thought for Today

"No artist work is so high, so noble, so grand, so enduring, so important for all time, as the making of character of a child."

~~~~~ Charlotte Saunders Cushman

Thought for Today

"Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways."

~~~~~ Stephen Vincent Benet

Thought for Today

"They never taste who always drink:
They always talk, who never think."

~~~~~ Matthew Prior

Thought for Today

"How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!"

~~~~~ 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

"Not every man remembers the name of the cow which supplied him with each drop of milk he has drunk."

~~~~~ Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Thought for Today

"Adventure is just bad planning."

~~~~~ Roald Amundsen

Thought for Today

"Give me the fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself."

~~~~~ Vilfredo Pareto

Thought for Today

"I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens."

~~~~~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

Thought for Today

"The best way to avoid a bad action is by doing a good one, for there is no difficulty in the world like that of trying to do nothing."

~~~~~ John Clare

Thought for Today

"There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language."

~~~~~ 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

"A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew the facts of the case."

~~~~~ Finley Peter Dunne

Thought for Today

"The brighter you are, the more you have to learn."

~~~~~ Don Herold

Thought for Today

"Trust gives you the permission to give people direction, get everyone aligned, and give them the energy to go get the job done. Trust enables you to execute with excellence and produce extraordinary results. As you execute with excellence and deliver on your commitments, trust becomes easier to inspire, creating a flywheel of performance."

~~~~~ Douglas Conant

Thought for Today

"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."

~~~~~ Robert A. Heinlein

Thought for Today

"Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgment will always be in demand under all conditions."

~~~~~ Roger Babson

Thought for Today

"No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good."

~~~~~ Mandell Creighton

Thought for Today

"The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten."

~~~~~ Calvin Coolidge

Thought for Today

"The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose."

~~~~~ John Mason Brown

Thought for Today

"The door of conciliation and compromise is finally closed by our adversaries, and it remains only to us to meet the conflict with the dignity and firmness of men worthy of freedom."

~~~~~ Robert Toombs

Thought for the Day

"Sound moral principle is the only sure evidence of strength, the only firm foundation of greatness and perpetuity. Where this is lacking, no man's character is strong; no nation's life can be lasting."

~~~~~ Orson F. Whitney

Thought for Today

"Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."

~~~~~ Frederic Bastiat

Thought for Today

"Lord, deliver me from the man who never makes a mistake, and also from the man who makes the same mistake twice."

~~~~~ Dr. William J. Mayo

Thought for Today

"The atmosphere of libraries, lecture rooms and laboratories is dangerous to those who shut themselves up in them too long. It separates us from reality like a fog."

~~~~~ Alexis Carrel

Thought for Today

"The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river."

~~~~~ Ross Perot

Thought for Today

"Miracles happen to those who believe in them."

~~~~~ Bernard Berenson

Thought for Today

"Indifference is harder to fight than hostility, and there is nothing that kills an agitation like having everybody admit that it is fundamentally right."

~~~~~ Crystal Eastman

America – The Movie

Last Sunday evening, I was one of the fortunate few hundred people who was invited to attend a preview of Dinesh D'Souza's new movie, America, in Nashville. To my surprise and delight, Dinesh was there, along with his beautiful and talented daughter, Danielle, already a published author whose first

book came out two years ago – while she was still a high school student. Dinesh spoke before and after the movie, then took a few questions from the audience. Afterward, he and Danielle waited in the theater lobby and greeted each one of us individually. No doubt, his hand was quite sore by the end of the evening.

When my turn came, I thanked Dinesh for the opportunity to watch the movie, then told him that in my opinion, it is a masterpiece. I then chatted briefly with Danielle, and advised her that she should be very proud of her father. (She assured me that she is.)

Why do I believe that America is a masterpiece? Because maybe once in a century, an author creates a work so powerful that it induces a major change in our entire social structure.

One such work is the 48-page pamphlet Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine and first published anonymously in January, 1776. Right from the start, it was enormously popular. Eventually, hundreds of thousands of copies were printed and distributed -- amazing in view of the fact that at the time, the thirteen original colonies had a total population of only about 2.5 million people. At least one newspaper printed the pamphlet in its entirety for the convenience of its subscribers. Throughout the colonies, there were public readings of Common Sense in order that those who were unable to read could also receive its message. Its impact on the American public cannot be overstated. Common Sense developed the necessary popular support which permitted the American Revolution to succeed in the face of overwhelming odds against the most powerful military of its time.

Next came Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, first published in 1854. Once again, the work quickly became a monster hit. During the 19th Century, Uncle Tom's Cabin far outsold every other book on the market with the sole exception of the Bible. Although a work of fiction, the book so inflamed the public's emotions on both sides of the slavery issue that 7 years after its publication, the Civil War broke out. In due course, slavery was ended and the Constitution was amended to guarantee full voting rights to all citizens regardless of the color of their skin.

Dinesh's movie America is a monumental cinematic accomplishment which packs an enormous emotional wallop. In an age when fewer people read serious books, printed material, while certainly influential, can no longer generate the same degree of public interest as Common Sense and Uncle Tom's Cabin, particularly when it swims upstream against the prevailing intellectual current. Nowadays, in order to reach the public, it is necessary to go to them directly – over the heads of the intelligentsia and the media – with a powerful multimedia message. Dinesh has succeeded admirably. If a small fraction of the American people watches this film and absorbs its message, the effect will be electric. The fraction of the public with a burning desire to restore the American republic and the determination to see this unprecedented challenge through to a successful conclusion will reach critical mass. American ingenuity will take care of the rest. If we are sufficiently determined to rid ourselves of our present soft tyranny and restore Constitutional government to the United States, we'll figure out how to do it as we go.

It is vitally important that we all demand that our local theaters obtain and show America as soon as possible after its July 2, 2014 release date, then convince as many friends, relatives, and acquaintances as we can to go with us to watch it. If we're successful, we'll be able to recapture the Senate this November, stop any further encroachment on our freedom, and begin the arduous task of cleaning up the huge mess which Obama and the Democrats -- with far too much help from the milquetoast country club Republicans -- have made. The major part of the job will have to wait until January 20, 2017, when we hope to see the Obamas leave our White House for the very last time and be replaced by a Republican who intends to honor his oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution – so help him (or her), God!

If we succeed, future historians will note that our previously scattered and ineffective efforts were given focus and force by a movie conceived by a creative genius who was born in India, but who, like so many millions of others, elected to immigrate to the United States and become a proud American citizen – Dinesh D'Souza.

Thought for Today

"It is a good rule never to see or talk to the man whose words have wrung your heart, or helped it, just as it is wise not to look down too closely at the luminous glow which sometimes shines on your path on a summer night, if you would not see the ugly worm below."

~~~~~ Rebecca Harding Davis

Thought for Today

"The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years."

~~~~~ David Ogilvy

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

"There is a contest old as Eden, which still goes on – the conflict between right and wrong, between error and truth. In this conflict every human being has a part."

~~~~~ Matthew Simpson

Thought for Today

"The dead of midnight is the noon of thought."

~~~~~ Anna Letitia Barbauld

Thought for Today

"If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names."

~~~~~ Elbert Hubbard

Thought for Today

"If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force."

~~~~~ Auberon Herbert

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

"One finds limits by pushing them."

~~~~~ Herbert Simon

Thought for Today

"It is a grave matter to enter a war, without adequate military preparation; it may prove fatal to come into peace, without moral and religious preparation."

~~~~~ Rabbi Louis Finkelstein

Thought for Today

"One's age should be tranquil, as childhood should be playful. Hard work at either extremity of life seems out of place. At midday the sun may burn, and men labor under it; but the morning and evening should be alike calm and cheerful."

~~~~~ Thomas Arnold

Thought for Today

"You may gain temporary appeasement by a policy of concession to violence, but you do not gain lasting peace that way."

~~~~~ Anthony Eden

Thought for Today

"Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception."

~~~~~ E. V. Lucas

Thought for Today

"Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow."

~~~~~ William Pollard

Thought for Today

"If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there's something wrong with my act."

~~~~~ Les Paul

Thought for Today

"The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution."

~~~~~ Byron White

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

"None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free."

~~~~~ Pearl S. Buck

Thought for Today

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

~~~~~ Adam Smith

Thought for Today

"Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts."

~~~~~ Robert Fulghum

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ Jefferson Davis

Thought for Today

"Dissatisfaction with possession and achievement is one of the requisites to further achievement."

~~~~~ John Hope

Thought for Today

"To secure peace is to prepare for war."

~~~~~ Carl von Clausewitz

Thought for Today

"A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama."

~~~~~ Clint Eastwood

Thought for Today

"Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think."

~~~~~ Alfred Austin

Thought for Today

"'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'"

~~~~~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Thought for Today

'Every scientific truth goes through three states: first, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it."

~~~~~ Louis Agassiz

Thought for Today

"I shall stick to my resolution of writing always what I think no matter whom it offends."

~~~~~ Julia Ward Howe

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

"Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you."

~~~~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thought for Today

"Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances."

~~~~~ Benjamin Cardozo

Thought for Today

"Lives of great men oft remind us
As we o'er their pages turn,
That we too may leave behind us -
Letters that we ought to burn."

~~~~~ Thomas Hood

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

"If you don't know what it is, don't mess with it."

~~~~~ Fats Waller

Thought for Today

"Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught."

~~~~~ Honoré de Balzac

Thought for Today

"A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not."

~~~~~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Thought for Today

"Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."

~~~~~ Bertrand Russell

Thought for Today

"In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil."

~~~~~ Anna Jameson

Thought for Today

"Age affects how people experience time."

~~~~~ Edward T. Hall

Thought for Today

"One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention."

~~~~~ Clifton Fadiman

Thought for Today

"A shady business never yields a sunny life."

~~~~~ B. C. Forbes

Thought for Today

"Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind."

~~~~~ Daphne du Maurier

Thought for Today

"Beware how you trifle with your marvelous 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 delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age."

~~~~~ 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

"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt."

~~~~~ Henry J. Kaiser

Thought for Today

"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom."

~~~~~ Friedrich August von Hayek

Thought for Today

"Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few."

~~~~~ David Hume

Thought for Today

"The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work."

~~~~~ Harry Golden

Thought for Today

"No amount of study or learning will make a man a leader unless he has the natural qualities of one."

~~~~~ Archibald Wavell

Thought for Today

"No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life."

~~~~~ Thomas Huxley

Thought for Today

"Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement."

~~~~~ Golda Meir

Thought for Today

"The character of a people may be ruined by charity."

~~~~~ Theodor Herzl

Thought for Today

"No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority."

~~~~~ 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

"Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory."

~~~~~ Sir Thomas Beecham

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

"Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror."

~~~~~ Herbert Spencer

Thought for Today

"There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go – if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall."

~~~~~ Bernard Malamud

Thought for Today

"Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts."

~~~~~ Edward R. Murrow

Thought for Today

"Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene."

~~~~~ A. C. Benson

Thought for Today

"Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost."

~~~~~ Chauncey Depew

Thought for Today

"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."

~~~~~ Immanuel Kant

Thought for Today

"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones."

~~~~~ Charlotte Bronte

Thought for Today

"Most human beings are quite likable if you do not see too much of them."

~~~~~ Robert Wilson Lynd

Thought for Today

"Middle age snuffs out more talent than ever wars or sudden deaths do."

~~~~~ Richard Hughes

Thought for Today

"President Obama's biggest weakness is weakness."

~~~~~ Niall Ferguson

Thought for Today

"It often happens that when a person possesses a particular ability to an extraordinary degree, nature makes up for it by leaving him or her incompetent in every other department."

~~~~~ Robert Shea

Thought for Today

"What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!"

~~~~~ Anatole France

Thought for Today

"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

~~~~~ Dr. Thomas Szasz

Thought for Today

"While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable direction."

~~~~~ James Branch Cabell

Thought for Today

"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."

~~~~~ Thomas Jefferson

Thought for Today

"An oppressed people are authorized whenever they can to rise and break their fetters."

~~~~~ 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

"Men should be judged not by their tint of skin, the gods they serve, the vintage they drink, nor by the way they fight, or love, or sin, but by the quality of the thought they think."

~~~~~ Adela Florence Nicolson

Thought for Today

"The capacity of man himself is only revealed when, under stress and responsibility, he breaks through his educational shell, and he may then be a splendid surprise to himself no less than to this teachers."

~~~~~ Dr. Harvey Cushing

Thought for Today

"The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this."

~~~~~ William Wordsworth

Thought for Today

"The man who can speak acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to what he really possesses."

~~~~~ Lowell Thomas

Thought for Today

"No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts."

~~~~~ Booker T. Washington

Thought for Today

"All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things unseen. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions."

~~~~~ James Freeman Clarke

Thought for Today

"Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little."

~~~~~ Washington Irving

Thought for Today

"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

Thought for Today

"It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more."

~~~~~ Agnes Repplier

Thought for Today

"You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays."

~~~~~ Nikolai Gogol

Thought for Today

"Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen."

~~~~~ 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

"I'd rather see folks doubt what's true than accept what isn't."

~~~~~ Frank A. Clark

Thought for Today

"What time he can spare from the adornment of his person he devotes to the neglect of his duties."

~~~~~ Prof. William Hepworth Thompson (1810-1886)

Prof. Thompson was describing a colleague at Cambridge, but could just as easily have been describing Obama.

Thought for Today

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

~~~~~ Viktor E. Frankl

Thought for Today

"Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history."

~~~~~ Norman Borlaug

Thought for Today

"Do not rely completely on any other human being, however dear. We meet all life's greatest tests alone."

~~~~~ Agnes Macphail

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ Ludwig Quidde

Thought for Today

"Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before – it takes something from him."

~~~~~ Louis L'Amour

Thought for Today

[Ed.: I posted this last year on Phyllis McGinley's birthday, but it's so great -- and so apropos -- that I'm posting it again.]

"When blithe to argument I come,
Though armed with facts, and merry,
May Providence protect me from
The fool as adversary,
Whose mind to him a kingdom is
Where reason lacks dominion,
Who calls conviction prejudice
And prejudice opinion."

~~~~~ Phyllis McGinley

Thought for Today

"It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians."

~~~~~ Henrik Ibsen

Thought for Today

"None so little enjoy themselves, and are such burdens to themselves, as those who have nothing to do. Only the active have the true relish of life."

~~~~~ William Jennings Bryan

Thought for Today

"Beware the wrath of a patient adversary."

~~~~~ John C. Calhoun

Thought for Today

"The church's teaching on marriage is unequivocal, it is uniquely, the union of a man and a woman and it is wrong that governments, politicians or parliaments should seek to alter or destroy that reality."

~~~~~ Keith O'Brien

Thought for Today

"When everything is easy one quickly gets stupid."

~~~~~ Maxim Gorky

Thought for Today

"Neither man nor woman can be worth anything until they have discovered that they are fools."

~~~~~ William Lamb Melbourne

Thought for Today

"Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don't swallow it."

~~~~~ Hank Ketcham

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

"'How do you know so much about everything?' was asked of a very wise and intelligent man; and the answer was 'By never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions as to anything of which I was ignorant.'"

~~~~~ John Abbott

Thought for Today

"To pursue science is not to disparage the things of the spirit. In fact, to pursue science rightly is to furnish the framework on which the spirit may rise."

~~~~~ Vannevar Bush

Thought for Today

"You make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you."

~~~~~ Maxwell Maltz

Thought for Today

"Government itself is founded upon the great doctrine of the consent of the governed, and has its cornerstone in the memorable principle that men are endowed with inalienable rights."

~~~~~ Leland Stanford

Thought for Today

"Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so."

~~~~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Thought for Today

"Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue."

~~~~~ John Herschel

Thought for Today

"Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody."

~~~~~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Thought for Today

"Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens."

~~~~~ William Beveridge

Thought for Today

“In modern Russia, you have no official, formal assessment of this past. Nobody in any Russian document has said that the policy of the Soviet government was criminal, that it was terrible. No one has ever said this.”

~~~~~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

Thought for Today

"There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers; we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness."

~~~~~ William Godwin

Thought for Today

"Ideals are like the stars: we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course by them."

~~~~~ Carl Schurz

Thought for Today

"You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up."

~~~~~ William Dean Howells

Thought for Today

"Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think."

~~~~~ Michel de Montaigne

Thought for Today

"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody."

~~~~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thought for Today

"By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act."

~~~~~ Claude Adrien Helvetius

Thought for Today

"We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation."

~~~~~ Anthony Burgess

Thought for Today

"Books are the ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom."

~~~~~ George William Curtis

Thought for Today

"The only people who attain power are those who crave it."

~~~~~ Erich Kastner

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

"Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it."

~~~~~ John Henry Newman

Thought for Today

"Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more."

~~~~~ Edward H. Harriman

Thought for Today

"In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you."

~~~~~ Amy Tan

Thought for Today

"Disenchantment, whether it is a minor disappointment or a major shock, is the signal that things are moving into transition in our lives."

~~~~~ William Throsby Bridges

Thought for Today

"When I was in baseball and you went into the clubhouse, you didn't see ball players with curling irons."

~~~~~ Red Barber

Thought for Today

"Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere."

~~~~~ Van Wyck Brooks

Thought for Today

"I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows."

~~~~~ Susan B. Anthony

Thought for Today

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."

~~~~~ Frederick Douglass

Thought for Today

"It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."

~~~~~ Robert Jackson

Thought for Today

"The world's problem is not too many people, but lack of political and economic freedom."

~~~~~ Julian Lincoln Simon

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

"Since others have to tolerate my weaknesses, it is only fair that I should tolerate theirs."

~~~~~ William Allen White

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

"Do not think of your faults, still less of others' faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes."

~~~~~ John Ruskin

Thought for Today

"Once you begin being naughty, it is easier to go on and on, and sooner or later something dreadful happens."

~~~~~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

Thought for Today

"One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it."

~~~~~ Ronald Reagan

Reagan meant this as a joke. Never in his wildest dreams did he ever think that we would take it as advice, then implement it.

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

"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 true aim of everyone who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds."

~~~~~ Frederick William Robertson

Thought for Today

"The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a Wilderness."

~~~~~ Havelock Ellis

"Clever" Anti-Semites

There's a special place in Hell reserved for those anti-Semites who think they're being clever by hiding behind the Rothschilds and the Zionists instead of coming right out and openly proclaiming that they hate Jews.

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ Richard Whately

Thought for Today

"You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves."

~~~~~ Franz Schubert

Thought for Today

"If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead."

~~~~~ Gelett Burgess

Thought for Today

"That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly."

~~~~~ Thomas Paine

Thought for Today

"Life is the game that must be played, this truth at least, good friends, we know; so live and laugh, nor be dismayed as one by one the phantoms go."

~~~~~ Arthur Rubinstein

Thought for Today

"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."

~~~~~ Learned Hand

Thought for Today

"If you want to live a long life, focus on making contributions."

~~~~~ Hans Selye

Thought for Today

"Firmness in enduring and exertion is a character I always wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and cowardly resolve."

~~~~~ Robert Burns

Thought for Today

"It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them."

~~~~~ Pierre Beaumarchais

Thought for Today

"If you think of paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured."

~~~~~ Stendhal

Thought for Today

"A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state."

~~~~~ Isabel Paterson

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

"Never turn down a job because you think it's too small; you don't know where it can lead."

~~~~~ Julia Morgan

Thought for Today

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

~~~~~ Robert E. Lee

Thought for Today

"The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power."

~~~~~ Daniel Webster

Thought for Today

"There is nothing so fatal to character as half finished tasks."

~~~~~ David Lloyd George

Thought for Today

"The man who kills the animals today is the man who kills the people who get in his way tomorrow."

~~~~~ Dian Fossey

Thought for Today

"I keep reading between the lies."

~~~~~ Goodman Ace

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

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."

~~~~~ Edmund Burke

Thought for Today

"I will act as if what I do makes a difference."

~~~~~ William James

Thought for Today

"And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that."

~~~~~ Lord Acton

Thought for Today

"The chief executive who knows his strengths and weaknesses as a leader is likely to be far more effective than the one who remains blind to them."

~~~~~ John Adair

Thought for Today

"Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after 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

"There is only one real failure in life that is possible, and that is, not to be true to the best one knows."

~~~~~ Frederic William Farrar

Thought for Today

"He that ceaseth to be a friend never was a good one."

~~~~~ Henry George Bohn

Thought for Today

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."

~~~~~ J. R. R. Tolkien

Thought for Today

"The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older."

~~~~~ William Lyon Phelps

Thought for Today

"I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little more, as I grow older."

~~~~~ Catherine Drinker Bowen