Thought for Today

"He who leaves nothing to chance will do few things poorly, but he will do few things."

~~~~~ E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

Thought for Today

"If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible."

~~~~~ William Lyon Phelps

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

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

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

~~~~~ Henry J. Kaiser

Thought for Today

"Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose -- not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember."

~~~~~ Anne Sullivan

Thought(s) 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

"As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln – just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history."

~~~~~ Barack Hussein Obama

Thought for Today

"The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments."

~~~~~ Gustave Flaubert

Thought for Today

"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing."

~~~~~ Thomas A. Edison

Thought for Today

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

~~~~~ Theodore Roosevelt

Thought for Today

"Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability."

~~~~~ John Wooden