For decades I’ve saved odds and ends of information and wisdom for future reference. That collection presently exceeds 200,000 words and 450 pages. The start of a new year is a good opportunity and excuse to dig out and review some of those bits and pieces. Here’s a sampling; some sources are unknown to me:
“Enjoy what you do, and be as kind as people will let you be.” An old machinist on YouTube
“If you can’t be kind, be quiet.” Audrey Hart
“Never miss a chance to keep your mouth shut.” (Attributed to numerous now-wiser men.)
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” Beverly Sills
“Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a long time making it.” Quoted by Roy Exum
“When old men die nobody notices except other old men.” Ogden Nash
“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.” Benjamin Franklin
“We might be has-beens, but we have been!”
“The instinctive feeling of a great people is often wiser than its wisest men.” Louis Kossuth
“They got everything right except all of it.” Bill Maher on the news media last year
According to the Internet, modern education is considered to be based on the philosophies of John Dewey – the same John Dewey who said this: “Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society.” Think about that for a while.
The older I get and the more I learn, the more I realize how much of what I was taught, and how much of what I thought I knew, was wrong. LC
“I would not change you for the world … but I will change the world for you.” Amy Wright, mother of two Down Syndrome children
Jordan Peterson on fidelity in marriage: “If you’ve found someone good, stop looking for someone better. Marriage is not a diploma, but a contract.”
“You can live as a socialist in a capitalist society, but you can’t live as a capitalist in a socialist society.” Charlie Kirk
“You ever notice how these politicians are always in a hurry but nothing ever gets done?” Greg Gutfeld
“The only criticism any one has any business making against Congress is that it’s too good for some of the men we send there. Congress is our great virtue, understand; the congressmen are our fault.” Booth Tarkington, 1899
“Beware of the anger of a patient man.” Irish proverb
“When the tide goes out, then you see who's been swimming naked.” Warren Buffett
“If you see me talking to myself, it's Okay. I'm self-employed and in a staff meeting.”
If you find something you like, “you have to buy them all to keep them away from the hoarders.” Satch Carlson
“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” Richard Feynman
“The war against drugs would never be won, but it had to be fought ... .” Dick Francis
Clint Eastwood on gun control: “If there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.”
“Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right.” Ricky Gervais
“I’m actually quite well balanced – I have a chip on both shoulders.” John Nash
“He had no credentials but Himself.” James Francis Allen, speaking of Jesus
"I suspect that every person who has ever reprimanded me for doing something they didn’t like ... did the same thing himself/herself when they were younger." LC
Wisdom from the Web:
“Don’t believe everything you think!”
When I’m sitting in public and a stranger sits down beside me, I just stare straight ahead and say, “Did you bring the money?”
When someone asks what I did over the weekend, I always say, “What did you hear?”
When telemarketers call, answer loudly, “Hello! You’re on the air!”
“I’m not insulting you. I’m describing you.”
“I wish I could invoice people for wasting my time.”
“You think I’m stupid? That’s just you rubbing off on me!”
“If you are the smartest person in the room, you may be in the wrong room.” That’s not necessarily an insult; it may be a warning!
“Never attribute to engineers that into which politicians, lawyers, accountants, and marketers have poked their fingers.”
“His driveway don’t go all the way to the street.”
“Government is the illusion that we can all live off somebody else.”
“Liberalism is arrogance masquerading as righteousness.”
“Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) is not a Tennessee convenience store!”
“I had my patience tested the other day. Turns out I’m negative.”
Happy New Year!
Larry Cloud