The real contest is always
between what you've done and what you're capable of doing.
You measure yourself against yourself and nobody else.
~ Geoffrey Gaberino

***
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~ Will Rogers

The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay in the narrow path she helped make, following the contour of the land, but she often profits by staying with it and she would be handicapped if she didn't know where it was or where it led to.
~E.B. White

***
He wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
—Rudyard Kipling

The five most frightening words in the English language: something needs to be done.~David Harsanyi

* * *
Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well~Peter Ustinov

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

***
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~ Will Rogers

We who now live are parts of a humanity that extends into the remote past, a humanity that has interacted with nature. The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have received it.
-John Dewey, A Common Faith, 1934

***
He wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
—Rudyard Kipling

These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.~Ralph Waldo Emerson

* * *
Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well~Peter Ustinov

Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality
~ Abraham Lincoln

***
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~ Will Rogers

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.
~H. Jackson Browne

***
He wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
—Rudyard Kipling

The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.~W. Somerset Maugham

* * *
Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well~Peter Ustinov

What are the facts? Again and again and again—what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history"; what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!
~ Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

***
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~ Will Rogers

No good decision was ever made in a swivel chair-George S. Patton

* * *
Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well~Peter Ustinov

The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible.
~ Jean Kerr

***
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~ Will Rogers

We all know how we got into this economic mess. We spent too much, borrowed with abandon, and acted like the bills would never come due. So what's the prescription for getting out? Spending more, borrowing more, and acting like the bills will never come due.~Stephen Chapman, "Repeating Our Economic Woes"

* * *
Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well~Peter Ustinov

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false. To know the truth is more difficult than most men suppose, and to act with ruthless determination in the belief that truth is the monopoly of their party is to invite disaster. ~Bertrand Russell

***
He wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
—Rudyard Kipling

A Senator named Tydings, the other day, introduced a bill where the Government couldn't appropriate more money than was coming in. That is, if you didn't have any money, you couldn't dole out any.
Well, the Senate like to have mobbed him. They called his idea treason, sacreligious, inhuman and taking the last vestige of power from a politician, that is, the right to appropriate your money which you don't have.
~ Will Rogers, January 29, 1933

***
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~ Will Rogers

Opinions are not to be learned by rote, like the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a dictionary. They are conclusions to be formed, and formed by each individual in the sacred and free citadel of the mind, and there enshrined beyond the arm of law to reach, or force to shake; ay! and beyond the right of impertinent curiosity to violate, or presumptuous arrogance to threaten.
~Frances Wright

***
He wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
—Rudyard Kipling

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.~Aristotle (B.C. 384-322)

* * *
Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well~Peter Ustinov

Ideas can now be carried in the ether. Because the medium for carrying ideas is fast and cheap, ideas move faster and cheaper! Whether it's the image of the new VW Beetle (how long did it take for the idea of that car to find a place in your brain?) or the words of a new Stephen King novel (more than 600,000 people read it in the first week it was available online), the time it takes for an idea to circulate is approaching zero.

Why should we care? Why does it matter that ideas can instantly cross international boundaries, change discussions about politics, crime and justice or even get us to buy something? Because the currency of our future is ideas, and the ideavirus mechanism is the way those ideas propagate. And the science and art of creating ideaviruses and using them for profit is new and powerful. You don't have to wait for an ideavirus to happen organically or accidentally. You can plan for it and make it happen.
~ Seth Godin, Unleashing the Ideavirus

***
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~ Will Rogers

Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman.
~Marian Anderson

***
He wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
—Rudyard Kipling

Men and women do behave wisely, once all other alternatives have been exhausted.~Abba Eban

* * *
Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well~Peter Ustinov