Money Will Do Everything

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790, American Scientist, Publisher, Diplomat)

Curious Confusion

By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

-- G. K. Chesterton

Amateur Hour

You get a lot more authority when the workforce doesn't think it's amateur hour on the top floor.

-- General Michael V. Hayden, President Bush's newly-confirmed C.I.A. director, New York Times, May 19, 2006

There Is Always Danger

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Every Crisis

Every crisis offers you extra desired power.

-- William Moulton Marston

Bad Season

Remember that it only takes one hurricane in your neighborhood to make it a bad season.

-- Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, New York Times, May 23, 2006

Producer Of Meanings

One way to describe the great struggle of our time is as the endeavor to become a producer of meanings rather than a consumer of them -- in an age when meaning as advertising and marketing, as others' definitions of pleasure and terror, is daily forced down our throats.

-- Rebecca Solnit, author, commencement address for the English Department at UC Berkeley, May 2006

Political Anxiety

Political anxiety in an election year is to blame for a lot of the bad bills Congress passes.

-- Representative Jeff Flake, R-AZ, on a (now-dead) proposed $100 rebate to taxpayers to compensate for higher gas prices. New York Times, 5/2/06

Complicate Simplicity

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.

-- Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian ethnologist, 1914-2002

Ride Of Silence

Across the nation, over 600 cyclists are killed on the road every year (662 in 2002, to 626 in 2003 according to NHTSA). A small number compared to the estimated 300,000 premature deaths estimated to result from overweight and obesity-related illnesses.
-- American League of Cyclists

Bicycling is part of the solution to many of our nation's problems: the obesity epidemic, traffic congestion, air pollution and more. Some 64% of adults and over 15% of kids are overweight today, resulting in 300,000 premature deaths and a cost to society of $117 billion a year. Over 22% of all motor vehicle trips Americans take are less than one mile long, and 50% of the working population commutes five miles or less to work, an easily bikeable distance. If the average person biked to work or shopping once every two weeks instead of driving, we could prevent the pollution of close to one billion gallons of gasoline from entering the atmosphere every year. The League of American Bicyclists' new television and radio PSA campaign encourages Americans to visit www.bike-to-work.com and bike to work instead of driving. The League promotes bicycling for fun, fitness and transportation, and works for a bicycle-friendly America.
-- League of American Cyclists

"No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." -- Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797)

http://www.rideofsilence.org/

Happy Death

As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

-- Leonardo da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519)

Don't Rust

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519)

Knocked Down More

I got knocked down more than any champion and I got up more than every champion.

-- Floyd "The Gentleman of Boxing" Patterson (January 4, 1935 - May 11, 2006), American heavyweight boxer

River Of Time

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

-- Leonardo da Vinci, 1452 - 1519

A Healthy Male Adult Bore

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

-- John Updike

The Younger Generation

In case you're worried about what's going to become of the younger generation, it's going to grow up and start worrying about the younger generation.

-- Roger Allen

Live To Be One Hundred

If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age.

-- George Burns

A Firm Anchor In Nonsense

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith (October 15, 1908 - April 29, 2006) Canadian-born economist, Harvard professor

If All Else Fails

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith (October 15, 1908 - April 29, 2006) Canadian-born economist, Harvard professor

The Modern Conservative

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith (October 15, 1908 - April 29, 2006) Canadian-born economist, Harvard professor

Comfort The Afflicted

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith (October 15, 1908 - April 29, 2006) Canadian-born economist, Harvard professor, in London Guardian, July 29, 1989

All The Rich People

If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves there wouldn't be enough to go around.

-- Christina Stead, House of All Nations (1938) "Credo"