Tenant Farmers

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy -- sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. -- Thomas Edison (1847-1931), American inventor and businessman, in conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone (1931); as quoted in Uncommon Friends : Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James Newton, p. 31

Big Brother

If you believe in privacy and free markets, you should be deeply concerned about the proposed marriage of government intelligence gathering with private, profit-seeking companies. CISPA is Big Brother writ large, putting the resources of private industry to work for the nefarious purpose of spying on the American people. -- Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), "CISPA is the new SOPA", thehill.com, 23 April 2012

HBD, HSA

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. -- Anne Sexton (1928-1974), American poet and writer, "The Poet's Story," entry for 1 January 1972

More Harm Than Good

At this point, we don't trust America's TSA, Britain's Department for Transport, or airport security in general. We don't believe they're acting in the best interests of passengers. We suspect their actions are the result of politicians and government appointees making decisions based on their concerns about the security of their own careers if they don't act tough on terror, and capitulating to public demands that "something must be done." ... This loss of trust -- in both airport security and counterterrorism policies in general -- is the first harm. ... In 2004, the average extra waiting time due to TSA procedures was 19.5 minutes per person. That's a total economic loss -- in America -- of $10 billion per year, more than the TSA's entire budget. The increased automobile deaths due to people deciding to drive instead of fly is 500 per year. Both of these numbers are for America only, and by themselves demonstrate that post-9/11 airport security has done more harm than good. -- Security expert Bruce Schneier, "Harms of Post-9/11 Airline Security, schneier.com, 29 March 2012

Soundtrack

Music is the soundtrack of your life.

-- Dick Clark (30 November 1929 - 18 April 2012), American radio and television personality, host of American Bandstand from 1957 to 1987

Crazy

The United States is getting accustomed to a completely crazy level of inequality.

-- Thomas Piketty, one of two French economists whose work tracking income equality has informed debate in the United States over earnings and tax fairness, New York Times, 17 April 2012

Product

If what you are getting online is for free, you are not the customer, you are the product.

-- Unknown

Generic

Your pharmacists aren't telling you, hey, when we fill this with your generic, you are giving up all of your legal remedies.

-- Michael Johnson, a lawyer in a case concerning a lack of redress for patients harmed by generic, rather than brand-name, drugs, New York Times, 21 March 2012

Drone

I have revenge in my heart. I just want to grab a drone by the tail and smash it into the ground.

-- Noor Magul, a farmer in Pakistan who said three of his relatives were killed by a United States drone strike, New York Times, 19 March 2012

Founder

I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that ....

-- Edward John Smith, Captain RMS Titanic (17 January 1850 - 15 April 1912), on the maiden voyage of the Adriatic in New York, 1907

Trayvon

If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

-- President Obama, on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 17, in Florida, New York Times, 24 March 2012

Dance

I feel like I want to dance. I'm so happy that they beat the military. We need a party that stands for the people.

-- 65-year-old Khin Maung Myint, on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's election to Myanmar's Parliament after 15 years imprisonment by the nation's military rulers, New York Times, 2 April 2012

Nine Out Of Ten

When I was a young man I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures. Not wanting to be a failure, I did ten times more work.

-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish playwright, critic, political activist, and the only person to have been awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938)

Of Sound Mind

A man who is "of sound mind" is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.

-- Paul Valery, "Bad Thoughts and Not So Bad", in The Collected Works of Paul Valery, edited by Jackson Mathews, Volume 14, page 450

Forest

If a cell phone rings in the forest and you're there to hear it, are you really on vacation?

-- Sean Kutzko