Once A Year

Everyone is a genius at least once a year.  The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799), German scientist, satirist, and philosopher, Aphorisms (1779-1788)

One Who Allows Art

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.  The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him.

-- Carl Gustav Jung (1875 - 1961), Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, from his essay "Psychology and Literature" (1930)

He Knows Too Much

The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.

-- Raymond Thornton Chandler (1888 - 1959), American novelist and screenwriter, "A Qualified Farewell" (essay, early 1950's), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)

Nobody Ever Made

Nobody ever made a grammatical error in a non-literate society. 

-- Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980), Canadian philosopher, futurist, and communications theorist, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) p. 271

At Play Or Leisure

Man works when he is partially involved.  When he is totally involved he is at play or leisure.

-- Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980), Canadian philosopher, futurist, and communications theorist, "The Agenbite of Outwit" (1998)

A Rear-View Mirror

We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.  We march backwards into the future.

-- Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980), Canadian philosopher, futurist, and communications theorist, The Medium is the Massage (1967)

Paradox And Difficulty

Our waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty.

-- Cormac McCarthy (1933 - 2023), American novelist, playwright, short-story writer, and screenwriter, Cities of the Plain (1998)

Basic Truths

Basic truths cannot change and once a man of insight expresses one of them it is never necessary, no matter how much the world changes, to reformulate them.  This is immutable, true everywhere, throughout all time, for all men and all nations.

-- Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988), popular and influential author of science fiction, Starship Troopers (1959)

Man Knows Much More

Man knows much more than he understands.

-- Alfred Adler (1870 - 1937), Austrian medical doctor and psychologist, quoted in Harold H. Mosak and Michael P. Maniacci, A Primer of Adlerian Psychology: The Analytic-Behavioural-Cognitive Psychology of Alfred Adler (1999)

Worth The Struggle

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals -- this alone is worth the struggle.

-- Sir William Osler, 1st Baronet (1849 - 1919), Canadian physician, Sir William Osler : Aphorisms (1950) p. 89, aphorism 178

That Man Is Lost

Nam ego illum periisse dico, quoi quidem periit pudor.

For I regard that man as lost, who has lost his sense of shame.

-- Titus Maccius Plautus (254 BC - 184 BC), comic playwright in the time of the Roman Republic, Bacchides, Act III, scene 3, line 80

Never Yet

The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.

-- Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 - 1988), popular and influential author of science fiction, Revolt in 2100 (1953), postscript

Not Your Own

The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.

-- Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924), Bohemian-Jewish novelist, The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918), Aphorism #29

Back The World

In the struggle between yourself and the world, back the world.

-- Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924), Bohemian-Jewish novelist, The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918), Aphorism #52

Not Quite By Chance

Nothing happens quite by chance.  It's a question of accretion of information and experience.

-- Jonas Salk (1914 - 1995), medical researcher and author, inventor of the Salk vaccine against Polio, and founder of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, as quoted in Breakthrough : The Saga of Jonas Salk (1966) by Richard Carter

Our Misfortunes

Even our misfortunes are a part of our belongings.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 - 1944), French writer, poet, and aviator, Vol de Nuit (1931) (translated into English as Night Flight)

The Moment

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 - 1944), French writer, poet, and aviator, Pilote de Guerre (1942) (translated into English as Flight to Arras)

Tiresome

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 - 1944), French writer, poet and aviator, The Little Prince (1943)

Independence Day

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

-- Opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, adopted by the Continental Congress on 4 July 1776

Happy Birthday, Mel Brooks

Yesterday, in honor of Mel Brooks's (28 June 1926 -) 100th birthday, the local glorious old theater showed the movie "Young Frankenstein" (1974).  Tickets were just $7 and I was happy to attend.

There was a good crowd at the Virginia Theatre, though it wasn't packed.  Before the show, a live (adjective required?) organist played the Virginia’s historic two manual, eight rank Wurlitzer Hope-Jones orchestral pipe organ, installed during the original 1921 construction, to entertain us while we waited.  The organist sits at a console mounted on a podium in the orchestra pit that can be raised to stage height, as it was Sunday, and lowered again, as it was while the organist played his last tune of the day.

The crowd applauded the organist, and the beginning and end of the movie.  Mel Brooks would be happy to know that there was laughter in the theater, and audience members saying they had seen the movie in this theater in its original release.