Month / January 2007

by carlos

Something to think about

Mal: You know what the first thing of flying is, Little Albatross? Well of course you do. You can read my mind.

River: I want to hear you say it.

Mal: Love. You can know all the math in the 'verse, you take a bird in the air you don't love it'll shake you just as sure as the worlds turn. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down. Tells you she's hurting 'fore she keenes. Makes her a home.

River: The storm's getting worse.

Mal: We'll come out of it soon enough.

Mal and River -- Serenity

I've always liked this quote but until I sat down and listened to Joss Whedon's commentary on Serenity it didn't dawn of me. There are two versions of you: Who you really are and who you project to be for the people around you. Problem is that there comes a time w hen you have to decide who you really are.

In the quote above River is askin Mal to open up and really speak what's on his mind and his heart. She knows what he's going to say but speaking it outloud is a committment to being that new person, to really surrender yourself to the new you that is emerging... It's always easy to be angry and to lash out at people; It's a lot harder yet more rewarding to try to meet them where they are and walk a few feet on their shoes.

by carlos

Life is too short to spend it griping

Persons' death leaves hole in community

By MELISSA DAUGHERTY - Staff Writer

Chico Enterprise-Record

Article Launched:01/20/2007 12:03:52 AM PST

Many members of the community are in shock over the loss of a professor who was considered a fixture at Chico State University.

Paul Persons' death just days shy of the spring semester has dealt a shock and a blow to many who knew the 55-year-old political science professor, who was also well-known outside of the university.

"Everyone feels like they've lost a friend, and Paul had that effect because he was (a friend)," said Paul Zingg, Chico State president.

Zingg was one of the first people in Chico to hear of Persons' death, which was reported to him by CSU Chancellor Charles Reed. Persons died in his hotel room in Long Beach, where he'd been staying to attend meetings of the Statewide Academic Senate, of which he was a member.

According to CSU spokesman Paul Browning, Persons was found Wednesday morning by colleagues who had become concerned when he did not show up for a scheduled meeting.

On Friday, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, which is waiting for toxicology results, had yet to report a cause of death.

Persons' long-time service as an academic senator, an elected position, was a reflection of the confidence members of the faculty had in him, Zingg said.

"He represents what's best about being a faculty at this university; his values, just the quality of the way he thought and acted," he said.

Zingg said his thoughts are with Persons' two children and wife, Marcia Briggs, who teaches at Chico State.

According to the university, Persons graduated from Chico State in 1973, and later attended the New College of Law in San Francisco. While attending classes, he conducted legal services as a Vista volunteer, and received a scholarship from Howard University to assist people with low incomes.

He returned to Chico State in 1979 to teach political science and has remained at the university since that time.

Persons served as an adviser to legal-studies students and those in the pre-law program at the Community Legal Information Center on campus. He also supervised several internship programs, including Environmental Advocates.

In 1998 he was named Outstanding Academic Adviser.

Andrew Flescher, a professor in Chico State's religious studies department, said he could not think of anyone better suited to being a professor than Persons.

"He really believed in what he did," Flescher said.

Flescher acknowledged sparring with Persons from time to time about issues, recalling a heated exchange in an Academic Senate meeting. But despite their differing opinions, they were friends who met regularly for lunch.

Persons, Flescher said, was very judicious, and had an internal sense of process that wouldn't stand for shortcuts when getting something done.

"These days, it's not the most common trait to find someone thoroughly authentic on a campus," he said. "Paul was the exception."

Persons will be remembered for that, and for walking around campus with what Flescher described as a gorgeous smile.

Someone else who mentioned his trademark grin is Barbara Vlamis, executive director of the Butte Environmental Council.

Vlamis noted his long history with the environmental community, including BEC, for which Persons served as an attorney and adviser.

She was quick to call Persons a friend, and described him as compassionate, kind, enthusiastic and deeply committed to education and the law. And she recalled flying over Butte County with Persons, who was a pilot.

His love of nature and commitment to humanity is what drove him to educate and litigate as he strove to make Butte County a better place to live, she said.

In addition to his work for the environment, Persons was considered a fervent advocate for prisoners' rights, the right to privacy, and a woman's right to an abortion.

Despite his experience and education, Vlamis said Persons never emitted a haughty attitude. He was just part of the grass roots, she said.

Like many others who knew Persons as a healthy and active person, the news of his death has been quite shocking for Vlamis.

She last saw him on Sunday when they marched in downtown Chico in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Her last memory of him is fitting, considering how he always managed to make time for the community, she said.

"All of us will sorely miss his intellect, his energy, and his absolutely wonderful smile."

Staff writer Melissa Daugherty can be reached at 896-7761 or [email protected].

You know what makes me sad about the note above? I had spoken with Paul a couple weeks before his passing talking about adding students to his online courses... I still remember reading the initial email on the 18th about his passing and how much everyone seemed to be shocked.

I didn't know Paul very well but every time I met him on campus he had this infectious smile and was always polite and respectful. I couldn't believe when Buzz told me Paul was only 55. As I've posted before, all of a sudden 55 doesn't look that old or that far away anymore, does it?

by carlos

Song that got i/on my head

What I am
Eddie Brickell and The New Bohemians

I'm not aware of too many things,
I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box.
Religion is the smile on a dog.

I'm not aware of too many things,
I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Choke me in the shallow water
Before I get too deep.

What I am is what I am.
Are you what you are - or what?

I'm not aware of too many things,
I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks.
Religion is a light in the fog.

I'm not aware of too many things,
I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Choke me in the shallow water
Before I get too deep.

What I am is what I am.
Are you what you are - or what?
Don't let me get too deep.

by carlos

Here We Go Again

They should have called 2014 instead of 1984

Congress to Send Critics to Jail, Says Richard Viguerie

Congress Wants to Blame the Grassroots for Its Own Corruption

MANASSAS, Va., Jan. 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a statement by Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of GrassrootsFreedom.com, regarding legislation currently being considered by Congress to regulate grassroots communications:

"In what sounds like a comedy sketch from Jon Stewart's Daily Show, but isn't, the U. S. Senate would impose criminal penalties, even jail time, on grassroots causes and citizens who criticize Congress.

"Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress the same as the big K Street lobbyists. Section 220 would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever. For the first time in history, critics of Congress will need to register and report with Congress itself.

"The bill would require reporting of 'paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying,' but defines 'paid' merely as communications to 500 or more members of the public, with no other qualifiers.

"On January 9, the Senate passed Amendment 7 to S. 1, to create criminal penalties, including up to one year in jail, if someone 'knowingly and willingly fails to file or report.'

"That amendment was introduced by Senator David Vitter (R-LA). Senator Vitter, however, is now a co-sponsor of Amendment 20 by Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) to remove Section 220 from the bill. Unless Amendment 20 succeeds, the Senate will have criminalized the exercise of First Amendment rights. We'd be living under totalitarianism, not democracy.

"I started GrassrootsFreedom.com to fight efforts to silence the grassroots. The website provides updates in the legislation and has a petition to sign opposing Section 220.

"Thousands of nonprofit leaders, bloggers, and other citizens have hammered the Senate with calls in opposition to Section 220, which seeks to silence the grassroots. The criminal provisions will scare citizens into silence.

"The legislation regulates small, legitimate nonprofits, bloggers, and individuals, but creates loopholes for corporations, unions, and large membership organizations that would be able to spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars, yet not report.

"Congress is trying to blame the grassroots, which are American citizens engaging in their First Amendment rights, for Washington's internal corruption problems."

CONTACT: Mark Fitzgibbons, +1-703-392-7676 or +1-703-408-3775, for GrassrootsFreedom.com.

by carlos

Paradox of Dualities

(Written over a period of several days starting on 1/16)

And even though the moment passed me by
I still can't turn away
Cause all the dreams you never thought you'd lose
Got tossed along the way
And letters that you never meant to send
Get lost or thrown away

...

Scars are souvenirs you never lose
The past is never far
Did you lose yourself somewhere out there
Did you get to be a star
And don't it make you sad to know that life
Is more than who we are

You grew up way too fast
And now there's nothing to believe
And reruns all become our history
A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio
And I won't tell no one your name
And I won't tell em your name

...

Names -- Goo Goo Dolls

This past weekend just rocked in so many levels... It was fun to see my mom and my friends and it was very good to connect with the things I know are important but that I've purposefully let go off because it makes me feel better.

Fear of the unknown and
The need to be challenged

When we are young
Wandering the face of the Earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we're only immortal
For a limited time

...

Time is a gypsy caravan
Steals away in the night
To leave you stranded in Dreamland
Distance is a long-range filter
Memory a flickering light
Left behind in the heartland

Dreamline -- Rush

It's funny... I'm not old by any stretch of the imagination but time is starting to be an issue for me. As I told my mom, 12  years ago I was still thinking I had all the time in the world to decide what was it that I wanted to do, little things like finish my MA and start looking for a PhD and enjoy the trip along the way.

I've been thinking about a doctorate for at least the past 8+ years and I always talked myself out of it one way or another. 8+ years later I'm still searching for reasons that will keep me safe and out of the challenges I know I want. 

It's just as well that I don't have as much time to see the dreams come to fruition. It lends an air of urgency to the whole thing that is actually making me get my ass in gear and get stuff done for a change.

A doctoral program scares the crap out of me but, at the same time, I know I can do it and I want to do it.  I used to laugh when my friends would tell me "I'm the first one in my family to go to college" or "I'm the first one in my family to graduate from college" or even "I'm the first one in Grad School" or "I'm the first one to graduate with an MA." In talking to my mom I laughed about it but if I want to be the first one in my family to do anything academically it has to be a doctorate... both my parents have master's and beyond my desire to teach there is always that pride of being able to say you're the first one to do something among your family.

Need for Company
And the need to be by myself

Baby's black balloon makes her fly
I almost fell into that hole in your life
And you're not thinking about tomorrow
'Cause you were the same as me
But on your knees

Black Balloon -- Goo Goo Dolls

This past year was interesting in terms of relationships... that's for damn sure. But in all the unpleasantness it taught me a lot about what I'm looking for and what I'm not looking for in a relationship.

The cliche you never know what you have until you loose it is not as much of a cliche once it happens to you. I'm in that double edged position of wanting a relationship without the committment involved on it and, yes, I've realized that there is a difference.  As I look back I realize that as long as things are easy I'm all for a relationship but when the going gets tough this tough runs the hell away

This time, This place
Misused, Mistakes
Too long, Too late
Who was I to make you wait
Just one chance
Just one breath
Just in case there's just one left
'Cause you know,
you know, you know

[CHORUS]
That I love you
I have loved you all along
And I miss you
Been far away for far too long
I keep dreaming you'll be with me
and you'll never go
Stop breathing if
I don't see you anymore

Far Away -- Nickelback

But the sad thing is that I don't regret it. I've become enough of a hermit that the things I do and the people I usually interact with are mostly enough to keep me from getting too depressed and moody about bachelorhood.

OTOH, seeing almost all my peers and friends engaged, attached of married, makes me yearn for that kind of deep, committed relationship But wanting and having are two different things, until they become one and the same I don't really want to put myself through the grind of relationships

There is a cultural component to it too. Despite having been here for almost 13 years, damn has it been that long already, I still feel some tug from cultural heritage... I'm the only one passing my family name to the next generation, I'm the only male child of my father's 2nd marriage (the ones from my dad's first attempt kept their mother's name) and that weighs some, more than I thought it actually would.

Everlasting love
Howard Jones

He wasnt looking for a pretty face
She wasnt searching for the latest style
He didnt want someone who walked straight off the tv
She needed someone with an interior smile

She wasnt looking for a cuddle in the back seat
He wasnt looking for a five minute thrill
She wasnt thinking of tomorrow or of next week
This vacancy he meant to permanently fill

Chorus
I need an everlasting love
I need a friend and a lover divine
An everlasting precious love
Wait for it, wait for it, give it some time

Back in the world of disposable emotion
In the climate of temporary dreams
He wasnt looking for a notch on his bedpost
A love to push, pull and burst at the seams

Is this love worth waiting for
Something special, something pure
Is this love worth waiting for
Bitterness will die for sure
Something special
, something pure
Is this love worth waiting for

Need for independece
And the need to be cared for

I have to admit it... one of the reasons why I love going to the Bay Area is because I love to be babied. It's a matter of just being able to relax and not have to worry about anything. I can let the control freak rest for a while before I have to jump into the fray

I hate to admit it but it's nice to be pampered and have someone to talk to when you're stressed and are thinking about the way you're planning things. My mom has always had that I know you well enough to know why you're doing this thinking that sees right through the center of things and cares enough to tell me how things are rather than what most people do which is to tell me what I think I want to hear.

Need for stability
And the need to grow

 

The Long Way Around
Dixie Chicks

My friends from high school
Married their high school boyfriends
Moved into houses in the same ZIP codes
Where their parents live
But I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow

I hit the highway in a pink RV with stars on the ceiling
Lived like a gypsy
Six strong hands on the steering wheel

I've been a long time gone now
Maybe someday, someday I'm gonna settle down
But I've always found my way somehow
By taking the long way
Taking the long way around
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around

I met the queen of whatever
Drank with the Irish and smoked with the hippies
Moved with the shakers
Wouldn't kiss all the asses that they told me to
No I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow

It's been two long years now
Since the top of the world came crashing down
And I'm getting' it back on the road now
But I'm taking the long way
Taking the long way around
I'm taking the long way
Taking the long way around
The long
The long way around

Well, I fought with a stranger and I met myself
I opened my mouth and I heard myself
It can get pretty lonely when you show yourself
Guess I could have made it easier on myself

But I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow

Well, I never seem to do it like anybody else
Maybe someday, someday I'm gonna settle down
If you ever want to find me I can still be found
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around

There are times when growth and stability seem like such opposite extremes...

I can't be stable and grow and I can't grow and be stable: Growth requires instability; you only grow by challenging yourself which, to me, is the complete oposite of stability.... When you're in a stable situation you cruise along and don't worry about what may or may not happen, you just worry that things continue to go as smoothly as they've been

Which one is more important? How do you know when to play your hand and when to fold? When does the cost outweigh the bennefit? How do you know what fights to fights and what fights to avoid?

Need for Compasion

And the need to do a good job

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion; you must set yourself on fire

Reggie Leach, quote by Neal Peart in the Vapor Trails Tourbook

I've been told I expect a lot of myself; I don't think so, it may be true and it may not be. What really pisses me off, however, is when I perceive someone not doing their jobs as well as I know they could. I mean I bust my ass off doing as good a job as I can and then things drop because someone else is dragging their feet and not puting up as much effor as I think they should.

I've always felt that I had to do a better job than everyone else, starting in school. Mom worked at the same school I attended so, for the longest time, people thought that I got the grades I did because the teachers knew my mom rather than through my own effort

I know now that I'm being judged on my own merits but that need to excel has never left me. It started after I left Central and moved to San Jose with my mom... I need to improve on myself, my skills and my attitudes all the time or I'm not satisfied with what I do or how I do it.

 I know I could have done better at Central and I regret not having the discipline to have done as well as I could have done... past is past but it's also proof: There is a difference of almost a full point of GPA between my BA and my MA (2.83 to 3.79 if you have to know).

One thing I've learned through the years is that it's impossible to expect others to have the same drive and dedication that you do. Actually, you can expect it but you will continue to be dissapointed and the dissapointment will grow worse as things get more complicated and more demanding.

But what becomes of a leader or the person who is in charge of a project if he can't set the expectations from the outset? I guess that's where coaching and mentoring comes in. Through stress and adversity I've learned more about project and team management in the past week than I ever thought I'd learn or cared to learn.

I think I now see what the differences between Morning on the good side and Victoria and Martha on the not so good (OMG they suck) side of managers I've worked with. Morning always worked on motivation and how to get the best of people, Victoria and Martha expected performance of you and just yelled when it wasn't there

I've always talked about not wanting to be in management. I think it has more to do with what kind of manager I want to be if I'm ever in that position... it cooled my pissiness in a big hurry.

There was a man back in '95
Whose heart ran out of summers
But before he died, I asked him
Wait, what's the sense in life
Come over me, Come over me

He said,
Son why you got to sing that tune
Catch a Dylan song or some eclipse of the moon
Let an angel swing and make you swoon
Then you will see... You will see

...

He said,
Dad I'm big but we're smaller than small
In the scheme of things, well we're nothing at all
Still every mother's child sings a lonely song
So play with me, come play with me

...

There are secrets that we still have left to find
There have been mysteries from the beginning of time
There are answers we're not wise enough to see

...

I guess
we're big and I guess we're small
If you think about it man you know we got it all
Cause we're all we got on this bouncing ball
And I love you free
I love you freely

The Riddle (You and I) - Five for Fighting

 

Living in the present
While looking at the future

Mal: You know what the first thing of flying is, Little Albatross? Well of course you do. You can read my mind.

River: I want to hear you say it.

Mal: Love. You can know all the math in the 'verse, you take a bird in the air you don't love it'll shake you just as sure as the worlds turn. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down. Tells you she's hurting 'fore she keenes. Makes her a home.

River: The storm's getting worse.

Mal: We'll come out of it soon enough.

Mal and River -- Serenity

It's kinda hard to live in the present when you keep looking at the future as the answer to all your questions.

by carlos

Time waits for no one

Name
Goo Goo Dolls

And even though the moment passed me by
I still can't turn away
Cause all the dreams you never thought you'd lose
Got tossed along the way
And letters that you never meant to send
Get lost or thrown away

And now we're grown up orphans
That never knew their names
We don't belong to no one
That's a shame
But if you could hide beside me
Maybe for a while
And I won't tell no one your name
And I won't tell em your name

Scars are souvenirs you never lose
The past is never far
Did you lose yourself somewhere out there
Did you get to be a star
And don't it make you sad to know that life
Is more than who we are

You grew up way too fast
And now there's nothing to believe
And reruns all become our history
A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio
And I won't tell no one your name
And I won't tell em your name

I think about you all the time
But I don't need the same
It's lonely where you are come back down
And I won't tell em your name

by carlos

Food for thoughts

(famous quotes, witty quotes, and funny quotations collected by Gabriel Robins over the years)

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)

"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."
- Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat

"His ignorance is encyclopedic"
- Abba Eban (1915-2002)

"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)

"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."
- A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."
- Saint Augustine (354-430)

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei

"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
- Emile Zola (1840-1902)

"This book fills a much-needed gap."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review

"The full use of your powers along lines of excellence."
- definition of "happiness" by John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."
- e e cummings (1894-1962)

"Give me a museum and I'll fill it."
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

"Assassins!"
- Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) to his orchestra

"I'll moider da bum."
- Heavyweight boxer Tony Galento, when asked what he thought of William Shakespeare

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is."
- Yogi Berra

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."
- Rene Descartes (1596-1650), "Discours de la Methode"

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
- Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed."
- George Burns (1896-1996)

"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."
- Edsgar Dijkstra (1930-2002)

"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
- Bjarne Stroustrup

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."
- Paul Erdos (1913-1996)

"Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back."
- Paul Erdos (1913-1996)

"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)

"Dancing is silent poetry."
- Simonides (556-468bc)

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."
- Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near."
- Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)

"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn."
- Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947-)

"Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain."
- Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805)

"We have art to save ourselves from the truth."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"I think 'Hail to the Chief' has a nice ring to it."
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) when asked what is his favorite song

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must."
- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."
- unknown

"Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake a whole relationship."
- Sharon Stone

"If you are going through hell, keep going."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"He who has a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death."
- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them."
- Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)

"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
- J. Paul Getty (1892-1976)

"Facts are the enemy of truth."
- Don Quixote - "Man of La Mancha"

"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."
- George Washington Carver (1864-1943)

"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself."
- Anais Nin (1903-1977)

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

"I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right."
- Frederick (II) the Great

"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."
- George Eliot (1819-1880)

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
- Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)

"Black holes are where God divided by zero."
- Steven Wright

"I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)

"We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time."
- Vince Lombardi

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."
- James Branch Cabell

"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."
- John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960)

"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered."
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
- Umberto Eco

"Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down."
- Jimmy Durante

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working."
- Albert Giacometti (sculptor)

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."
- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."
- Frank Zappa

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
- Antoine de Saint Exupery

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
- Isaac Asimov

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
- Carl Sagan

"It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."
- G. B. Burgin

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
- Auric Goldfinger, in "Goldfinger" by Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance"
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
- Jimi Hendrix

"A clever man commits no minor blunders."
- Goethe (1749-1832)

"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours."
- Richard Bach

"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera."
- James Stephens (1882-1950)

"The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault."
- Henry Kissinger (1923-)

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
- Will Durant

"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
- Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)

"It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti

"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means."
- Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

"I'll sleep when I'm dead."
- Warren Zevon (1947-2003)

"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

"When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head."
- Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

"Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together."
- Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it"
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"While we are postponing, life speeds by."
- Seneca (3BC - 65AD)

"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
- Bumper Sticker

"God, please save me from your followers!"
- Bumper Sticker

"Fill what's empty, empty what's full, and scratch where it itches."
- the Duchess of Windsor, when asked what is the secret of a long and happy life

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

"Luck is the residue of design."
- Branch Rickey - former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
- Mel Brooks

"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Wit is educated insolence."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher."
- Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

"Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
- Gore Vidal

"Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them."
- Samuel Palmer (1805-80)

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny."
- Guy Davenport

"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."
- Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

"I would have made a good Pope."
- Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)

"In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience."
- W.B. Prescott

"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."
- John von Neumann (1903-1957)

"The mistakes are all waiting to be made."
- chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game's opening position

"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

"Grove giveth and Gates taketh away."
- Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep up with software demands

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."
- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

"There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."
- C. A. R. Hoare

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"What do you take me for, an idiot?"
- General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy

"I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon."
- Bill Hirst

"Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do."
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"Logic is in the eye of the logician."
- Gloria Steinem

"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)

"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."
- Martin Fraquhar Tupper

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."
- Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."
- Goethe (1749-1832)

"In the end, everything is a gag."
- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

"The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people."
- Lucille S. Harper

"You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
- Yogi Berra

"I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known."
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)

"He who hesitates is a damned fool."
- Mae West (1892-1980)

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater."
- Gail Godwin

"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
- Henry Kissinger (1923-)

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

"I am not young enough to know everything."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
- General George Patton (1885-1945)

"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking."
- Katherine Cebrian

"I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it."
- Steven Wright

"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."
- Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)

"Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure."
- Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

"I have read your book and much like it."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

"The covers of this book are too far apart."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."
- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end."
- Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
- Mae West (1892-1980)

"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
- Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

"No Sane man will dance."
- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

"Hell is a half-filled auditorium."
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
- Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)

"Vote early and vote often."
- Al Capone (1899-1947)

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Hell is other people."
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"I am become death, shatterer of worlds."
- Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (citing from the Bhagavad Gita, after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion)

"Happiness is good health and a bad memory."
- Ingrid Bergman (1917-1982)

"Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate."
- Thomas Jones

"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
- Al Capone (1899-1947)

"The gods too are fond of a joke."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting."
- Gloria Leonard

"It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man."
- Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell

"Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work."
- Robert Orben

"The cynics are right nine times out of ten."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

"There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
- Revelations 6:8

"Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)

"Plato was a bore."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal."
- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

"I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy."
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

"Hemingway was a jerk."
- Harold Robbins
"Men are not disturbed by things, but the view they take of things."
- Epictetus (55-135 A.D.)

"What about things like bullets?"
- Herb Kimmel, Behavioralist, Professor of Psychology, upon hearing the above quote (1981)

"How can I lose to such an idiot?"
- A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)

"Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday."
- Woody Allen (1935-)

"I don't feel good."
- The last words of Luther Burbank (1849-1926)

"Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure."
- Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)

"Men have become the tools of their tools."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant."
- Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines

"I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."
- Gore Vidal

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
- Woody Allen (1935-)

"Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives."
- Abba Eban (1915-2002)

"A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually."
- Abba Eban (1915-2002)

"To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me."
- Charles William Stubbs

"Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

"Why don't you write books people can read?"
- Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."
- Tom Stoppard

"Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting."
- Karl Wallenda

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
- Sun Tzu

"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."
- Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)

" The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- Alan Kay

"Never mistake motion for action."
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
- Sir Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-1971)

"Hell is paved with good samaritans."
- William M. Holden

"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Silence is argument carried out by other means."
- Ernesto"Che"Guevara (1928-1967)

"Well done is better than well said."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"The average person thinks he isn't."
- Father Larry Lorenzoni

"Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."
- William Congreve (1670-1729)

"A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted."
- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

"Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."
- Lewis Perelman

"Dogma is the sacrifice of wisdom to consistency."
- Lewis Perelman

"Sometimes it is not enough to our best; we must do what is required."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"There is a country in Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal."
- Sigfried Hulzer

"Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done."
- Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), while working, when informed that his wife is dying

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943

"I think it would be a good idea."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" "
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy."
- Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity."
- Irving Kristol

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."
- A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- H. M. Warner (1881-1958), founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood."
- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)

"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."
- Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
- last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
- Tom Clancy

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), "The Prince"

"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep."
- Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live

"We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees."
- Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks

"Half this game is ninety percent mental."
- Yogi Berra

"There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole."
- Bill Wulf

"There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"I criticize by creation - not by finding fault."
- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

"Love is friendship set on fire."
- Jeremy Taylor

"God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time."
- Robin Williams, commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky affair

"My occupation now, I suppose, is jail inmate."
- Unibomber Theodore Kaczynski, when asked in court what his current profession was

"Woman was God's second mistake."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"This isn't right, this isn't even wrong."
- Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), upon reading a young physicist's paper

"For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

"Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

"Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
- Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.

"Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run."
- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

"He would make a lovely corpse."
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
- Irvin S. Cobb

"I worship the quicksand he walks in."
- Art Buchwald

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."
- Paul Valery (1871-1945)

"We are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction."
- General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)

"If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"
- Seymour Cray (1925-1996), father of supercomputing

"#3 pencils and quadrille pads."
- Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer; he also recommended using the back side of the pages so that the grid lines were not so dominant.

"Interesting - I use a Mac to help me design the next Cray."
- Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when he was told that Apple Inc. had recently bought a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac.

"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.

"I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need."
- Francois-Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"The truth is more important than the facts."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
- Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

© The quotations collection on this Web page is copyright © 1994-2007 by Professor Gabriel Robins. Permission is hereby granted to anyone to make copies of this Web page, either in part or in its entirety, for any purpose whatsoever, including using any part of the collection above in published works, as long as Gabriel Robins is credited as the creator of this quotations collection and a Web link is included to this quotes Web page (i.e., in electronic or Web copies that use parts of this Web page, please link the citation/acknowledgement to http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/quotes.html).

by carlos

Looking back and moving forward

Looking back

The more things change the more they stay the same

Careful what you wish for... you may get it

May you live in interesting times and be noticed by people in high places

2006 has been an interesting year to say the least. It sounds like a cliche but the more time passes the better I understand myself, my dad and the choices he made, and where I want to go with life.

Work has been a year of compromising and learning that it's whoever bitches the most usually wins. I've learned how to deal with burnout and how to avoid people who cause the burnout. I've also improved my perceived performance over time... it's amazing the things that bosses look at when trying to find the little things that will hurt your chance of professional growth.

In the relationship front I have to accept the fact that I'm too self-centered for a relationship to actually work at this time. It wasn't fair to treat Sara the way I did and, until I can get past the "first meeting infatuation" I don't think I'm going to be ready for relationships any time soon...

I went to the theater today (20070101) and missed Casino Royale so went to see Eragon instead. Man the effects are awesome... That dragon was scary and yet so loyal and friendly. It reminded me of the value of friends and how much I take them for granted 

Moving Forward

These are the days
Sugarland (Enjoy the Ride)

It's written on our palms and it's written on our hearts
It's written in our songs and it's written in the stars
Sometimes all we can do is stand up tall
They're standing in line just to watch us fall

Whooooa, whoooa, whoooa, whoooa
We can't forget these are the days
Whooooa, whoooa, whoooa, don't be afraid
We can't forget these are the days

Well, we got each other and that's all we need
From here on out it's just you and me
Two hometown hearts up against the world
That don't stand a chance against this boy and girl

We've faced em down, fought bigger fights
And I know, babe, we're gonna be alright

Whooooa, whoooa, whoooa, whoooa
We can't forget these are the days
Whooooa, whoooa, whoooa, don't be afraid
We can't forget these are the days

Well, it feels like we're living from paycheck to check
And we wake up wondering what might happen next
Yeah, sometimes it feels like we won't make it through
But the hard times pass like the good ones do
Baby, wrap your fingers and hold on tight
I'll be right here beside you tonight

Baby, climb up here, watch the city glow
Let's make a wish on the fireworks below
We're making moments we won't forget
We fill in ones that haven't happened yet

Whooa, whooa, whooa, whooa, whooa
We can't forget these are the days
Whooooa, whoooa, whoooa, don't be afraid
We can't forget these are the days

Whooooa, whoooa, whoooa, don't be afraid
We can't forget these are the days

2007 is going to be an interesting year, I know that for sure. 

Overarching goals:

  1. Get the GRE out of the way so I can apply for Grad School
  2. Save enough money to be actually move when ready
  3. Get work on good enough a shape to be able to hand it off with a clean conscience
  4. Find balance in life where work and play can be enjoyed in equal measure

Smaller, specific, goals

  1. Start the Kaplan course no later than June 1st
  2. Take the GRE no later than September 1st
  3. Have applications ready to go by September 15th

 I decided to concentrate on small attainable goals rather than large goals that will not be attainable in the time period I set for myself.