May 31, 2012
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
Thomas Edison
May 8, 2012
“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
Edgar Allan Poe
April 18, 2012
“Everyone must be the same and have the same. Social justice means we deny ourselves many things so that others may have to do without them as well.”
Sigmund Freud
March 24, 2012
“When drinking Linie Aquavit, be sure to remember who you are, so that in two hours you can remind yourself who you are supposed to be.”
Stein Eriksen, Gold and Silver Medalist, Olympic Skier
1/14/12
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Sun Tzu
Whether you think you can or think you cannot, your are right! Henry Ford
1/13/12
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
C.S. Lewis
A pessimist is an optimist with experience.
Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises”. Demosthenes
12/6/11 UKOUG
Caveat emptor; “the buyer has need of a hundred eyes, the seller has need of but one.”
American writer Minna Antrim observed long ago, “between flattery and admiration there often flows a river of contempt”.
Peter Orzag former OMB director, “We might have a healthier democracy if we were a slightly less democractic one”.
“The Danish on average use less toilet paper per person, than any other nation.” I think the average worked out to three sheets of TP per day per person. “That society was so uniform, that Danes could leave their children in strollers outside the restuarant while they ate dinner and leave their doors unlocked.”
“Many Americans can leave their doors unlocked at night, even in our diverse culture, because any intruder can recognize the sound of a pump action shotgun.”
Thomas Jeffers0n, in a letter to James Madison, asserts “the earth belongs to the living”. Madison’s reply was that “in it’s natural state only” does the earth belong to the living, as this assertion “omits the crucial importance of the improvements made by the dead, from which the living benefit”.
Concluding his nomination acceptance speech as Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 1932, Franklin Delano Rossevelt said:” I pledge to you , I pledge myself. to a new deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help. not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.” After his election, the legislation that was passed to address the crisis of The Great Depression became known as “New Deal” legislation.
Mark Twain: “. . . here I was, in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. . . I was become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal.”
Pericles: “Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition.”
Enos Slaughter is my great grandfathers brother, his quotes from baseball:
From that day on, I ran from spot to spot.
I asked no odds and I give none. A guy got in my way, I run over him.
I learned early on to never walk while I was on the ball field. I ran everywhere I went.
So I say keep yelling and hustling every minute you’re in uniform.
I asked no odds and I give none. A guy got in my way, I run over him.
I learned early on to never walk while I was on the ball field. I ran everywhere I went.
So I say keep yelling and hustling every minute you’re in uniform.
To be a big league ball player, you have to love the game.
Andy Grove, a founder of Intel: “This is easy to understand. High tech runs three time faster than normal businesses. And the government runs three times slower than normal businesses. So we have a nine times gap”, Eric Schmidt agrees: “All of my experiences are consistent with Andy Grove’s observation.” This thesis has become known as Grove’s Law of Government.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? “who watches the watchmen?”
There are time when a man should be content with what he has but never with what he is. William George Jordan
The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates
11/1/11 WSJ
Steve Jobs previously had said, “The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can’t get done. It infuriates me”. Jobs made the point that “Silicon Valley is mystified by a policy that instead educates foreign engineers at top US universities, then sends them home immediately”.
“We are judged by what we finish, not what we start.” Anonymous, but this sounds like my Scottish ancestors.
‘Lo, there do I see my father. ‘Lo, there do I see, my mother, and my sisters, and my brothers. ‘Lo, there do I see, the line of my people, back to the beginning. ‘Lo, they do call to me, they bid me to take my place among them. In the halls of Valhalla, where the brave, may live forever.
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius
― Marcus Aurelius
“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.”
― Marcus Aurelius
― Marcus Aurelius
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
“Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm, whereas a large fire is enhanced by it, likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them”.
Victor Frankl.
11/11/11
White House budget director Jacob Lew, “Pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy”.
11/21/11
“Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
Confucius
11/22/11
WSJ Peggy Noonan, on Steve Jobs
His mission he said, was plain: to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products.” Steve Jobs has this theory about “why decline happens”. “The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesmen, because the they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenue.” So salemen are put in charge, and product engineers and designers feel demoted. Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the company’s daily life. They “turn off.” IBM, Xerox, Jobs said, faltered in precisely this way. The salesmen who led the companies were smart and eloquent, but “they didn’t know anything about the product.” In the end, this can doom a great company, because what consumers want is good products.
11/24/2011 Thanksgiving Day
“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord. Across the uncertain ways of space and time our hearts echo those words.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, November 26, 1942, Thanksgiving Day