Quotes of the day

Confession. Okay, who am I kidding- this whole blog is about confessing. I am addicted to my google homepage. One of the handy features of the wonderful google home page is that I have a few quotes of the day everyday. The ones I really like I copy and paste into my sticky notes feature- a handy way of keeping track of everything you gots to do. Alas, there are so many quotes my sticky notes have become a sticky novel. As a way of preserving them I have copied them here so I can clear the way for more quotes. Quotes. Little sound bytes of wisdom. Thought provoking for about a millisecond, a little purple nurple to the brain if you will…

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
– Thomas Sowell
I like how this sounds but can’t for the life of me come up with concrete examples. Except for maybe the war on terror but that didn’t even sound good. Or how about the axis of evil (picture poor Barbara Frum rolling in her grave)? Okay, I can think of some…

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
– Lily Tomlin
Shit. What about being simply mediocre in a mediocre world? It is like dress sizes. What used to be a size six is now a size two. Mediocre used to be just dumb and what we call success used to be just mediocre. Pink is the new black. See? thought provoking.

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
– John Gaule
Trim the fat people! Occam’s razor! Small is beautiful! If you can’t make it into a motto it’s not worth saying!

To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.
– Jacques Derrida
I am still thinking about this one….

Humankind cannot stand very much reality.
– TS Eliot
The original, “You can’t handle the truth!”

I am not young enough to know everything.
– Oscar Wilde
The most quoted man for a reason. If you have kids, or remember being one, the truth of this will hit you like a jack-in-the-box pointed at your stomach.

A waist is a terrible thing to mind.
– Jane Caminos
Because I spend way too much time minding my waist.

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
– Paul Valery
Yep. I feel this. I feel this deeply.

Literature is news that stays news.
– Ezra Pound
Again, a sum up of my definition of art.

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
– An English Professor
This deserves to be embroidered, framed and placed strategically in every English professor’s office in the country.

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
– Sir Barnett Cocks
The hell of committees. It’s becoming a phobia- committees, meetings- RUN AWAY!!!!!!

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
I lost the genius who thought this one up. Oops- I made him anonymous, one of the masses.

It takes hundreds of nuts to hold a car together, but it takes only one of them to scatter it all over the highway.
– Evan Esar
Terrifying thought. I will never drive again.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.
– Samuel Johnson
Framed embroidery for librarians.

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
– Vladimir Nabokov
Holy crap! I have the same loathings as Nabokov!

A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
– Robert Heinlein
This is unfortunately true. Poetry readings make me leak.

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
– Pablo Picasso
Yeah, yeah. Pablo. Stop talking about yourself.

It isn’t necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be unhappy.
– Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx- the second most quoted individual (well, if he isn’t he should be).

I have a rock garden. Last week three of them died.
– Richard Diran
I don’t know who this person is, but I hear ya brother.

If only we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.
– Edith Wharton Morley
I agree- happiness an over-rated, over-attempted phenomena. Merhaps the subject of another post?

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Goddam Brits. They are so f’in witty it makes me kind of nauseous.

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
– Thomas Szasz
Again, subject of another blog entry.

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease.
– George Dennison Prentice
OOH, another one for a future post. I can skewer myself and those very close to me talking about diet fads.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
– Groucho Marx
He is my new guru. Groucho, I love you.

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
– Mahatma Gandhi
But Gandhi, tell me what you really think.

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.
– Richard Feynman
Oh god. I have so much work to do…