Quote of the Day(inspired by SD's post)

[sabertooth]

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day                 Brewster Higley

[raw-al]

People are always ready to do the right thing
After they have exhausted all the other possibilities
W. Churchill

(It may be not exactly as he said it)

[sabertooth]

When you look for the bad in mankind, expecting to find it, you usually will."
— Abraham Lincoln

A drunkard had told me something similar when I was sleeping on the streets, he was going into some monolog about how you have to dig in( he had literally made a dug out and lived in a thicket at a city park and survived off of garbage for years, anyway he could tell that I was judging him to be loony and then he said to me,point blank, If you are going to look for fault in a person you will find it. It struck me as being prophetic at the time. I didn't know it was derived from the Abraham Lincoln quote, anyway I began to take him more seriously and even made pilgrimage to northern California because he said it was the perfect place to life as a vagrant. It may have been when he was there 20 years ago but by the time I got there I found much of it to be a meth hole, although the weather was nice and the forrest were beauteous.

[PaleoPhil]

"Be hearty in your approbation, and lavish in your praise.” -American steel magnate Charles Schwab (not the discount broker), a quote popularized by Dale Carnegie


An aside regarding:

When you look for the bad in mankind, expecting to find it, you usually will."
— Abraham Lincoln

....

Excellent choice, Sabertooth. That is also one of my favorite quotes and I hope this won't be perceived as nit-picky, but it didn't actually come from Lincoln. I was impressed by it when I came across it in a positive-thinking book somewhere (I thought it was in one of Dale Carnegie's books, but I haven't found it there since), but when I went searching for it again to get the right wording I learned that its source was not Lincoln, but rather a far more humble source--David Swift, the director of the Disney movie Pollyanna...

"When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will. Abraham Lincoln." —the character Reverend Ford, reading a fictional inscription on Pollyanna's locket, conceived by David Swift, Writer/Director of the 1960 Disney Film Pollyanna

Swift had derived the quote from one in the book that the movie was based on:

"When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know you will find the good--you will get that." -fictional sermon of the Reverend Paul Ford in Pollyanna, by Eleanor H. Porter, http://porter.thefreelibrary.com/Pollyanna/22-1

So the earliest known source of this quote was the humble author Eleanor Porter, whose book Pollyanna (intended for little girls) and its message have ironically become the object of derision over the years. What is the point of this other than accuracy? Well, this and other misattributions have taught me  to be skeptical of the attributions and wordings of popular quotes and to consider whether a quote that doesn't need a famous name attached to it may provide more useful advice than one that does. I find that Swift's quote holds up pretty well in my experience without Lincoln's name attached, but I still find it useful to ask myself if a quote would stand on its own and whether it holds true in the real world.

There is a corrollary to this. Nassim Taleb has advised that we should be more skeptical of someone who wears a tie, not less. Taleb explained, "You have to ask yourself why he is wearing a tie. More often than not, he's not an expert. He just wants you to think he is."

[raw-al]

There is a corrollary to this. Nassim Taleb has advised that we should be more skeptical of someone who wears a tie, not less. Taleb explained, "You have to ask yourself why he is wearing a tie. More often than not, he's not an expert. He just wants you to think he is."

I was going along with you right up to the point where you started dumpin on the guy with the tie. 

I hate ties. They are dangerous pointless and the a#*hole who invented them should be strung up by it.

Nonetheless I wore one for many years because it allowed me to work in an industry where you basically are obliged to wear one. I am not an expert, but what I wear has no bearing on anything other than whether I wish to work, get married, whatever.

If Nassir Taleb wishes to wear a Fez or a black undershirt under his jacket that's because as an drinker from the university trough he can look however ridiculous he wants.

Whew Great rant Al. 

[PaleoPhil]

I was going along with you right up to the point where you started dumpin on the guy with the tie.  

I hate ties. They are dangerous pointless and the a#*hole who invented them should be strung up by it.

Nonetheless I wore one for many years because it allowed me to work in an industry where you basically are obliged to wear one. I am not an expert, but what I wear has no bearing on anything other than whether I wish to work, get married, whatever.

If Nassir Taleb wishes to wear a Fez or a black undershirt under his jacket that's because as an drinker from the university trough he can look however ridiculous he wants.

Whew Great rant Al.

As a wage slave, I understand. I'm not dumping on all tie wearers. I have worn ties too, despite finding them uncomfortable and pretty silly, but I didn't take offense at Taleb's words because I don't think he was referring to ordinary folks like you and me. He usually makes such remarks while talking about bigwigs like Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, prominent economists and bankers and the like. Unfortunately, short quotes don't include the contexts they come from, so they can be misunderstood in this way.

I was required or strongly urged to wear a tie in certain jobs, such as jobs in the financial industry, in part I think because the employers wanted me and other employees to give the impression of credibility, stability, authority, and so forth. Taleb seems to be suggesting that we shouldn't let appearances sway us too greatly and maintain a healthy level of skepticism.

[raw-al]

As a wage slave, I understand. I'm not dumping on all tie wearers. I have worn ties too, despite finding them uncomfortable and pretty silly, but I didn't take offense at Taleb's words because I don't think he was referring to ordinary folks like you and me. He usually makes such remarks while talking about bigwigs like Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, prominent economists and bankers and the like. Unfortunately, short quotes don't include the contexts they come from, so they can be misunderstood in this way.

I was required or strongly urged to wear a tie in certain jobs, such as jobs in the financial industry, in part I think because the employers wanted me and other employees to give the impression of credibility, stability, authority, and so forth. Taleb seems to be suggesting that we shouldn't let appearances sway us too greatly and maintain a healthy level of skepticism.

I know what you are saying and I am not attacking you, but I think that Taleb was taking a cheap shot at someone he didn't like maybe because of jealousy that he was stuck in his career in a university. You don't have to make sense in attacking someone if you can divert from the actual topic by making a dumb correlation with their clothing choices. Most entertainers of my generations wore ridiculous clothes on stage and off stage but I liked their music not their clothes.

As far as big shots wearing ties well that's the way they view the world. If they didn't wear a tie that would be a statement too. Look at me I don't wear a tie. Sort of like Elton John doing a Boy Scout movie.

Wearing jeans makes some people feel like they are some kind of a common hero. To me they are cold stiff and uncomfortable and a fashion statement, expressing a fear of looking like they are someone rich. I used to fly with a guy who couldn't wait to get off work so he could go around in scruffy clothes and a tee shirt. I think what he really was saying is look at me I am really not a rich guy in a cool well paid job, I am just a poor workin stiff like everybody else.

[sabertooth]

That man who had some how found that jewel of a quote that I Miss attributed to Lincoln, sent me to Eureka California were I had another sign appear on a wall by a homeless shelter, All who wander are not lost.(it fit me to a T). all our words are colored by the spirits of the past and our language is a treasure trove of humanity, keeping Noble souls alive by spreading thei words to a new generation is a good cause, I have often changed the quotes of others to make them my own.

[PaleoPhil]

I know what you are saying and I am not attacking you,

I know you're not attacking me and I'm not attacking you. I just didn't take Taleb's quote as a cheap shot because he was stuck in his career in a university. On the contrary, he had already earned his "F*** you" money by the time he wrote the quote. He could do whatever he wanted. On the other hand, Taleb admits that if an aphorism has to be explained it probably isn't that good, so perhaps this one isn't that good.

[sabertooth]

One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

H.S.T

[TylerDurden]

 "Villainy wears many masks, none of which so dangerous as virtue... "Ichabod Crane from the film  Sleepy Hollow.

[PaleoPhil]

"Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such [poor] keeping as our souls are now."

- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_State_of_Virginia

[PaleoPhil]

"What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy." -Voltaire


(I don't have a source for this one, so I'm not sure if it was really Voltaire who wrote or said it.)

[PaleoPhil]

"There is no greater fool than someone who thinks himself clever." --Tyl Eulenspiegel the trickster

[TylerDurden]

"Oderint dum metuant." ("Let them hate me as long as they fear me")- Caligula

[SkinnyDevil]

"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there." (Robert Pirsig)

[raw-al]

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world.
The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man
George Bernard Shaw.

[laterade]

A fine is a tax for doing wrong, a tax is a fine for doing well.

[achillezzz]

To face what we are in the end,
We stand before the light
And our true nature is revealed.
Self-revelation is annihilation of self 

[sabertooth]

"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there." (Robert Pirsig)

I Guy at my UU Buddhist group told me about Pirsig and I read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
He was a conceptual Dynamo I was refreshed by many of his Ideas.


"The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton."
...and what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It 's a ghost!"
Mind has no matter or energy but they cant escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exist in the mind. numbers exist only in the mind. Idont get upset when scientists say that ghosts exist in the mind. its that only that gets me. science is nly in your mind too, it s just that that dosent make it bad. or ghosts either."
Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Law of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts."
...we see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past."
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

[SkinnyDevil]

I Guy at my UU Buddhist group told me about Pirsig and I read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
He was a conceptual Dynamo I was refreshed by many of his Ideas.

If you liked "Zen...", the I recommend his 2nd book, "Lila". Incredible work.

[Brother]

‘it no longer matters if these people are right about global warming, I don’t want to live in a world controlled by them. I am Sparticus!’ -anonymous poster on the internet in an angered response to the fruit and nut cakes at 10:10 who released a campaign in which school children who question their teachers global warming alarmist bovine feces are blown up (with explosives). The campaign was pulled within hours, as a tsunami of disgust, fear and loathing appeared on their horizon.

[sabertooth]

What do you mean "red meat'll kill you?" People are starving all over the world, what do you mean red meat will kill you, if you're one of the chosen few people in the world lucky enough to get your hands on a piece of steak then bit the Sh*t out of it. 

Chris Rock

[TylerDurden]

"Report suspicious activity! Total Bull----! You have created a self fulfilling prophecy." 

Message ,from two packages sent to Maryland's governor and transportation secretary that ignited when they were opened,  railing against highway signs urging motorists to report suspicious activity.

[raw-al]

Before I speak let me say a few things. Anonymous