Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Failure Is Not An Option


I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
Novelist George Eliot, a.k.a. Mary Anne Evans, a.k.a. Marian Lewes

Saturday, November 19, 2011

19 Nov 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania


Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
President Abraham Lincoln



Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Up Sh*t Creek?


I believe the appropriate metaphor here involves a river of excrement and a Native American water vessel without any means of propulsion. 

Sheldon to Penny in The Big Bang Theory, "The Lizard-Spock Expansion"

Monday, November 14, 2011

Hope


Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

St. Augustine



Political Satire Alert!


No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

Political Satirist PJ O'Rourke

Thursday, November 10, 2011

I Second This Endorsement, Albeit 500 Years Later


Who loves not woman, wine, and song remains a fool his whole life long. 
Martin Luther