Robert Benchley

"A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down."

Henry David Thoreau

On the 150th anniversary of Thoreau's birth, William Packard wrote: "His uniqucly personal form of moral protest is a timeless achievment in the same spirit as our Declaration of Independence and exerting a profound influence on thinkers and reformers from Tolstoy to Gandhi to Martin Luther King. An astonishing variety of men have responded to Thoreau's example of uncompromising honesty and to his firm conviction that life without principle is not worth living."

Yogi

"You can observe a lot just by watching."

Alexander the Great

Will Durant reports: "No wonder Alexander carried the Iliad with him in a precious casket on his expeditions. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of nearest to life itself."

Humor

It has been said that man is distinguished from all other creatures by his ability to laugh. I have observed that those with a sense of humor have a certain kind of "readiness of response" and do not take themselves too seriously. I can't describe such a person but I know one when I see one.

Truth

It is hard to accept that the universe and all matter that's in it is constituted solely of interacting quanticized fields - such fields being the underlying reality of all matter that we see and deal with daily - even of ourselves.

Choice

"You can run with the big dogs or sit on the porch and bark." ( W. Arnold)

The Quest

Physicists search in vain for the "theory of everything." General relativity works on the cosmic scale; quantum mechanics works on the sub-atomic scale; neither theory cn be adapted to handle both scales. General relativity predicted the existence of black holes and the Big Bang but it cannot tell what happens at the center of a black hole or at the moment of the Big Bang. The theory breaks down at such tiny scales. The search goes on.

Anonymous

If it weren't for caffeine I'd have no personality whatsoever.

Capitalism

To quote from Adam Smith's landmark work "Wealth of Nations" - "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expecct our dinner, but for their regard for their own interest." Paul Romer, Professor of Economics at the University of California, agrees and says that it is not from the benevolence of Bill Gates or Craig McCaw that we can expect a communications revolution, but from their desire to innovate, build new enterprises, and amass furtunes.

Brain Games

From WSJ 8/15/2006: "Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, says our brains make spurious connections between our actions and the events surrounding them. "We're constantly creating cause-and-effect relationships," he says.

Steve Henthorn

Learn from the past. Look to the future. Live in the present.

Pelagius

This 5th century English monk crossed swords theologically and intellectually with the renowned champion of church orthodoxy, the Bishop of Hippo, Augustine. Pelagius believed, preached, and wrote that God does not predestine man to heaven or hell, that God does not choose whom He will damn or save, that God leaves the choice of our fate to ourselves. The Council of Epheses in the year 431 condemned his views as a heresy. Such was so often the fate of the independent thinkers of history.

The Great Debates

Stephen Douglas sought reelection to the Senate from Illinois - Abraham Lincoln sought to unseat him. The issue was slavery. Carl Sandburg's description of their debates is engrossing. At that time the election was by the state legislature. Final vote - Douglas 54 - Lincoln 46. Sandburg said Lincoln sat in his law office for awhile, then blew out the light and started home. He slipped on the way, caught himself, and said "its a slip not a fall." He had lost the election but with his rare combination of vision, principle, dedication, humor, and humility, he had awakened the conscience of the nation. The year was 1858.

The Great Debates

Stephen Douglas sought reelection to the Senate from Illinois - Abraham Lincoln sought to unseat him. The issue was slavery. Carl Sandburg's description of their debates is engrossing. At that time the election was by the state legislature. Final vote - Douglas 54 - Lincoln 46. Sandburg said Lincoln sat in his law office for awhile, then blew out the light and started home. He slipped on the way, caught himself, and said "its a slip not a fall." He had lost the election but with his rare combination of vision, principle, dedication, humor, and humility, he had awakened the conscience of the nation. The year was 1858.

Change

Do our ideas change over time? In the twenty years over which Montaigne wrote his Essays he recognized and accepted his changing and sometimes contradictory views as his thoughts matured. He wrote : "I do not portray being, I portray passing. My history needs to be adapted to the moment. I may indeed contradict myself now and then; but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict."

Burt Bacharach

"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of."

Abraham Lincoln

He never belonged to a church because he said he had reservations to the complicated statements of doctrine of the many denominations. Henry C. Deming's "Eulogy of Lincoln" quotes Lincoln: "When any church will inscribe over its alter Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself, that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul."

Otto von Bismarck

"To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making."

Proverb

This old English proverb: "A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner" reminded me of Longfellow's poem:
"Wouldst thou - so the helmsman answered,
Learn the secret of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery!"

Robert Frost

"All thought is a feat of association: having what's in front of you bring up something in your mind that you almost didn't know you knew."

Joseph Conrad

Many years ago a passage from his "Lord Jim" impressed me. His character Stein, a wealthy Bavarian merchant, described a huge butterfly:
"Look! The beauty - but that is nothing - look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so fragil! And so strong! And so exact! This is Nature - the balance of colossal forces - the mighty Kosmos in perfect equilibrium."

Henny Youngman

A man goes to a psychiatrist. "Nobody listens to me."
The Dr. says "Next"

Constants

In our ever changing world does anything never change? Scientists contend there are but three fundamental universal constants - three and only three unvarying constants in our universe:
c - the velocity of light in empty space.
G - the gravitational constant of Isaac Newton.
h - the quantum constant of Max Planck.

Chinese Proverb

"On the subject of singing.
the frog school and
the lark school disagree."
Is there such a thing as reconciled compatibility?

Einstein

His young friend Peter Bucky had many conversations with Einstein and reconstructed them in his book "The Private Albert Einstein." I quote from his book:
"Einstein - Well, I do not think that it is necessarily the case that science and religion are natural opposites. In fact, I think there is a very close connection between the two. Further I think that science without religion is lame and , conversely, that religion without science is blind."

Alexander Pope

He was an 18th century English poet whose brilliant mind transcended his physical disability and lifelong pain. He knew us well:
"Tis with our judgements as our watches, none
go just alike, yet each believes his own."
And shouldn't we remember his admonition:
"To err is human, to forgive divine."