Three Hardest Tasks
The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements but moral acts:
- to return love for hate
- to include the excluded
- and to say “I was wrong.”
— Sydney J. Harris, Pieces of Eight
I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don’t even invite me.
— Dave Barry
In some ways, Dave Barry is saying the same thing, in his comedic genius sort of way, that John Morely said yesterday.
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
— Jeannette Rankin
First woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives
I hope if dogs ever take over the world, and they choose a king, they don’t just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.
— Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts
Both destiny’s kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person’s basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can’t even hear because you’re in such a rush to or from something important you’ve tried to engineer.
— David Foster Wallace
Listen to that still, quite voice in the back of the mind. It might be your destiny trying to get your attention.
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
— Goethe
Goethe lived from 1749 to 1832. In the two centuries since his death I am please to report that the planet has made great strides in mental health. At the dawn of the 21st century we have managed to confine the majority of our disordered minds to the executive suites and the board rooms of our largest corporations. A small consolation to the millions of us who must work in these corporations but progress nonetheless.