Hope
Hope springs eternal in the human heart.
— Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
As TV’s Craig Ferguson would say, “It’s a great day for America, everybody.”
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The Death of Ponzi Schemes
ByHeatherSo Social Security will be broke in seven years. First Bernie Madoff, now this. It’s like Ponzi schemes don’t even work anymore.
– Bill Muse, Top 5 Rumination
Commonplaces of Existence
ByHeatherMy life is spent in one long effort to escape the commonplaces of existence.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, spoken by Sherlock Holmes in The Red-Headed League
Ditto.
Science is a way of thinking
ByHeather“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
— Carl Sagan, astronomer and author (1934-1996)
Forecasting the Future
ByHeatherWe have two classes of forecasters: Those who don’t know — and those who don’t know they don’t know.— John Kenneth Galbraith, economist
Hurry
ByHeatherIn human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often, men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he wold not be moved to false action by anxiety or fear. Very few people learn this.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Skill and Imagination
ByHeatherSkill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
— Tom Stoppard