All Power Corrupts
All power corrupts, but we need the electricity.
— Unknown
I have always loved to collect intangible things. One of my favorites collections consists of opening lines of great novels. Who can forget “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . ” Other greats include “Who is John Galt?” Or “Howard Rork laughed.” My all-time favorite opening line comes from Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides: “My wound is geography.”
But lo, I digress. By far my largest stash of immaterial things are the countless quotes, words of wisdom, poems, and pithy sayings I have collected over the years. I have a library card catalog filled with hand written 3×5 cards with quotes accumulated from the days before computers had entered my life. In the intervening years I have made several vain attempts to catalog my precious to no avail. The first installment came and went in a HyperCard stack that is long gone. A Microsoft Access database of pearls of wisdom sits unused on an old Windows machine somewhere in the house. …
If I wished to put a curse on a nation, I would invoke the gods to decree that it be governed by those who consider themselves to be the only true patriots in it.
A skeptic is not one who doubts, but one who examines.
— Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, French literary critic and historian
A job done by half is never done right.
— Mom
It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.