A Man With a Plan
I ain’t Martin Luther King. I don’t have a dream, I have a plan.
— Spike Lee
Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term. Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.
In the glance of a speechless animal there is a discourse that only the soul of the wise can really understand.
— An Indian Poet
While in graduate school at Purdue many years ago a friend and I made a road trip to the west coast. Along the way we took the opportunity to visit the Grand Canyon with a goal of hiking down to the canyon floor. Although we were experienced hikers, neither of us were in the best of shape, and we were further weakened by the several days we had just spent driving across the country in a Honda Civic. Hiking all the way down to the canyon floor and all the way back up in a single day was strongly discouraged by the park authorities. Since campsites on the canyon floor were reserved far into the future, we were fortunate to snag a reservation for a campsite that was a couple of miles up from the canyon floor on a different trail. Our plan was to hike down one trail all the way to the bottom, take in the grandeur, then hike back up a few miles to camp for the night. The next day we would hike back out and continue our westward journey.
The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements but moral acts:
— Sydney J. Harris, Pieces of Eight
If you want to experience the joys of yacht racing in the comfort of your own home, simply stand fully clothed in an ice cold shower and tear up $100 bills.
— Unknown
Look, I really don’t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you’re alive, you’ve got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you’re quiet, you’re not living. You’ve got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy, colorful and lively.
— Mel Brooks