Running the Country
Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.
— George Burns
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
The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.
Rob Long is a brilliant television writer who offers a weekly five minute commentary on KCRW. He outdid himself this week.
The very best thing about flattery is how incredibly flattering it is. If you’re on the receiving end of a nice blast of “you’re so wonderful” it barely matters – what am I saying, it doesn’t matter in the least! – if it’s true. If you really are wonderful. If the personal telling you how wonderful you are even thinks you are wonderful.
What’s important is that the person delivering the flattering cascade thinks you’re worth the butter. It’s like a kubuki moment: I’m probably lying, you know I’m probably lying, but you’re the kind of person it’s worth lying to.
And if you’re on the other side, if you’re delivering the flattery, it’s amazing how instantly it works, how immediately the recipient begins to glow and swan around. It’s like a sugar rush. It’s cheap, it rots your teeth and makes you fat, but for a few moments, you feel invincible. Flattery, done correctly, is the Cinnabon of human interaction.
I don’t practice what I preach, ’cause I’m not the kind of person I’m preachin’ to.
— J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, founder, Church of the SubGenius
What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music. . . . And men crowd about the poet and say to him, “Sing for us again;” that is as much to say, “May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be formed as before; for the cries would only frighten us but the music is delicious.”
An intelligent mind is a mind which is not satisfied with explanations, with conclusions; nor is it a mind that believes, because belief is again another form of conclusion. An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind, a mind that is watching, learning, studying.