Quotation Saturday: Randominities
Mamacita says: Some people don’t like quotations. “They’re not original!” or some such, blahblahblah. I like a good quotation. They make me more original. A good quotation is a thought made sharable.
I’ve been collecting quotations since I was in my teens; that’s as much as ten years. (coughcough) When we moved, I thought I’d lost my original classy file system which consisted of a paper ream box lid and ten thousand little lined file cards. Last week, finally boxing up some random things in my former laundry room, I found the lid.
“I finally found the lid!” Go nuts, Google.
Usually I try to have a theme, but not this time. I’m just going to go in order, “order” in this case being somewhat amusing to consider in and of itself. We’ll call it “A.” Letter “A.”
1. Where tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization. — Daniel Webster
2. There are some people whose idea of adventure is to sit home like great puddings with the sauce of television pouring over them. — Gene Rheaume
3. To obtain maximum attention, it’s hard to beat a good, big, mistake. — Anon.
4. Don’t be content with being average. Average is as close to the bottom as it is to the top. — Anon. (This has been my motto for many years!)
5. Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself. — Tom Wilson
6. Most people are willing to pay more to be amused than to be educated. — Robert Savage
7. Be ashamed to die until you have achieved some victory for humanity. — Horace Mann
8. We need programs that will teach athletes how to SPELL “Jump shot” rather than how to shoot it. — Larry Hawkins
9. An ass is but an ass, though laden with gold. — Thomas Fuller
10. Art is the signature of civilization. — Beverly Sills
11. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. — William James
12. Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk. — Joaquin Setanti
13. Ancestry is most important to those who have done nothing themselves. — Louis L’Amour
14. I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company. — Jonathan Swift
15. Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant are more learned than the ears. — Shakespeare
16. A work of art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament. — Emile Zola
17. You don’t need to take a person’s advice to make him feel good – just ask for it. — Laurence J. Peter
18. An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last. — Winston Churchill
19. Activity is the politician’s substitute for achievement. — Anon
20. What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit. — John Updike
21. The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. — H. L. Hencken
22. I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments, but not with comprehension. — Disraeli
23. Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors. — Voltaire
24. Art is not a thing; it is a way. — Elbert Hubbard
25. He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight. — John Randolph
26. Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead. — W.H. Auden
27. The same wind snuffs candles yet kindles fires; so, where absence kills a little love, it fans a great one. — La Rochefoucauld
28. He had the general look of an elderly fallen angel traveling incognito. — Peter Quennell
29. If you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, you don’t need advice. — the OK Rotary Club Bulletin
30. Admiration is our polite recognition of another man’s resemblance to ourselves. — Ambrose Bierce
31. There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream. — Archibald MacLeish
32. Scratch an artist, and you surprise a child. — James Huneker
33. The most original modern authors are not so because they advance what is new, but simply because they know how to put what they have to say as if it had never been said before. — Goethe
34. An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow. — Laurence Barrett
35. I have one rule: attention. They give me theirs and I give them mine. — Sister Evangelist RSM ( My only rule for years!)
36. Being about to pitch his camp in a likely place, and hearing there was no hay to be had for the cattle, “What a life,” said he,”is ours, since we must live according to the convenience of asses!” — Plutarch
37. I think it’s interesting how much we can accomplish before we find out we can’t do something. — General Leslie Groves
38. Authority does not make you a leader. It gives you the opportunity to be one. — Unknown
39. There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talent. — Jefferson
40. Adventures are an indication of inefficiency. Good explorers don’t have them. — Herbert Spencer Dickey
41. Advice: the suggestions you give someone else which you believe will work to your benefit. — Anon.
42. Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty. — Stanislaus J. Lee
43. Amnesty: the state’s magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish. — Ambrose Bierce
44. Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun. — Emerson
45. Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think. — Alexander Pope
46. Acting without thinking is like shooting without aiming. — B.C. Forbes
47. Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. — Lady Bird Johnson
48. I have long been disposed to judge men by their average. If it is reasonably high, I am charitable with faults that look pretty black. — Ed Howe
49. When two men in a business always agree, one of them is unnecessary. — William Wrigley, Jr.
50. No matter what accomplishments you achieve, somebody helps you. — Althea Gibson
51. It is easy to sit up and take notice. What is difficult is getting up and taking action. — Al Batt
52. By appreciation we make excellence in others our own property. — Voltaire
53. Most of us ask for advice when we know the answer but want a different one. — Ivern Ball
54. “Automatic” simply means that you cannot repair it yourself. — Anon.
55. He that makes himself an ass, must not take it ill if men ride him. — Thomas Fuller
56. Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man. — Leon Trotsky
57. Advice is offensive because it shows us that we are known to others, as well as to ourselves. — Samuel Johnson
58. Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass. — Walter Pater
59. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city. — Oliver Wendell Holmes
60. There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. — Shopenhauer
61. It’s not how old you are, but how you are old. — Marie Dressler
62. Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age. — Anais Nin
63. Old people like to give good advice, as solace for no longer being able to provide bad examples. — La Rochefoucauld
64. What wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. — Edmund Burke
65. Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we can not resemble. — Samuel Johnson
66. There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. — Robert Half
67. Anyone who says you can’t see a thought simply doesn’t know art. — Wynetka Ann Reynolds
68. Knowing you’ll have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations. — Vladimir Nabokov
69. Action without study is fatal. Study without action is futile. — Mary Beard
70. One good thing about becoming ninety years old is that you’re not subject to much peer pressure. — Anon.
71. What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers. — Logan Pearsall Smith
72. The trouble with good advice is that it usually interferes with our plans. — E.W. Howe
73. Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory. — Leonardo Da Vinci
74. True affluence is not needing anything. — Gary Snyder
75. One thing most alumni won’t stand for is a college football team that plays like a bunch of amateurs. — G. Norman Collie
You might have noticed that all of these quotations have something to do with the letter “A.” I’d insert a Sesame Street remark here, but I don’t want to get political.
76. Never refer to me as an item. I’m a bird. — Big Bird
My bad.
Mashed Velveeta and Pot Roast
Mamacita says: Remember that anecdote about the young bride whose husband asked her why she cut the beef roast in half before she put it in the pan?
She told him she did it that way, because her mother always did it that way.
So the young husband asked his mother-in-law why she had always cut the beef roast in half before she put it in the pan. Her reply? She did it that way because HER mother had always done it that way.
At the next family dinner, the husband asked his wife’s grandmother why she had always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply? Because her mother had always done it that way.
His wife’s great-grandmother was still alive, so he went to the nursing home and asked her why she had always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply?
“I only had the one small pan, and the only way a roast would fit in it was if it was first cut into two pieces.”
When my children visit, I often think of this story. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it might as well be, because so many of the things we do make no sense except in the context of the past.
First of all, both of my children love grilled cheese sandwiches. I mean, who doesn’t? Secondly, neither of my children will touch a grilled cheese sandwich 
unless it was made with Velveeta.
Thirdly, and most importantly, I can grant these wishes because A. I won’t eat a grilled cheese sandwich unless it was made with Velveeta, either, and B. Velveeta is a name brand food I can actually AFFORD!
I mean, seriously, a grilled cheese sandwich NOT made with Velveeta? What the heck?
When my son comes down for a visit, he often requests grilled cheese sandwiches. Now, when he was a little boy, the only way he could eat a grilled cheese sandwich was if I mashed it down flat with the spatula after the Velveeta had melted. THEN his little mouth could close around it, and he could eat the sandwich “like a man.”
He is all grown up now, but he still wants his grilled cheese flattened with the spatula. Why? Because that’s how his mother always made them.
If he ever decides to get married, I can’t wait to hear his wife’s reaction when he asks her to mash a perfectly good sandwich flat. Will she question it, or just do it?
Sometimes, family traditions have serious beginnings and funny middles. As for the endings, there aren’t any, not really.
(from November 2004.)
Banned Books Week: September 30 – October 6, 2012
I posted this a month or so ago in anticipation of Banned Books Week, and now that Banned Books Week is officially here, well, here’s that post again. We can’t speak up against censorship enough. As long as we put up with such horrendous nonsense, it will just get worse. It is the personal responsibility of each citizen to educate themselves to the point that he/she is able to interpret bullshit from fertilizer. There will always be people who prefer to allow others to dictate their beliefs, but I do not consider such people to be sentient. Am I mean? No, I’m honest. Censorship is for the weak-minded who don’t have the brains to interpret correctly, or the balls to change their parasitic ways, and for people who are afraid. Afraid of new ideas, afraid of questions, and afraid of the universe in general. This is a sick, sad, pathetic way to live, and even sicker, sadder, and more pathetic to insist that our children live this way. If your belief system can’t stand up to questions and thinking, you need to step back and re-evaluate your belief system, because there is something majorly wrong with it.
Mamacita says: Banned Books Week is this week: Sept. 30 – Oct. 6, 2012. It always saddens me to be reminded that there are such huge hordes of ignorant masses in the United States, and yet, sigh, there they are, forbidding this and banning that lest their children learn something their parents hadn’t already run through the personal values laundromat since, heaven forbid, the kids might come home asking questions and – we can’t have it, we just can’t HAVE IT – thinking. Maybe even. . . ASKING QUESTIONS! (shudder)
First of all, I despise censorship. Banning books is akin to banning people; both are abhorrent to the collective intelligence, and both bring us down as a culture. It’s one thing for someone to decide that a certain book will not be allowed in his/her house – every parent has that right – but it’s quite another thing for this person to decide that a certain book will not be allowed in my house, or yours. Or in a library, or school; for one person, or a handful, to be allowed to dictate what the masses might be exposed to is ridiculous, cowardly, stupid, and evil. Someone is offended? There are choices. Such people can remove themselves and their children from the nasty thought-provoking sources. They could also grow a pair and encourage thinking and questions, but that’s too hard and scary for such people, I suppose. God forbid their children might come home from school with. . . . ideas. Brrrrrr, can’t have it. Besides, people who advocate censorship and book burning banning don’t usually know the answers; their thoughts are scripted by others. It’s a lot easier to live that way; thinking for oneself can be so hard, you know.
Many book censors are too insecure in their own backgrounds and beliefs to risk questions from others, and a huge lot of them are just plain too ignorant to deal with anything that isn’t very, very simple. Learning is hard. Stick with what we already know. Go that extra mile to make bloody sure our kids aren’t exposed to anything that might threaten what these adults consider “safe.” Again, every parent has this right – in his/her own home. Outside of that home, guess what? Other people have rights, too. Imagine.
This post is a rerun, but before Banned Books Week actually begins, I want to share with you again this memo from a college-educated man who was in charge of a building full of impressionable middle school students.
I firmly believe that any memo, letter, or piece of written information that is sent by an administrator, should contain no idiocy or errors.
I also believe that any memo, letter, or piece of written information that is sent by an administrator that DOES contain idiocy or errors should be posted publicly and that the general public should be allowed to mock it.
I suppose that my belief that administrators should be required to be intelligent and able to proofread would be thrown out by the PC police.
This is the letter a principal gave me several years ago, demanding requesting that I take down my bulletin board about Banned Books Week. I had used that same bulletin board for over ten years, and in those earlier years, he had actually praised it for being timely and creative. That was, of course, before he saw Waldo on there.
This is the same school system that had a virtual meltdown because I was bringing in speakers; the curriculum director didn’t want me to bring in people from the outside to talk about careers because, and I quote, “it might give the students ‘ideas.'” These people volunteered their time, and would have continued to volunteer their time, and it would have been of enormous benefit to the students, but no. Ideas are scary, and, to the ignorant, dangerous.
A few years later, the same man who denied permission for me to bring in speakers for free, spent nearly a million dollars of taxpayer money to take all the middle school students to town and have paid speakers talk to them about the same thing I could have done for free. By this time, you see, the Trend Wheel had spun back around, and it was now permissible to give the students ‘ideas.’
One of those speakers represented General Motors, and her speech was 
excellent, although it didn’t sit well with administration. She spoke about high school ‘graduates’ for whom a diploma was nothing but a piece of paper that connoted untruths. She spoke about how an employer should have the right to assume that a diploma pretty much guaranteed literacy and general competence. She spoke about all the money big corporations were having to shell into remedial programs for employees who had diplomas, pieces of paper that represented four years of showing up and not much else. She spoke about how businesses would really appreciate a diploma that told the truth: that if a student had been graduated out of respect for really trying, the diploma should say so, discretely of course, but in terms that the business world would be able to interpret. If the student was just going through the motions of graduation for self-esteem’s sake, the diploma should say so. And if the diploma was rightfully earned because the student had become fully literate and generally competent and had genuinely and individually and truthfully learned how to care for himself/herself in the world in general, the business world should be able to see that kind of diploma and interpret it for what it was: a real diploma.
Oohh, the remarks that were scattered throughout the auditorium. And when we returned to the individual buildings, there was much talk of blueberries and self-esteem.
My friends are mostly lawyers, musicians, writers, speakers, businesspeople, and other educators. Before the edict went out, I often had one of them come to my classroom and talk about what they did all day, and then the students would ask questions. Silly me, I really thought it was helpful.
Sure, they asked my lawyer friends about their individual rights and stuff, but. . . . .
Oh. I get it.
We certainly can’t have our students understanding their basic civil rights and those of their fellow citizens of any age, now can we.
What a narrow escape.
P.S. A few years later, I dared to submit a speaker proposal for my classroom again, and it was again turned down, but this time the reason was different. 
Apparently, it was unfair to other students if one group got to have a speaker and others didn’t. I suggested that other teachers could just as easily invite a speaker into their classroom, too, but nobody else cared to go to the trouble, so I couldn’t, either.
Are our schools in trouble? Darn right they are, and most of it isn’t coming from the students.
Censorship and book banning, indeed. If our society gets any more politically correct, it will be so boring and insipid and cowardly, it will be indistinguishable 
from an ant colony.
Except, of course, that ants are not cowardly.
Book banners are, though.
Censors. The lowest common denominator of humanity. Can there be anything lower than those who strive to keep the rest of us in the dark? Those who fear creativity, ideas, questions, and knowledge are somewhat less than human, by my way of thinking. The human being was created to soar, not bury its head in the sand of fear.
Do I read banned books? I do. And so should you.
*Heine
