GRAVITY (Reality Check)

More enjoyable quotes

It's a game that can't be won, only played. (From the movie, The Legend of Bagger Vance)

We usually know what we are doing, we sometimes know why we’re doing it, but we almost never know what our doing does. We had, I should think, damn well better find out soon. (Clifford Geertz)

Bad Moon Rising
I see the bad moon arising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today

Don't go around tonight
Well, it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise

I hear hurricanes ablowing
I know the end is coming soon
I fear rivers over flowing
I hear the voice of rage and ruin

Don't go around tonight
Well, it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise

Hope you got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we're in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye

Don't go around tonight
Well, it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise
(Credence Clearwater Revival)

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality. (Nikos Kazantzakis)

Mark Twain on the two best words in the English language:  Not guilty!

A man makes his dying by the way he lives.
(Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke)

Life is one vast conglomeration inflamed with passion. (Ugo Betti)

An atheist is someone who has no invisible means of support.

The evil men do lives on after them
The good is oft interred with their bones
(Shakespeare)

Experience is the worst teacher.  It gives the test before presenting the lesson.  (Vernon Law)

The great suns may eclipse but the little stars will always be shining.

Life's a banquet and you poor suckers are starving. (Sophie Tucker)

Most people who get lost in the wilderness die of shame.  They fail to engage in the one thing that would save them: thinking. (From the movie, The Edge)

A man may forget where he went on his honeymoon, buy he never forgets why he went!

They don't see what the Lord has done or notice the work of his hands. (Isaiah)

Arguments only lead to the dead end of regret. (Daniel Van Auken)

The teacher told us the Romans built this place.
They built a wall and a temple
At the edge of the empire garrison town.
They lived and they died,
They prayed to their gods.
But the stone gods did not make a sound
And their empire crumbled
'Til all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found. (Sting)

A loud voice cannot compete with a clear voice, even if it's a whisper. (Barney Neil Kaufman)

Don't get too far in front of the troops or they mistake you for the enemy, (George S. Patton)

Under capitalism, man exploits man; under communism, it’s just the opposite. (John Galbraith)

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air
and feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at cloud that way.
But now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things I would have done but clouds got in my way.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
from up and down, and still somehow
it's cloud illusions I recall.
I really don't know clouds at all.

Moons and Junes and ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel
as every fairy tale comes real; I've looked at love that way.
But now it's just another show. You leave 'em laughing when you go
and if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away.

I've looked at love from both sides now,
from give and take, and still somehow
it's love's illusions I recall.
I really don't know love at all.

Tears and fears and feeling proud to say "I love you" right out loud,
dreams and schemes and circus crowds, I've looked at life that way.
But now old friends are acting strange, they shake their heads, they say
I've changed.
Something's lost but something's gained in living every day.

I've looked at life from both sides now,
from win and lose, and still somehow
it's life's illusions I recall.
I really don't know life at all.
(Performed by Joni Mitchell)

The church of Jesus Christ must be bigger than its culture.  (Jimmy Dorrell)

The human subject has changed; intimacy and solitude have lost their value, the individual has become increasingly gregarious; he wants collective, massive, often paroxysmal music, the expression of "us" rather than "me."
(Roland Barthes)

The repertoire of evil has never been richer.  Yet never have our responses been so weak.  Evil tends to recede into the background hum of modern life.  We cannot really see the perpetrator, so the work of the devil is everywhere, but no one knows where to find him.  We feel something that our culture no longer gives us the vocabulary to express.
(Andrew Delbanco)

We are all put to the test, but it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer. (From the movie, The Edge)

Bloom where you’re planted or whither where you’re planted?

Dallas Cowboy fans love you, win or tie. (Roger Staubach)

Been working everyday since I was twenty.
Haven't got a thing to show for anything I've done.
There's folks who never work and they've got plenty.
Think it's time some guys like me had some fun.
(Merle Haggard)

Who’s Gonna Drive You Home Tonight?
(The Cars)
Who’s gonna tell you when it’s too late?
Who’s gonna tell you things aren’t so great?
You can’t go on thinkin’ nothing’s wrong
Who’s going to drive you home tonight?
Who’s gonna pick you up when you fall?
Who’s gonna hang it up when you call?
Who’s gonna pay attention to your dreams?
Who’s gonna plug their ears when you scream?
You can’t go on thinkin’ nothing’s wrong
Who’s going to drive you home tonight?
Who’s gonna hold you down when you slip?
Who’s gonna come around when you break?
You can’t go on thinkin’ nothing’s wrong
Who’s going to drive you home tonight?

Tired of Toeing the Line

Baby, I’m tired of toeing the line

Don’t know why you want to jump on me

Baby, baby, baby, you’re makin’ me cry

Baby, I’m gonna find me someone new

Someone who will be true

And no more toeing the line

I know it’s all over ‘cuz I see the sign

Don’t let me waste your precious time

Baby, I’m tired of toeing the line

Don’t know why you want to jump on me

Baby, baby, baby, you’re makin’ me cry

If you want to get rid of me

Baby, baby, baby, you’re doing fine

I’m gonna put on my walkin’ shoes and leave you far behind

You’re rollin’ all over my soul so fine

You can’t fix the broken heart of mine

Baby, I’m tired of toeing the line

Don’t know why you want to jump on me

Baby, baby, baby, you’re makin’ me cry

(Rocky Burnett)

Rather than focusing on ways to free people so they can elevate themselves, liberalism instead concentrates on ways to subsidize people in their current misery.  Liberalism is embarrassed by success and prosperity because independent and free people do not need liberals--and above all, liberals need to be needed.  Otherwise, they'd have to find real work instead of careers in politics, entertainment, and  class warfare (the only kind of war in which the believe).  (Cal Thomas)

Christianity, with its denunciation of idolatry, its insistence on monotheism, and its strict moral code naturally creates  antagonism in the world.

(M. C. Tenney)

There are more important thing to do than to inquire into the traits of elite intellectuals engaged in various careerist pursuits in their narrow and pretty uninteresting circles. (Noam Chomsky)

"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"
The road is long, with many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where, who knows where
But I'm strong, strong enough to carry him
He ain't heavy - he's my brother

So on we go, his welfare is my concern
No burden is he to bare, we'll get there
For I know he would not encumber me
He ain't heavy - he's my brother

If I'm laden at all, I'm laden with sadness
That everyone's heart isn't filled with gladness of love for one another
It's a long long road from which there is no return
While we're on our way to there, why not share
And the load, it doesn't weigh me down at all
He ain't heavy - he's my brother
He ain't heavy - he's my brother, he's my brother, he's my brother

(B. Scott and B. Russell)

By commanding belief in matters not essentially religious or moral, science has kept making unbelievers.  Since it forces a choice, science deprives many of the chance to believe. (Jacques Barzun)

You'd better trust me!  I have the power to make you look like a bulldog when you wake up.

(Plastic surgeon to gangster Humphrey Bogart, seeking a new face as a way to beat the rap.)

Academics has no value, impact, or purpose.  (Philip Kennicott)

Being funny is in large part a con game practiced on oneself, a sort of self-confidence game.  It is much
like sexual potency.  Everything works fine as long as one avoids even considering that there might be
a problem. Once one starts to worry, everything stops functioning and the fear becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy. (William A. Henry III)

If he can fire one, I can FIRE ONE! (The torpedo is accidentally launched)
(Fatal words from the movie, The Bedford Incident)

Where there is power, evil is near.

The postmodern world is a world where people see themselves as belonging to the environment rather than over it or apart from it. A world distrustful of institutions, hierarchies, centralized bureaucracies and male dominated organizations. It is a world where networks and local grass roots activities take precedence over large scale structures and grand designs; a world in which the book age is giving way to the screen age; a world hungry for spirituality yet dismissive of systematized religion. It is a world in which image and reality are so deeply intertwined that it is difficult to draw the line between the two. (Dan Kimball)

The best employees are those who have a Ph.D: Poor, Hungry, & Driven (Rick Pitino)

But what am I?

An infant crying in the night

An infant crying for the light

And with no language but a cry

(Tennyson)

It is not we who are handling our affairs; we are being handles. (Martin Luther)

All those in hell chose it. (C.S. Lewis)

Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’, boy.

You know there ain’t no forgettin’.

He’s not hard to find—he leaves bodies behind where ever he goes.

Governments don’t live together, only people do.

(From the movie, Outlaw Josey Wales)

The ropes on your boat hang loose. The mast is not held firm. The sails are not spread open. (Isaiah)

Rainy day people always seem to know when it's time to call
Rainy day people don't talk
They just listen til they've heard it all
Rainy day lovers don't lie when they tell you
They've been down like you
Rainy day people don't mind if you're crying a tear or two
 
If you get lonely, all you really need is that rainy day love
Rainy day people all know there's no sorrow they can't rise above
Rainy day lovers don't love any others, that would not be kind
Rainy day people all know how it hangs on a piece of mind
 
Rainy day people always seem to know when you're feeling blue
High stepping strutters who land in the gutter sometime need one too
Take it or leave it, or try to believe it, if you've been down too long
Rainy day lovers don't hide love inside they just pass it on
(Gordon Lightfoot )

That dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard laid poor Jesse in his grave

I think the Union army had something to do with it. (Gen. George Pickett on why his charge at Gettysburg failed, as quoted by George Will).

Jackie Gleason as the sun was setting on his career:
I felt out of touch. I lost interest.
You no longer mix with people who are living real, struggling lives.
Your existence becomes artificial.
Those laughing faces no longer mean anything to you.
You are out of it and life takes its revenge.

Veni, Vidi, Vici.  I came.  I saw.  I conquered.  (Julius Caesar)

The family is the root of all emotion and emotion the root of all crime; this, and the complexity of people, means that justice is not always obtainable.

(S.J. Rozan)

National identity requires a collective work of amnesia. (Ernest Renan)

I’m an outsider by choice, but not truly. It’s the unpleasantness of the system that keeps me out. I’d rather be in, in a good system. That’s where my discontent comes from; being forced to choose to stay outside. My advice: Just keep movin’ straight ahead. Every now and then you find yourself in a different place. (George Carlin)

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not live. (Oscar Wilde)

It is easy to escape from business, if you will only despise the rewards of business. (Seneca)

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. (Samuel Butler The Younger)

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment. (Samuel Johnson)

If only we could say that comprehension establishes a link between men. Except, however, for a small elite who speak the same language, this is not the case, because, according to their culture and their intelligence, men give different meanings to the word ‘comprehend.’ An explanation that will satisfy one man will seem quite inadequate to another. (Lecomite Du Nouy)

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. (J. M. Barrie)

Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong and the final decisions are made in silent rooms. Tell him to be different from other people if it comes natural and easy being different. Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives. Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural. He will be lonely enough to have time for the work he knows as his own.” (Carl Sandburg)

The business of life is to go forward. (Samuel Johnson)

The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned with it, teachers and taught. (Henry Adams)

We ain’t what we wanna be, and we ain’t what we’re gonna be—but we ain’t what we wuz. (South Carolina Mountain Proverb)

And I would find myself and not an image… (William Butler Yeats)

If misery loves company, misery has company enough. (Thoreau)

He didn’t try to have sex with women because he was afraid he would have to talk to them afterwards.

What moves and delights me leaves the public indifferent, and what still continues to interest them holds no further attraction for me. (Igor Stravinsky)

The main problem narrows down to just one word—life (William Styron)

The good art of any age has always been the product of neurosis. (William Styron)

He no longer saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. (William Sydney Porter, O. Henry)

In an academic career instead of achieving any real freedom from preoccupation with petty details, I would only bog down in more petty details. You’ll find yourself, some twenty years from now, worrying about money, worrying about trying to meet your annual expenses on a salary no self-respecting plumber would be willing to work for. On top of that you’ll be all snarled up with campus and faculty politics, disillusioned with teaching, because for every one student who wants to learn anything you’ll run up against five thousand who are only there for the sake of a degree by which they hope to better themselves financially, and in general you’ll wind up a tired, cynical, disgusted old man, wondering why the devil you ever got yourself into such a cul-de-sac to begin with. (Artie Shaw)

What does it matter what we say about people? (Marlene Dietrich in Touch of Evil)

I’m an introvert at heart. And show business—even though I’ve loved it so much—has always been hard for me. (Roy Rogers)

Mothers should not be encouraging children to read, they should be encouraging children to question what they read. (George Carlin)

If they pay you, they own you.

How do you begin describing the life of a document which probably had dozens of authors and redactors, and whose highly diverse component parts were written down over a period of more than a thousand years? Throw in the notion that the book’s declared purpose is to describe a far longer process—the entire history of God’s relationship with man and creation. Finally add in the fact that over the past 2,000 years, the text has been endlessly reread in accordance with human society’s ever-changing needs, hopes, and fears. (The Economist magazine)

Never look back. Be aware of what’s behind you, but don’t look at it. (Bobby Darin)

Every step forward is made at the cost of mental and physical pain to someone. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

If the right one don’t get ya’, the left one will. (Tennessee Ernie Ford)

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. (Gandhi)

The more you do, the more you need to do. (Maureen Dowd)

I love American, but I don’t like it. When fascism come to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. Winter is not a season, it is an occupation. (Sinclair Lewis)

The Man in Black
You wonder why I always dress in black
Why you never see bright colors on my black and
Why my appearance seem to have a somber tone
Well, there's a reason for the things I have on

I wear the black for the poor and beaten down
living in the hopeless hungry side of town
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime
but is there because he is a victim of the times

I wear the black for those who have never read
or listened to the words Jesus said
about the road to happiness and love and charity
Why, you'd think he's talking straight to you and me

Well we're mighty fine I do suppose
in our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes
But just so we're reminded of those left back,
up front there ought to be a man in black

I wear it for the sick, lonely and old
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold
I wear the black in mourning for the lives that could have been
Each week we lose a hundred fine men

And I wear it for the hundreds who have died
Believing that the Lord was on their side
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died
Believing that we were all on their side

Well there's things that will never be right I know
And things need changing every where you go
But 'till we start to make a move to make a few things right
You'll never see me wear a suit of white

I've love to wear a rainbow every day
And tell the world everything is okay
But I'll try to carry a little darkness on my back
But 'till things are bright
I'm the man in black
(Johnny Cash)

Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.

Doc: In time you'll forget the bad part.  Matt Dillon: Yeah, one more thing to forget. (Gunsmoke)

To think is to add a flame to fire.
 Thinking is an instrument of destruction that deteriorates
our nerves and is the cause of our illnesses and death. (Honore de Balzac)

Great crossing, great divide (Steven Mackey)

Please, I’ve done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now? (Kurt Vonnegut)

There’s only two kinds of pain in life: discipline and regret. (Bill Curry)

Good people will do good thing and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things, that takes religion. For bad people to do good things, that also takes religion.

(Stephen Weinberg & Freeman Dyson)

In the abstract, war retains the objectives of politics: security, acquisition, deterrence, and the imposition of the national will. It raises the problem of murder to a level of such magnitude that murder ceases to be a problem and becomes an achievement. (Rod Macleish)

If Walls Could Talk (Little Milton)
If walls could talk
Then I’m sure you’d hear a lot of things
That would make you cry my dear
Ain’t you glad that walls don’t talk
If doors could tell who turned the knob
When he’s away on the job
Ain’t you glad, I know you ought to be glad,
That doors don’t tell
If cars could say who’s been inside
And who’s been takin’ for a ride
Ain’t you glad that cars don’t talk
If shoes could tell where they’ve been
When you claim you’re visiting a friend
Ain’t you glad shoes don’t tell
In a world of trouble we’d be
If things ever told about me
My love life would be through
‘Cause I’m guilty, how ‘bout you?
If things ever talked that way
There’s no tellin’ what they might say
So ain’t you glad, everybody ought to be glad
That things don’t talk
I’m so glad things don’t talk

In a society where millions seek the even-keel solace of pharmaceutical sanity, unhappiness isn't sexy.
(Philip Kennicott)

Philosophy will clip an angels wings
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line
Empty the haunted air and gnomed mine
Unweave a rainbow
(John Keats)

More people write poetry than read it. (George Carlin)

The Antichrist will come disguised as the great humanitarian. He will talk peace, prosperity, and plenty, not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves. He will explain guilt away psychologically, make men shrink in shame if their fellowmen say they are not broad-minded and liberal. He will spread the lie that men will never be better until they make society better.

There'll be a load of compromisin' on the road to my horizon.  (Larry Weiss)

What do you lose when your life becomes more valuable than other life in history? When your death is something you can’t accept? When pain makes you cower in fear? You lose what every human before you aspired to: the selfless desire to sacrifice for a future generation. (Timothy Querengesser)

Prisoners, abuse victims, addicts, and the mentally ill experience involuntary solitude. Hermits choose isolation for psychological reasons. Both types of solitude makes a statement about culture. (Sue Halpern)

University faculties suffer from the same political problems as the “small republics” described in Federalist 10: a motivated majority within the faculty finds it easy to monopolize decision-making and squeeze out the minorities. (Stephen Balch)

When the horse is dead, it’s time to dismount. (Rick Warren)

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. (Disederius Erasmus)

Dying is the way to understanding life.

(From the movie, Tuesdays with Maury)

Read about young people and despair for them.  They are in perpetual crisis.  Fat, lazy, and amoral.  Sexually promiscuous and drug-addicted.  Failed by a deteriorating education system and sent astray by society's dropping standards.  Explosive.  Aimless.  Spoiled and corrupted by materialism, television and violent video games.  Sullen and distant.  Armed.  (Economist magazine)

Every advance in communication brings us closer to people far away from us,
but insulates us from those nearest to us. (Daniel Boorstin)

“It (forgetting the past) never goes away.” (The Two Jakes)