Against
the wind. (Bob Seger)
Go
straight ahead
Means
nothing to the blind.
All's
straight ahead
That
does not lie behind.
(Virginia
Hamilton Adair)
If you can’t
do something differently, don’t do it. (David Bar-Illian)
What do I
ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince. (Lucian
Freud)
I wear
black because I like it. It's my symbol of rebellion--against a stagnant status
quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are
closed to others' ideas. (Johnny Cash)
It’s
better to wear out than to rust out.
I'm
always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning
and look for something creative to do with my life. (Miles Davis)
If
anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change. (Miles Davis)
That was
my gift--having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a
chemistry and then letting them go, letting them play what they knew and above
it. (Miles Davis)
How come
when I need a pair of hands in the factory, I always get a human being as well?
(Henry Ford)
Good,
better, best, never let it rest until your good is better, and your better,
best.
Do it the
hard way and it’s easy sailing
Do it
the hard way and it’s hard to lose
Only
the soft way has a chance of losing
You
have to choose. (Rogers & Hammerstein)
Mend the
break, kill the snake, and conquer everything you undertake.
Life
is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. (John Lennon)
I'm
not going to get out of this world alive. (Hank Williams)
I
won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, I won't be laid a hand upon. I don't do
these things to other people, and I require the same from them.
(John Wayne in The
Shootist)
Companies
with too many "me too" products call me for a seminar on
innovativeness. The moment I walk into the meeting room, I discover why they're
in a rut: 150 people sit there, 147 of whom are white, male, and around 48
years old, and 144 are wearing lime-colored polyester golf trousers. (Tom
Peters)
Fourscore
and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation,
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal. (Abraham Lincoln)
So send I
you to labor unrewarded, to serve unpaid, unloved, unknown
To
bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing, so I send you to toil for me alone.
So send
I you to bind the bruised and broken, over wandering souls to work, to weep, to
wake
To
bear the burdens of a world aweary, so send I you to suffer for my sake.
So
send I you to leave your life's ambition, to self will resign
So I
send you to lose your life in Mine.
So
send I you to hearts made hard by hatred, to eyes made blind because they will
not see.
So
send I you to taste of
When asked if there
was any cure for his final illness, Cash replied, “no, I don’t think so. But that’s alright. There’s no cure for life either.”
Imagine
there's no countries
Nothing
to kill or die for
Imagine
all the people
Living
for the day
Imagine
all the people
Living
life in peace
Imagine
no possessions,
No
need for greed or hunger
Imagine
all the people
Sharing
all the world
A
brotherhood of man
(John
Lennon)
We
are the invisible ones, the People of the Sky, the people of dreams whose
voices cannot be bound by pain. We are the people of prayers, who stand
small before the Creator, who entreat him, so that the strand of time that
holds us to eternity might not be cut and our words slip into silence.
(DebraCalling/Thunder)
Leadership
is getting outside your comfort zone. (Charles Olsen)
Some
Other Stuff (title of jazz album by Gracun Moncur III)\
Be
regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in
your work. (Gustave Flaubert)
Born to
be alive.
Just
a still town girl on a Saturday night, lookin' for the fight of her life
In the real-time world no one sees her at all, they all say she's crazy
Locking rhythms to the beat of her heart, changing woman into life
She has danced into the danger zone, when a dancer becomes a dance
It can cut you like a knife, if the gift becomes the fire
On a wire between will and what will be
She's a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
She's a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
On the ice-build iron sanity is a place most never see
It's a hard warm place of mystery, touch it, but can't hold it
You work all your life for that moment in time, it could come or pass you by
It's a push of the world, but there's always a chance
If the hunger stays the night
There's a cold connective heat, struggling, stretching for defeat
Never stopping with her head against the wind
She's a maniac, maniac, I sure know
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
She's a maniac, maniac, I sure know
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
(Michael Sembelo)
Ty
Cobb would have climbed a mountain to punch an echo.
I was about as
relaxed as a bug in a roach motel. (Johnny Cash)
He altered the band,
but the band didn’t alter him.
(Whitney Balliett on
jazz saxophonist Lester Young)
"It won't be the same without you around
here." "It's always the same around here."
(Frank Sinatra upon his retirement from the bureaucratic NYPD
in the movie, The First Deadly Sin)
You don’t
know me but you don’t like me.
You
say you care less how I feel.
But
how many of you that sit there and judge me
Have
ever walked the streets of
Women
have to accomplish twice as much as men in order to get half the credit, but
fortunately it’s easy for women to do.
I don’t
seek, I just find. (Picasso)
He's a
real nowhere man
Sitting
in his nowhere land
Making
all his nowhere plans
For
nobody
Doesn't
have a point of view
Knows
not where he's going to
Isn't
he a bit like you and me?
(Lennon
& McCartney)
Geniuses
are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they
most want to do. (W.H. Auden)
Shane:
A gun is a tool, no better or no worse than any other tool.
A gun
is as good or bad as the man using it. Remember that.
**********
Shane:
So, you're Jack Wilson.
Jack
Wilson: What's that mean to you, Shane?
Shane:
I've heard about you.
Shane:
I've heard that you're a low-down Yankee lier.
**********
Little
Joe: Was that him, Shane? Was that
Shane:
That was Wilson, all right, and he was fast, fast on the draw.
**********
Little
Joe: Shane, come back, come back, Shane! I don't want you to leave! Shane!
(From
the movie, Shane, starring Alan Ladd)
Ours is Christian
army, so he said
A regiment of men who
led
And ours is A
Christian navy added he
Who sailed a thunder
junk upon the sea
Better they know than
men unwarlike do
What is an army and a
navy too
Pray God there may be
sent them by-and-by
The knowledge what a
Christain is, and why,
For somewhat lamely
the conception runs
Of a brass-buttoned
Jesus firing guns
(Ambrose Bierce)
The soil of peace is thickly sown with the seeds of war.
(Ambrose Pierce0
Ambrose Bierce adhered to the ruling principle that white is
black.
Bierce dramatized the unfriendliness of fate; the purposeful
malignancy of coincidence; the uselessness of glory; the hopelessness of hope;
the cowardice of bravery; the grief of love and brotherhood; the failure of
philosophy; the deceptiveness of human ideals; the perversion of honor; the
cruelty of loyal obedience; and all the baneful world of war.
(Ernest Jerome Hopkins)
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)
AMBROSE BIERCE: The Devil’s Dictionary
ABORIGINES: Persons of little worth
found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to
cumber—they fertilize.
ACHIEVEMENT: The death of endeavor and
the birth of disgust.
ACTUALLY: Perhaps; possibly
AFFLICTION: An acclimating process
preparing the soul for another bitter world.
APPLAUD: The echo of a platitude
ARREST: God made the world in six days
as was arrested on the seventh.
CHRISTIAN: One who follows the
teachings of Christ in sor far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
CONSERVATIVE: A statesman who is
enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal, who wishes to
replace them with others.
CONVENT: A place of retirement for
women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the vice of idleness.
CORPORATION: An ingenious device for
obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
CYNIC: Someone with faulty vision who
sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
EGOTIST: A person of low taste, more
interested in himself than in me.
EDUCATION: That which discloses to the
wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
FAITH: Belief without evidence in what
is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.
FAMOUS: Conspicuously miserable.
IDLENESS: A model farm where the devil
experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
IMMIGRANT: An unenlightened person who
thinks one country is better than another.
IMMORALITY: A toy which people cry for, and on their knees
apply for, dispute, contend and lie for, and if allowed would eternally die
for.
LEARNING: The kind of ignorance
distinguishing the studious.
MOUTH: In man, the gateway to the
soul; in women, the outlet of the heart.
MYTHOLOGY: The body of a primitive
people’s beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so
forth, as distinguished from the true accounts it invents later.
NON-COMBATANT: A dead Quaker.
ONCE: Enough
PATRIOTISM: The dupe of statesmen and
the tool of conquering.
PEACE: In international affairs, a
period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
PHILANTHROPIST: A rich old gentleman
who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his picket.
PHILOSOPHY: A route of many roads leading
from nowhere to nothing.
POLITICS: A strife of interests
masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for
private advantage.
POSITIVE: Mistaken at the top of one’s
voice.
PROPHECY: The art and practice of
selling one’s credibility for future delivery.
REALITY: The nucleus of a vacuum.
RELIGION: A daughter of Hope and Fear,
explaining to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable.
ROAD: A strip of land along which one
may pass from where it is too tiresome to be where it is futile to go.
RUM: A fiery liquor that produces
madness in total abstainers.
SCRIPTURES: The sacred books of our
holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which
all other faiths are based.
UGLINESS: A gift of the gods to
certain women, entailing virtue without humility.
ULTIMATUM : In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to
concessions.
YEAR: A period of 365 disappointments.
Better late than before anyone has
invited you.
Of two evils, choose the least.
Where there’s a will, there’s a won’t.
What is worth doing is worth asking
somebody to do it.
Half a loaf is much better than a
whole one if there is much else to eat.