tuesdays with morrie quotes

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. ~John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding



We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents. ~Justice William J. Brennan, for the Majority US Supreme Court Decision, 3 July 1989



You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. ~Albert Einstein



If a man could have just half of his wishes, he would double his troubles. ~Benjamin Franklin



A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings. ~William Ralph Inge



A wise man never loses anything if he have himself. ~Michel de Montaigne, translated



There is in all animals a sense of duty that man condescends to call instinct. ~Robert Brault, robertbrault.com~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com



Have a very good reason for everything you do. ~Laurence Olivier Have children while your parents are still young enough to take care of them. ~Rita Rudner Have cognition before ignition. ~Author Unknown



Scars are tattoos with better stories. ~From a Toyota advertisement in Sports Illustrated magazine, 3 June 2002



My message to businessmen of this country when they go abroad on business is that there is one thing above all they can take with them to stop them catching AIDS, and that is the wife. ~Edwina Currie My message to businessmen of this country when they go abroad on business is that there is one thing above all they can take with them to stop them catching AIDS, and that is the wife. ~Edwina Currie, quoted in The Observer, 15 February 1987



You know you live in Phoenix when the cold-water faucet is hotter than the hot-water faucet. ~Author Unknown



A weed is but an unloved flower. ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox



"In good prose (says Schlegel) every word should be underlined!" that is, every word should be the right one; and then no one would be righter than another. There are no italics in Plato. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827



In the Middle Ages, they had guillotines, stretch racks, whips and cahins. Nowadays, we have a much more effective torture device called the bathroom scale. ~Stephen Phillips



Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one? ~George Bernard Shaw



Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done. Today we are called once more - and it is time for our generation to answer that call. For that is our unyielding faith - that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. ~Barack Obama, Announcement for President, 2007 Feb 10, Springfield, Illinois



In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog. ~Edward Hoagland



None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible. ~Henry Ford, Sr.



We can't afford to be so worried about losing the next election that we lose the battles we owe to the next generation. The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result. And that's a risk we can't take. ~Barack Obama, 2007 Dec 27, Des Moines, Iowa



We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong. ~Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart, 1941