Today we remember Nelson Mandela and Hunter S Thompson, two brothers who could not possibly be from the same mold!
"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking." - H. L. Mencken, with thanks to Will
"Politicians wish to move great masses of people. We do not need to move great masses of anyone. We need to let the bitterness of the moves we have already accomplished die down." - Stephen Gaskin, Sunbeams
"All the church has ever needed to rise from the dead is memory, bread, wine, and Holy Spirit – that, and care for the world that is at least equal to her care for her own preservation. Where church growth has eclipsed church depth, it is possible to hear very little about the world except as a rival for the human resources needed by the church for her own survival." - Barbara Brown Taylor
"Many culprits have been fingered for the housing crisis we’re in today: unscrupulous mortgage lenders, dishonest borrowers, under-regulated financial institutions. And all of them played a role. But too little attention has been paid to the most fundamental cause, the same one that was at the root of the many booms and busts that Sakolski chronicled years ago: the contagious optimism, seemingly impervious to facts, that often takes hold when prices are rising. Bubbles are primarily social phenomena; until we understand and address the psychology that fuels them, they’re going to keep forming. And unless we apply that understanding to the bubble we’re trying to recover from, we risk calamity. " - Robert J Shiller, The Atlantic
"An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today." - Educator Laurence J Peter, The Week
[To pastors from Switzerland]: "If you want to understand what an American denomination is, you should attend a big family reunion in west Texas. People will come from miles away, hug and kiss and catch up on what everyone has been doing in the last year. Everybody goes to church in the morning, where long prayers are said and beloved hymns are sung. Then there is a big picnic with lots of food, and the children head for the playground. An occasional fight breaks out, but no one is seriously hurt. A few siblings get into an argument about inheritance and who has a claim to what. The day comes to an end and a date is set for next year’s reunion." - Martin Marty, Christian Century
"The Everglades is a test; if we pass, we may get to keep the planet." - Saying, quoted by Michael Grunwald in Time
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting ink." - George Orwell, Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac
"How can you possibly have an international agreement that's effective unless countries like China and India are not full participants?" - George W Bush, Camp David, Apr 19 08
Jim/Jul 18 08
...
HB, Phyllis Diller! A quotable: "Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight!"
Do NOT let this opportunity pass you by: "As a teenager, when a friend first told me about the rapture, in which Christians will be miraculously transported to heaven while sinners remain on earth to suffer a variety of tribulations, I was quite sure that, sinner that I was, I was destined to be the one member of my family and friends who would surely be ‘left behind.’ My psychology teacher later assured me that considering oneself the ‘chief of sinners,’ as the apostle Paul did, was a normal response, since we each know our own peccadilloes far more intimately than we know those of others. Apparently, however, not everyone shares this proclivity. For forty dollars a year, those who are relatively assured of their own salvation can now leave a final e-mail to less fortunate loved ones who might be left behind during the rapture. A new web site, Youvebeenleftbehind.com, allows users to compose a final message that will be sent to up to sixty-two recipients, six days after the rapture occurs. These messages might be used to pass on information, such as bank account numbers and passwords, but the site stresses the opportunity to leave a letter begging those who remain to accept Christ, a last chance with one's loved ones to ‘snatch them from the flames.;" - Noreen Herzfeld, from Martin Marty’s Sightings
"We understand and believe vastly more than we know." - Blaise Pascal, Sierra
"Our gizmos are a tethering technology, a new kind of apron string, strong albeit wireless, a safety net woven a bit too tight. When colleges report kids explaining their lateness to class with the excuse that their mother forgot their wake-up call, when a professor find undergraduates communicating with parents more then 10 times a week, I look back on my once-a-week calls home to the parents I was very close to and wonder if this really counts as progress. Maybe it wouldn’t be bad to practice distance, not just physical but psychological; let our kids take a walk alone in the woods, maybe do the same ourselves, and relish the fresh conversations we’ll get to have when we are together again." - Nancy Gibbs, Time
"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up for work." - Chuck Close, The Week
"If crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part, do they?" - George Carlin [Listening, W and Cheney?]
"Life is a horizontal fall." - Jean Cocteau, Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac
And again: "More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing nothing, than by believing too much." - Phineas Taylor Barnum, the Writer’s Almanac[
[Like the reluctant-to-dance kids at the recent wedding he attended]: "I’m at the edge of the dance floor, this time at the heavenly marriage feast, and I’m holding onto my chair because it’s all I know to do. But here comes Jesus, outstretched hand inviting me onto the floor, winking and laughing, cajoling, silly, even willing to let me stand on his feet so he can teach me how to dance." - Bradley Schmeling, Christian Century [As you can tell by this theology (?), this ELCA gay pastor, in a committed relationship with the man he dearly loves, is not fit to serve Jesus, right? SO wrong!]
"There's no question this is a major human disaster that requires a strong response from the Chinese government, which is what they're providing, but it also responds a compassionate response from nations to whom - that have got the blessings, good blessings of life, and that's us." - George W Bush, on relief efforts after a Chinese earthquake, WDC, Jun 6 08
Jim/Jul 17 08
Comments