Washington

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.

To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.
- All from George Washington, 1732 - 1799

About: George Washington was born in Virginia's Westmoreland County on 21 Feb in 1732. He learned surveying and worked in the frontier areas of Virginia until the French and Indian War. His abilities in leading troops earned the rank of lieutenant colonel at the age of 22. He served in the Virginia House of Burgesses, then as representative to both the First and Second Constitutional Conventions, the latter of which elected him unanimously as commander of the Continental forces in 1775. He went back to Mount Vernon after the war, but disappointed by the results of the early government he led the Virginia delegation to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia. When the new constitution was ratified, Washington became the first president. By all accounts, Washington was brilliant and capable, of good character, and would have much rather spent many more years as a Virginia gentleman had the British Colonial government been more reasonable.

Photography

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created.
- Edward Steichen, 1879 - 1973

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.
- Tony Benn

Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer, it is my task to reveal it if I can.
- Yousuf Karsh, 1908 - 2002

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
- Ansel Adams, 1902 - 1984

Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life.
- Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1908 - 2004

Coincidence

Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself, and know that everything in this life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, 1926 - 2004

Coincidences are spiritual puns.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874 - 1936

The myth is the public domain and the dream is the private myth. If your private myth, your dream, happens to coincide with that of the society, you are in good accord with your group. If it isn't, you've got a long adventure in the dark forest ahead of you.
- Joseph Campbell

Coincidence is a pimp and a cardsharper in ordinary fiction but a marvelous artist in the patterns of facts recollected by a non-ordinary memorist.
- Vladimir Nabokov, 1899 - 1977

Patience

A wise man does not try to hurry history. Many wars have been avoided by patience, and many have been precipitated by reckless haste.
- Adlai Ewing Stevenson, 1900 - 1965

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we are driven out of Paradise; because of impatience we cannot return.
- Franz Kafka, 1883 - 1924

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.
- Hyman G. Rickover, 1900 - 1986

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1533 - 1592

Patience is the companion of wisdom.
- Augustine of Hippo, 354 - 430

Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.
- Laurence J. Peter, 1919 - 1990

Love

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.
- Christian Nevell Bovee, 1820 - 1904

There is time for work. And there is time for love. That leaves no other time.
- Coco Chanel, 1883 - 1971

Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.
- David Grayson

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it.... It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
- Erica Jong

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.
- Katharine Hepburn, 1907 - 2003

There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love, as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning.
- Vincent van Gogh, 1853 - 1890

~~~ HAPPY VALENTINES DAY ~~~

Farming

No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
- Booker Taliaferro Washington, 1856 - 1915

To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.
- Charles Dudley Warner, 1829 - 1900

A garden is evidence of faith. It links us with all the misty figures of the past who also planted and were nourished by the fruits of their planting.
- Gladys Taber, 1899 - 1980

On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice.
- Willa Silbert Cather, 1873 - 1947

The study of tools as well as of books should have a place in the public schools. Tools, machinery, and the implements of the farm should be made familiar to every boy, and suitable industrial education should be furnished for every girl.
- Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 1822 - 1893

Ronald Reagan

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

Isn't it strange that ... people build walls to keep an enemy out, and there's only one part of the world and one philosophy where they have to build walls to keep their people in?

Most [tax revisions] didn't improve the system, they made it more like Washington itself: complicated, unfair, cluttered with gobbledygook and loopholes designed for those with the power and influence to hire high-priced legal and tax advisers.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

To sit back hoping that someday, someway, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last - but eat you he will.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
- All from Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1911 - 2004

About: Ronald Wilson Reagan was born at Tampico, Illinois on 6 Feb in 1911. Based on an early motion picture role he was called "The Gipper." Based on his easy resonance with audiences he was sometimes called "The Great Communicator."

Horace Greeley

Fame is vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.

The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages.

Morality and religion are but words to those who crouch behind barrels in the street to cut the icy blasts, or fish in the gutters for the means to sustain life.

The Republic needed to be passed through chastening, purifying fires of adversity and suffering; so these came and did their work and the verdure of a new national life springs greenly, luxuriantly, from their ashes.

Wisdom is never dear, provided the article be genuine.

Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it.
- All from Horace Greeley, 1811 - 1872

About: Horace Greeley was born at Amherst, New Hampshire on 3 Feb in 1811. At eleven he was apprenticed to a printer, after his apprenticeship ended he moved to New York in 1831 and worked for a string of newspapers before founding the New York Tribune in 1841. He edited the Tribune for thirty years, reaching a large local audience daily plus another million Americans with his weekly edition. His editorials in favor of school reforms and westward expansion were mixed with opposition to drinking, smoking, slavery, gambling, prostitution, and flogging in the Navy.

Franklin Roosevelt

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
- All from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882 - 1945

About: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd president of the United States and the only four-term president in history, was born at Hyde Park, New York on 30 Jan in 1882. Whether revered or reviled, the creator of the "New Deal" is certainly one of the most influential presidents in the country's history.

Challenger

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, or a new country.
- Anaïs Nin, 1903 - 1977

I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.
- Christa McAuliffe, 1948 - 1986

We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.
- Ida R. Wylie

Adventure isn't hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day-to-day obstacles of life: facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown and, in the process, discovering our own unique potential.
- John Amatt

If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.
- Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, 1926 - 1967

Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhiliration of victory.
- George S. Patton, 1885 - 1945

About: Challenger - Space Shuttle Mission 51-L lifted off from Pad B at Cape Canaveral at 11:38 am Eastern on 28 Jan in 1986. It was the 25th Shuttle launch, the 10th for Challenger (OV-099). Challenger had made 987 orbits of the earth and spent 69 days in space in her first nine flights. On board were Francis R. Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ellison S. Onizuka, Ronald E. McNair, Gregory B. Jarvis, and Sharon Christa McAuliffe. The mission ended in a fireball 46,000 feet above the Atlantic, 73 seconds into the flight. Christa McAuliffe, the schoolteacher who trained and joined the mission as Payload Specialist 2, had as her motto, "Reach for the Stars." So should we all.