Wealth

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
- Andrew Carnegie, 1835 - 1919

Wealth stays with us a little moment if at all: only our characters are steadfast, not our gold.
- Euripides, 484 - 406 BC

Nothing more clearly show how little God esteems his gift to men of wealth, money, position and other worldly goods, than the way he distributes these, and the sort of men who are most amply provided with them.
- Jean de La Bruyère, 1645 - 1696

Wealth is not without its advantages, and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

The poor man wishes to conceal his poverty, and the rich man his wealth: the former fears lest he be despised, the latter lest he be plundered.
- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1830 - 1916

The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth which it prevents you from achieving.
- Russell Greene

Football

In life, as in football, you don't go far unless you know where the goalposts are.
- Arnold H. Glasgow

Being in politics is like being a football coach; you have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
- Eugene McCarthy

Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings.
- George F. Will

In life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is: hit the line hard.
- Theodore Roosevelt, 1858 - 1919

In baseball, when a player scores, you cheer. In football, when a player scores, you look for flags.
- Thomas Boswell

If a man watches three football games in a row he should be declared legally dead.
- Erma Louise Bombeck, 1927 - 1996

George S. Patton

A good battle plan that you act on today can be better than a perfect one tomorrow.

All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty.

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

I want you to remember that no son of a bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory.

Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

Always do everything you ask of those you command.

Better to fight for something than live for nothing.

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

I do not fear failure. I only fear the "slowing up" of the engine inside of me which is pounding, saying, "Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?"

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

By perseverance, study, and eternal desire, any man can become great.

Do more than is required of you

I am a soldier, I fight where I am told, and I win where I fight.

Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't.

Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men

Say what you mean and mean what you say

You’re never beaten until you admit it

An Army is a team; lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap

- All from George S. Patton, 1885 - 1945

About:

George Smith Patton was born at San Gabriel, California on 11 Nov in 1885 in a family with deep military roots. After graduating from West Point, Patton represented the US in the pentathlon competition of the 1912 Olympic Games at Stockholm. He stayed in Europe for several years, studying and teaching sword skills. Patton fought on horseback against Pancho Villa, and was the first member of the US Tank Corps. He advocated an expanded role for the new armored cavalry, but Congress didn't provide the funds he wanted until the German Blitzkrieg made his point. A demanding and inspiring military leader, it's appropriate that his birthday coincides with Veterans Day (US) or Remembrance Day (Canada).

Doubt

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.
- Christian Nestell Bovee, 1820 - 1904

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
- René Descartes, 1596 - 1650

If a man will begin in certainties he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin in doubts he shall end in certainties.
- Francis Bacon, 1561 - 1626

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.
- François Marie Arouet (Voltaire), 1694 - 1778

Give me the benefit of your convictions, if you have any, but keep your doubts to yourself, for I have enough of my own.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749 - 1832

I suppose it is much more comfortable to be mad and not know it than to be sane and have one's doubts.
- G. B. Burgin

Normal

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
- Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960

Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite; more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility.
- George Santayana, 1863 - 1921

Those who misrepresent the normal experiences of life, who decry being controversial, who shun risk, are the enemies of the American way of life, whatever the piety of their vocal professions and the patriotic flavor of their platitudes.
- Henry M. Wriston

The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.
- Joe Ancis

Television emphasizes the deviant so that it becomes normal.... It's become more and more difficult for people to know the difference between fame and infamy.
- Vicki Abt

Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine.
- Whoopi Goldberg

Whiskey

I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.
- Abraham Lincoln, 1809 - 1865

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenaged boys.
- P. J. O'Rourke

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.
- Thomas Alva Edison, 1847 - 1931

The best audience is intelligent, well-educated, and a little drunk.
- Alben William Barkley, 1877 - 1956

The hard part about being a bartender is figuring out who is drunk and who is just stupid.
- Richard Braunstein

Great fury, like great whiskey, requires long fermentation.
- Truman Capote, 1924 - 1984

Rain

After three days men grow weary of a wench, a guest, and rainy weather.
- Benjamin Franklin, 1706 - 1790

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots.
- Frank A. Clark

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
- Jerry Chin

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882

In winter, when the dismal rain
Comes down in slanting lines,
And Wind, that grand old harper, smote
His thunder-harp of pines.
- Alexander Smith, 1830 - 1867

It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.
- Howard Ruff

Election

We always want the best man to win an election. Unfortunately, he never runs.

-Will Rogers

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is an election going on all the time... the Lord votes for you and Satan votes against you, and you must cast the deciding vote.

-Anonymous

Sooner will a camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be "discovered" by an election

-Adolf Hitler

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.

-Bill Vaughan

Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.

-Author Unknown

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

-George Jean Nathan

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.

-Robert Byrne

I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.

-Alexander Woollcott

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.

- Henry Louis Mencken, 1880 - 1956

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.

- Otto von Bismarck, 1815 - 1898

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

- Lily Tomlin

J. B. S. Haldane

If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation it would appear that God has a special fondness for stars and beetles.

This is my prediction for the future - whatever hasn't happened will happen and no one will be safe from it.

I have never yet met a healthy person who worried very much about his health, or a really good person who worried much about his own soul.

We do not know, in most cases, how far social failure and success are due to heredity, and how far to environment. But environment is the easier of the two to improve.

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible, though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

If human beings could be propagated by cutting, like apple trees, aristocracy would be biologically sound.

A fairly bright boy is far more intelligent and far better company than the average adult

Science is vastly more stimulating to the imagination than are the classics
- All from J. B. S. Haldane, 1892 - 1964

About:

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was born at Edinburgh, Scotland on 5 Nov in 1892. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, but possibly most important is the fact that he assisted his scientist father in the lab from age eight. His primary work was in genetics, being the first to provide a mathematical basis for Mendelian genetics and for Darwin's evolution. He taught at Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of London. In 1957 he became disgusted with policies of the British government and moved to India where he spent the rest of his life.

Sandwich

The small businessman is smart; he realizes there's no free lunch. On the other hand, he knows where to go to get a good inexpensive sandwich.
- Adam Osborne, 1939 - 2003

Even a modestly competent district attorney can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.
- Sol Wachtler

Too few people understand a really good sandwich.
- James Beard

It has been well said that a hungry man is more interested in four sandwiches than four freedoms.
- Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., 1902 - 1985

In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe. It is a place of the most wondrous and gratifying possibility, and beautiful, too. And it was all done in about the time it takes to make a sandwich.
- Bill Bryson

Sonny, true love is the greatest thing in the world - except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is lean and the tomato is ripe.
- William Goldman, The Princess Bride

About:
John Montagu was born on 3 Nov in 1718 and succeeded his grandfather to become the Fourth Earl of Sandwich when he was ten. He held a number of significant political positions, three times serving as First Lord of the Admiralty, notably including the American Revolution. He was a patron of Captain James Cook, who named quite a few things in the south Pacific, including the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) after the Earl. Depending on whether you believe the traditional biography (which holds that Montagu was too busy at the admiralty to leave for lunch, so he had meal of salt beef between two slices of bread at his desk) or the rumors of his detractors (that he often ate this meal at the casino to avoid interrupting the games), what we know as the sandwich was definitely named after him.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sandwich

Solitude

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
- Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.
- May Sarton, 1912 - 1995

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.
- Thomas Alva Edison, 1847 - 1931

Solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition...
- Amelia Barr, 1831 - 1919

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.
- Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788 - 1860

If you can't stand solitude, perhaps others find you boring as well.
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

Fear

If fear alters behavior, you're already defeated.
- Brenda Hammond

Many of our fears are tissue paper thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.
- Brendan Francis

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
- Eric Hoffer, 1902 - 1983

He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1533 - 1592

To fight fear, act. To increase fear - wait, put off, postpone.
- David Joseph Schwartz

Do not fear mistakes, there are none.
- Miles Davis, 1926 - 1991

Time

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.
- Andrew Jackson, 1767 - 1845

Lost time is like a run in a stocking. It always gets worse.
- Ann Morrow Lindbergh, 1906 - 2001

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
- Carl Sandburg, 1878 - 1967

Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.
- Augustine of Hippo, 354 - 430

The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time.
- Sydney Smiles

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
- Theodore Roosevelt, 1858 - 1919

Manners

Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.
- Clarence Thomas

Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882

The test of good manners is to be patient with bad ones.
- Solomon Ibn Gabirol, 1022 - 1058

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
- Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826

Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculed in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.
- William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
- François Marie Arouet (Voltaire), 1694 - 1778

Desiderius Erasmus

If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception, and ignorance, but it isn't - it's human.

Nowadays the rage for possession has got to such a pitch that there is nothing in the realm of nature, whether sacred or profane, out of which profit cannot be squeezed.

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.

Concealed talent brings no reputation.

Don't give your advice before you are called upon.

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

The desire to write grows with writing.

Prevention is better than cure.

Time takes away the grief of men.

Women, can't live with them, can't live without them.

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
- All from Desiderius Erasmus, 1466 - 1536

About:
Desiderius Erasmus was born Gerrit Gerritszoon at Rotterdam, Holland on 26 Oct in 1466 (1469?), probably. (There is no dispute over the date, the year is uncertain.) His parents weren't married, and he was orphaned by the plague at age thirteen, but managed to acquire a broad education and had made a reputation for himself throughout Renaissance Europe by age 30. He was the frequent guest and correspondent of kings, princes, the notable philosophers and theologians of his day, as well as being well connected with the Roman Catholic hierarchy which he later attacked. He went from humble, in fact disgraced, beginnings to fame and fortune entirely on the basis of his intellect and wit.

Picasso

Painting isn't a question of sensibility; it's a matter of seizing the power, taking over from nature, not expecting her to supply you with information and good advice.

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

Every positive value has its price in negative terms, and you never see anything very great which is not, at the same time, horrible in some respect. The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Give me a museum and I'll fill it.

Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

Everything you can imagine is real.

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Action is the foundational key to all success.

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.
- All from Pablo Picasso, 1881 - 1973

About:

Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisma Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso was born at Malaga, Spain on 25 Oct in 1881. Legend says that young Picasso once painted a picture so compelling that his artist father gathered up his own brushes and gave them to the son, never to paint again. He pursued, many would say mastered, a dizzying sequence of artistic styles and media. His painting, sculpture, pottery, and printmaking had a profound effect on the world of art, his comments along the way are fairly profound as well.

Little Things

If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.
- Anita Koddick

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the more important.
- Arthur Conan Doyle, 1858 - 1930

The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God.
- Blaise Pascal, 1623 - 1662

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
- Henry David Thoreau, 1817 - 1862

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.
- Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, 1694 - 1773