| 27 March, 2009 |
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Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat. Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known. Two people kissing always look like fish. Life is good, if you like that sort of thing. Without an adequate theory, reality is irrelevant. There are times when one would like to end the whole human race, and finish the farce. I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not. Being in a ship is like being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it. Be as radical as reality. ...it is as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you. No president in history has been more vilified or was more vilivied during the time he was President than Lincoln. Those who knew him, his secretaries, have written that he was deeply hurt by what was said about him and drawn about him, but on the other hand, Lincoln had the great strength of character never to display it, always able to stand tall and strong and firm no matter how harsh or unfair the criticism might be. These elements of greatness, of course, inspire us all today. Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it. We had parties that Nero would have been ashamed to attend. More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to utter hopelessness and despair, the other to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to choose correctly. If you take a dog which is starving and feed him and make him prosperous, that dog will not bite you. This is the primary difference between a dog and a man. Genius is of no country. Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them. Life is either always a tight-rope or a featherbed. Give me a tight-rope. The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals. Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived. No normal man ever fell in love after thirty when the kidneys begin to disintegrate. The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be its parent. Was all this bloodshed and deceit - from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro the Puritans - a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery to civilization? Was Morison right in burying the story of genocide inside a more important story of human progress? Perhaps a persuasive argument can be made - as it was made by Stalin when he killed pesants for industrial progress in the Soviet Union, as it was made by Churchill explaining the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and Truman explaining Hiroshima. But how can the judgement be made if the benefits and losses cannot be balanced because the losses are either unmentioned or mentioned quickly? Son, in war times it is not safe to think unless one travels with the mob. Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight. The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference. Divorces are made in heaven. The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back. First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint a second time. Of children as of procreation - the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable. For the first year of marriage I had basically a bad attitude. I tended to place my wife underneath a pedestal. A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other. The major sin is the sin of being born. A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. I did not attend his funeral, but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved it. I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles. The 100% American is 99% an idiot. Speculations and loans in foreign fields are likely to bring us into war... The war-for-profit group has counterfeited patriotism. America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences. There are some defeats more triumphant than victories. Americans are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging. Marriage is not merely sharing the fettucini, but sharing the burden of finding the fettucini restaurant in the first place. Everything you see I owe to spaghetti. Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other. My father and he had one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether. When a book and a head collide and there is a hollow sound, is it always from the book? |
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