Libertine: On the Prowl

Vidi, vici, veni -- I saw, I conquered, I came. _______________________________________________________________

Saturday Quotes

07:06, 2008-May-31 .. Posted in quotes .. 3 comments .. Link

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
--Nikita Khrushchev

Some things never change

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
--Wilson Mizner

Question everything!

Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.
--Wilson Mizner

Stupidity is painful

It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it.
--Henry Allen

Isn't that the truth.

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.
--Sir William Bragg

Think outside the box.

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
--Elizabeth Taylor

I agree.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
--Herbert Spencer

Wisdom comes from trial and error

Some Interesting Quotes

08:52, 2008-Apr-1 .. Posted in quotes .. 4 comments .. Link

My ass is worn out tonight and I'm too tired to concentrate on writing anything, so I leave you with a list of interesting quotes.

A "Normal" person is the sort of person that might be designed by a committee. You know, "Each person puts in a pretty color and it comes out gray."
~Alan Sherman

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
~Dr. Seuss

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. ~J.K. Galbraith

Before you can break out of prison, you must first realize you're locked up. ~Author Unknown

I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.
~Fritz Perls

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it - even if I have said it - unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
~Buddha

Our concern must be to live while we're alive... to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.
~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity.
~Thomas Szasz

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
-- JFK

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
-- W. Somerset Maugham

Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.
-- Remy De Gourmont

Virtue is its own punishment.
- Aneurin Bevan

Quotes and Comments

10:38, 2008-Feb-1 .. Posted in quotes .. 5 comments .. Link

I'm feeling a bit under the weather today, so I leave you with some quotes and comments

I feel like a mosquito in a nudist camp -- I know what I'm supposed to do,
but I don't know where to start!
--Unknown

I always know where to start. It's knowing when to stop that's my problem!

I keep reading this book about anti-gravity and for some reason..... I just
can't seem to put it down
--Unknown

This one would make a good tag line.

If you don't like the answer, don't ask the question.
--Unknown

This reminds me of when I'd be on desk duty at the police station and after I'd tell them something they didn't want to hear, they'd ask to talk to someone else.

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
--Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

Talk about being wrong in a big way!

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
--Ken Olson, 1977

I'll bet he's embarrassed now.

Time is money, money is the root of all evil, and knowledge is power. Therefore, procrastination is the key to world peace.
--Unknown

Works for me!

I don't need cybersex -- AOL goes down on me all the time!
--AOL user

I've never used AOHell, so I couldn't tell you if that was true.

Its not the boulders in my path, but the pebbles in my shoe that really sends me over the edge.
--Unknown

It's the nit-picky small annoyances constantly plaguing me than get me down most often.

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.
--Doug Larson

Why is it that everything that tastes good is bad for you?

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
— Dr. Seuss

My friends love me for who I am, not what I could be.

Quotes and Comments

11:29, 2007-Dec-5 .. Posted in quotes .. 5 comments .. Link

If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.
--Lane Kirkland

How hard someone has to work is usually inversely proportional to how much they get paid.

Always be smarter than the people who hire you.
--Lena Horne

This has always been true for me, as they don't apparently hire supervisors for their intelligence.

I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.
--G.K. Chesterton

Dogs are a lot more fun than the reverse.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
--Thomas Jefferson

One would think that if God exists, then we were given the power of reasoning for a purpose.

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.
--Winston Churchill

Better to have fewer, basic laws that are applied with discretion and common sense, than thousands of laws that micromanage every iota of our existence.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
--Cicero

And those whose room it is tend to be boring and mundane as well.

No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
--Abraham Lincoln

Nothing better than make up sex!

Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.
--Groucho Marx

Isn't that the truth!

I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican.
--Barbara Ehrenreich

Friends don't let friends vote Republican!

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.
--Eleanor Holmes Norton

Free speech is for everyone, even those who offend us.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
--Harry S Truman

Truman said this in response to McCarthyism, but it's still just as true today.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.
--Mohandas K. Gandhi

This is why "nanny laws" are wrong and misguided. Freedom connotes the right to either learn or not learn from the consequences of our actions that don't affect the rights of others.

Quotes to Think About

11:54, 2007-Nov-2 .. Posted in quotes .. 6 comments .. Link

I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals. I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.
— A. Whitney Brown

Die, plants, die!

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
— George Bernard Shaw

It's all in how you look at it.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
— Albert Camus

Autumn beats spring because the leaves come multicolored then, instead of just in green.

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
— Isaac Newton

Argue the point, don't insult the person

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
— Plato

Everyone has their crosses to bear; no one is perfect

In Mexico we have a word for sushi: Bait.
— Jose Simon

Works for me!

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
— Anna Quindlen

I wholeheartedly agree.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
- William Butler Yeats

Education isn't an end; it's a process. The more you know, the more you should want to learn.

Efficiency is intelligent laziness.
--David Dunham

Work smarter, not harder

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

Everyone has their own peculiar quirks.

Cats know how to obtain
food without labor, shelter
without confinement, and
love without penalties.
--W.L. George

I think I want to be a cat in my next life!

Quotes From George Carlin

01:12, 2007-Oct-18 .. Posted in quotes .. 9 comments .. Link

In the last month or so, I've done two posts that have been inspired by quotes from George Carlin. The other night when I was bored, I went googling for Carlin quotes, the results of which you see below. Some of these quotes may be elaborated into full length entries in the future.
_____________________

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

Weather forecast for tonight: Dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.

I put a dollar in a change machine. Nothing changed.

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a man nailed to two pieces of wood.

Have you ever wondered why Republicans are so interested in encouraging people to volunteer in their communities? It’s because volunteers work for no pay. Republicans have been trying to get people to work for no pay for a long time.

Once you leave the womb, conservatives don’t care about you until you reach military age. Then you’re just what they’re looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.

The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

"I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?

Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen.

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

Let a smile be your umbrella, and you'll end up with a face full of rain.

I've begun worshipping the Sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the Sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to God are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate.

If churches want to play the game of politics, let them pay admission like everyone else.

How come when it’s us, it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken, it’s an omelette?

Quotes and Comments

12:10, 2007-Aug-31 .. Posted in quotes .. 1 comments .. Link

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
-- Edwin Schlossberg

This has always been the aim of my blog.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
-- Bertrand Russell

I've seen this to be true over the years.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
-- Robertson Davies

The good old days were never seen as being "good" at the time they were current. Rather, people waxed nostalgic over "good old days" even further in the past.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
-- Will Durant

It's like the old saying goes, "Better to be thought an idiot for not saying anything, than opening one's mouth and removing all doubt."

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
-- Kurt Vonnegut

Strong dislike may be appropriate, but anger misplaced is a waste of energy.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
-- Jack London

I write every day, whether I'm inspired or not. Sometimes, the entries I have to pull out of myself, word by word, turn out to be the best ones.

If an article is attractive, or useful, or inexpensive, they'll stop making it tomorrow; if it's all three, they stopped making it yesterday.
~Mignon McLaughlin

I've had this one to happen to me many times. It's as if that as soon as the Powers That Be find out that I like it, they immediately discontinue it.

How is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

I've been guilty of this one.

If you wonder where your child left his roller skates, try walking around the house in the dark.
~Leopold Fechtner

With me, it's usually shoes, which tend to roll over and over and over again, so that I can keep on tripping over them as I go.

The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.
~Author Unknown

Never fails!

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
~Dave Barry

What a surprise -- not!

Quotes and Comments

01:14, 2007-Aug-15 .. Posted in quotes .. 0 comments .. Link

The sinning is the best part of repentance.
~Arab Proverb

What repentance? The best part is to keep on sinning!:devilgrin:

It's pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.
~Kin Hubbard

Those aiming for perfection tend toward anal-retentiveness

In every age "the good old days" were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
~Brooks Atkinson

With the passage of time, good memories tend to become exaggerated and bad one tend to fade.

Few great men could pass personnel.
~Paul Goodman

Most human resource, aka personnel, departments over-rely on people's resumes; how they look on paper, more than the person themselves.

The good die young - because they see it's no use living if you've got to be good.
~John Barrymore

Life is meant to be enjoyed and it's more fun off the beaten path than on the straight and narrow.

Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent.
~Epictetus

Do what's right for you and allow others to make that decision for themselves.

Filling out job applications is so depressing. I was filling one out the other day and I got to the part that says "Sex?" Well, I prefer to 'F', but I'm usually alone, so I had to circle 'M'.
--Unknown

Fortunately, this isn't my problem.:laughass:

Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography.
~Robert Byrne

It's a bit....lower...for me.:skank:

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.
Saint Augustine (354-430)
Confessions, 397-401, VIII, 7

I've seen this particular prayer referred to elsewhere as "The Libertine's Prayer".

Independence Day Quotes

12:40, 2007-Jul-4 .. Posted in quotes .. 0 comments .. Link

In honor of the 231st anniversary of my nation's birth, I leave you with a collection of relevant quotes. Enjoy!

Freedom

Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.
-Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
-Ronald Reagan

One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
-Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, 1930

What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from."
~Marilyn vos Savant, in Parade

We hold in our hands, the most precious gift of all: Freedom. The freedom to express our art. Our love. The freedom to be who we want to be. We are not going to give that freedom away and no one shall take it from us!
--Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Cicely, 1992

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
--Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
--Albert Einstein

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
~Abraham Lincoln

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!
--Martin Luther King

Liberty

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
--Benjamin Franklin

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.
--Aristotle

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.
--Carl Schurz

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
--Lord Acton, Lecture, February 26, 1877

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
--Thomas Jefferson

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
-Kahlil Gibran, "The Vision"

What light is to the eyes – what air is to the lungs – what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.
-Robert G. Ingersoll

We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all.
-William Reece Smith, Jr.

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.
~Thomas Paine

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
~Harry Emerson Fosdick

We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.
~Robert J. McCracken

Where liberty dwells, there is my country.
~Benjamin Franklin

Patriotism

It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.
-Baha'u'llah

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
-James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
-William Jefferson Clinton, First Inaugural Speech, January 20, 1993

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.
~Erma Bombeck

If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace.
~Hamilton Fish