Archives - February 2005

The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn.

Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself.

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence.

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.

If you don't learn to laugh at troubles, you won't have anything to laugh at when you grow old.

Cyberspace: A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation.

The world at large does not judge us by who we are and what we know; it judges us by what we have.

That's what learning is, after all: not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.

If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.

Taxation WITH representation ain't so hot either.

Adversity cause some men to break; others to break records.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.

The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his vanity. Godlike he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words; whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis completely expressible in words.

Exercise alone provides psychological and physical benefits. However, if you also adopt a strategy that engages your mind while you exercise, you can get a whole host of psychological benefits fairly quickly.

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize.

A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.

Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility... in the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have... is the ability to take on responsibility.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

You should examine yourself daily. If you find faults, you should correct them. When you find none, you should try even harder.

When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"

There are countless ways of achieving greatness, but any road to achieving one's maximum potential must be built on a bedrock of respect for the individual, a commitment to excellence, and a rejection of mediocrity.

Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world's work, and the power to appreciate life.