21 August 2004

If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I have been hiking in the Cascades this week.

-Josh Mitteldorf

20 August 2004

"Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness."
George Santayana

War is seldom about a real conflict between two peoples, much more frequently about the egos of their leaders. The ancient Greeks developed customs that permitted the leaders of two armies to engage in one-on-one combat that spared their general engagement. Later, this was further ritualized into Olympic competitions that satisfied a few men’s needs to dominate while avoiding loss of life and damage to property.

18 August 2004

Much of Will Rogers's humor was cynical, but rarely mean. Three of his most positive:

Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.

The best way out of a difficulty is through it.

You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is.

"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend."

-- Abraham Lincoln

"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye, which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints. Possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility."

-- Soren Kierkegaard