An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
-- Anatole France
French novelist (1844 - 1924)

“Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky.”

“The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.”

“The best fame is a writer's fame. It's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough to get you interrupted when you eat.”

“Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.”

"Think before you speak. Read before you think."

“My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging.”

“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”

• Heraclitus

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.

Jerome K. Jerome

When a moderator tried to silence Ronald Reagan's microphone during a 1980 Republican primary debate that he had personally financed, Reagan shouted: "I am paying for this microphone!" The line, as NBC's Brian Williams noted, became a "political home run" for Reagan, even though it wasn't actually his. He borrowed it from the 1948 film State of the Union.

I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience," Ronald Reagan quipped during the 1984 presidential debates when asked if, at 73, he is too old to be President. The line — a classic example of Reagan's sense of humor — even solicited a laugh from Democratic opponent Walter Mondale.

People can still get fired for doing ridiculous things. //

civil_truth
6 hours ago edited
Ancient rabbinic wisdom from the Pirke Avot attributed to Hillel:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am for myself only, what am I?
And if not now, when?

The man in the arena

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their government with certain Rights that may only be rescinded if exercising those Rights carries any risk.’ //

the coronavirus should teach us that these ideas are far too risky to stay the way we learned them as kids. They often even led to people dying!

Let’s start by updating a short one so you get the idea. Some of you probably know the state motto of New Hampshire. It comes from a quote by Revolutionary War Gen. John Stark. “Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.”

Obviously, that concept is terribly dangerous, but we can fix it. Instead, it should be, “Live free and you’ll die.” With a barely noticeable adjustment, New Hampshire license plates go from being a reckless endangerment to a somber warning. //

A lot of crazy fringe people who still want to do things have been using a famous quote by Patrick Henry. They fail to point out that life expectancy back in that era was only about 38 years, so people wouldn’t have lived to be old enough to die of coronavirus anyway.

That means his words are obsolete and need an update. Possibly, “Give me a mask or give me death!” It now becomes a practical health advisory instead of a dangerous demand for freedom.

Here’s one for the kids to recite before they watch school on the computer. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with social distancing and unemployment benefits for all.” //

For those who are not sufficiently scared by coronavirus simply because the odds of dying from it are incredibly small, you need to remember what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address: “The only thing we have to fear is being around people!”

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

At the age of 28, Benjamin Franklin wrote this mock epitaph. (1) Over the years, he wrote different versions and passed them out to friends.

The Body of

B. Franklin, Printer;

Like the Cover of an old Book,

Its Contents torn out,

And stript of its Lettering and Gilding,

Lies here, Food for Worms.

But the Work shall not be wholly lost:

For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more,

In a new & more perfect Edition,

Corrected and amended

By the Author.

It is interesting to note that Franklin (1706-1790) – Founding Father of the United States of America, foreign diplomat, statesman, author, soldier, scientist, author, inventor, printer – a true Renaissance man, a polymath – chose to refer to himself simply as a “printer” and liken his dead body to an old book:

If you work for a man, in heaven's name work for him, speak well of him, and stand by the institution he represents. Remember, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must growl, condemn, and eternally find fault - resign your position, and when you are outside, damn to your heart's content - but as long as you are part of the institution, do not condemn it. If you do, the first high wind that comes along will blow you away, and probably you will never know why.

Elbert Hubbard

Age is mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

• Satchel Paige
• //US baseball player (1906 - 1982) //

All engineering knowledge has an expiration date. The trick is to know when. -- Robert Luckey, IEEE Spectrum

Technology moves faster than our imagination can keep up with. We invent one breakthrough technology today and then tomorrow's inventors transform it into another we never imagined possible." -- Atlantic Magazine

Broadcast professionals cannot afford to be complaisant... we must continue to challenge ourselves... we must continue to learn and expand our horizons. -- Gary Cavell

There are three kinds of pipe. There's what you have, which is garbage - and you can see where that's gotten you. There's bronze, which is pretty good, unless something goes wrong. And something always goes wrong. Then, there's copper, which is the only pipe I use. It costs money. It costs money because it saves money.

“Measure twice – cut once.”

Oh-so-much better than:

“Measure once – cut again and again until we all bleed to death.

There's no praise to beat the sort you can put in your pocket.
-- Moliere, French actor & comic dramatist (1622 - 1673)

Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
-- Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982), What The Dead Men Say, 1964