The Eternal Riddle '08

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THE ETERNAL RIDDLE

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Curated by
Robert J. Schneck, Jr.
November 2008
New York City
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Out yonder, there is this huge world which stands before us like a great
eternal riddle.
Albert Einstein, German-American Physicist (March 14, 1879-April 18, 1955)
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If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me?
Even then? Since we’re bound to be something, why not
together. Imagine! Two little stones, two fleas under the
wing of a gull, flying along through the fog! Or, ten blades
of grass. Ten loops of honeysuckle, all flung against each
other, at the edge of Race Road! Beach plums! Snowflakes,
coasting into the winter woods, making a very small sound,
like this
sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
as they marry the dusty bodies of the pitch-pines.
Mary Oliver, American poet

West Wind (1997)
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EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE
to explore the fundamental human questions of living & being;
to share in the wisdom of all places & all times;
to be touched by the words, thoughts & feelings of human kind;
to responsively engage in the process of thinking;
to excite the possibility of changing your life.
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THE ETERNAL RIDDLE
- WHO WE ARE - 1
- ON PURPOSE - 6
- HOW TO BE - 11
- HOW TO THINK - 16
- HOW THINGS ARE - 21
- POLITICS - 26
- ON BUSINESS - 32
- TRADITION - 39
- THE EXISTENTIAL - 44
- OUR IDEALS - 49
- WHIMSY - 54
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- WHO WE ARE -
In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people …

BARACK (HUSSEIN) OBAMA, JR., AMERICAN SENATOR FROM ILLINOIS AND
PRESIDENT ELECT (AUGUST 4, 1961-)
VICTORY SPEECH, CHICAGO ILLINOIS, NOVEMBER 4, 2008
In Exodus 3:14, though God also gives himself a name, he defines himself as “I am
that I am,” which according to scholars is more accurately rendered “I will be
what I will be.”
LUCINDA VARDEY, BRITISH-CANADIAN WRITER
GOD IN ALL WORLDS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUAL
WRITING, 1995
Wherever I go
I meet him
He is no other than myself
yet
I am not he.
AN CHANG-HO (PEN NAME: DOSAN) KOREAN INDEPENDENCE ACTIVIST
(NOVEMBER 9, 1878-MARCH 10, 1938)
FREDERIC FRANCK, DUTCH-AMERICAN PAINTER, SCULPTOR AND AUTHOR

(APRIL 12, 1909-JUNE 5, 2006)
ZEN SEEING, ZEN DRAWING: MEDITATION IN ACTION, 1993
There is only one man in the world

and his name is All Men.
There is only one woman in the world
and her name is All Women.
There is only one child in the world
and the child’s name is All Children.
CARL SANDBURG, AMERICAN POET AND WRITER (JANUARY 6, 1878-JULY
22, 1967)
Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhnattan the son,

Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
No sentamentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,
More modest than immodest.
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
(WALTER) WALT WHITMAN (JR.), AMERICAN POET (MAY 31, 1819-MARCH
26, 1892)
“SONG OF MYSELF”
1
Only remember that the spirit of the snake, of the lion, is your spirit. For it is only
from yourself that you are acquainted with spirit at all.
LUDWIG (JOSEF JOHANN) WITTGENSTEIN, AUSTRIAN PHILOSOPHER
(APRIL 26, 1889-APRIL 29, 1951)
NOTEBOOK, RUSSIAN FRONT, OCTOBER 15, 1916
The wealth of the universe is for me. Every thing is explicable and practical for
me .... I am defeated all the time; yet to victory I am born.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, AMERICAN ESSAYIST AND POET (MAY 25,1803-
APRIL 27, 1882)
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, A SPEECH AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 1837
The individual finds within himself kartavya, literally ‘what is to be done’. His
inmost nature contains this, like a seed. It is unique to each person, and may be
understood as the reason for his embodiment.
BRIAN HODGKINSON, BRITISH WRITER AND SCHOLAR (1938-)
THE ESSENCE OF VEDANTA: THE ANCIENT WISDOM OF INDIAN
PHILOSOPHY, 2006
It feels much richer to me to imagine that a cold, empty cosmos collapses with
stars, and stars burn and shine, and they make carbon in their cores, and then
they throw them out again. And that carbon collects and forms another planet
and another star and then human beings arise. I mean, that’s, to me, a really
beautiful narrative.
JANNA LEVIN, AMERICAN ASTROPHYSICIST AND AUTHOR
KRISTA TIPPETT, PRODUCER

“1.MATHEMATICS +TRUTH 2.PURPOSE,” SPEAKING OF FAITH, NATIONAL
PUBLIC RADIO, JANUARY 12, 2008
There are no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially
if he sees them accepted by everyone around him.
COUNT LEO (LEV) (NIKOLAYEVICH) TOLSTOY, RUSSIAN MAN OF LETTERS
(SEPTEMBER 9, 1828-NOVEMBER 20, 1910)
ANNA KARENINA, 1875-77
What is this person doing? What’s the activity that defines this person? If I were
doing that activity that person would be me. If I were wandering the other way,
rather than this way, that person could be me. That could be me. That could be
me. What is it that separates any of us?
26, 1892)
NOTEBOOKS
People all smile in the same language.

CHINESE PROVERB
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Each man carries the entire form of the human condition.
MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE, FRENCH ESSAYIST (FEBRUARY 28, 1553-
SEPTEMBER 13, 1592)
I am the thread that runs through the pearls as in a necklace. Each religion is one
of the pearls.
NIKHILANANDA, INDIAN-AMERICAN SWAMI (1895-1973)
I dote on myself
There is that lot of me and all so luscious.
26, 1892)
“SONG OF MYSELF,” 1882
Sensitive inhabitants of the forests of ourselves.

JULES SUPERVIELLE, URUGUAYAN-FRENCH POET (1884-1960)
LES AMIS INCONNUS
GASTON BACHELARD, FRENCH PHILOSOPHER (1884-1962)
there is God-energy in all of us.

RJS
In the manner of men of the past

We build within ourselves stone
On stone a vast haunted castle.
VINCENT MONTEIRO
VERS SUR VERRE

THE POETICS OF SPACE, 1958 (MARIA JOLAS TRANSLATION, 1964)
There’s no such thing as a saint without a past and a sinner without a future.
CHRISTOPHER DODD, AMERICAN LAWYER AND U.S. SENATOR FROM
CONNECTICUT (MAY 27, 1944-)
Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention
is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not
hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to
admit of no dispute; but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up –– the
harsh tide of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend.
ABIGAIL SMITH ADAMS, WIFE OF JOHN ADAMS, SECOND PRESIDENT OF
THE UNITED STATES (NOVEMBER 11, 1744-OCTOBER 28, 1818)
LETTER TO JOHN ADAMS, MARCH 31, 1776
I’m not funny, what I am is brave.
3
LUCILLE DÉSIRÉE BALL, AMERICAN ACTRESS AND COMEDIAN (AUGUST 6,
1911-APRIL 26, 1989)
My life is a river, and I am a boat being borne along the current. I cannot relate to
my life as a story, as a sequence of events, because I cannot get off the boat in
order to see where I am. I do not see myself as moving forward or going backward.
ARVO PÄRT, ESTONIAN COMPOSER (SEPTEMBER 11, 1935-)
All things want to fly. Only we are weighed down by desire and enthralled with
our heaviness.
RAINER MARIA RILKE, AUSTRO-GERMAN POET (DECEMBER 4, 1875-
DECEMBER 29, 1926)
I see a man notching a cedar post

with a double-blade axe, rolling the post
under his foot in the grass: quick strokes and there
is a ringed groove one inch across, as clean
as if it cut with the router blade down at the mill.
I see a man who drags a dead calf or watches
a barn roaring with fire and thirteen heifers
inside, I see his helpless eyes. He has stood
helpless often, of course: when his wife died
from congenital heart disease a few months before
open-heart surgery came to Vermont, when his sons
departed, caring little for the farm because
he had educated them …
HAYDEN CARRUTH, AMERICAN POET (AUGUST 3, 1921-)
“MARSHALL WASHER,” TOWARD THE DISTANT ISLANDS: NEW AND SELCTED
POEMS BY HAYDEN CARRUTH, 2006
What I’ve seen

Is all I’ve found: myself.
GEORGE OPPEN, AMERICAN POET
the tin man

has a brain––
but needs
a heart
RJS
A friend is another self.

ARISTOTLE, GREEK PHILOSOPHER (384-322 BC)
But do your own thing and I shall know you.
4
APRIL 27, 1882)
Let all Men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, AMERICAN STATESMAN AND INVENTOR (JANUARY
17, 1706-APRIL 17, 1790)
The characteristic of the biography of famous men is that they wanted to be

famous. The characteristic of the biography of all men is that they did not want to
be, or never thought of being famous men. … A famous man is disgusting.
EUGÉNE IONESCO, ROMANIAN PLAYWRIGHT (NOVEMBER 26, 1909-MARCH
29, 1994)
THE HUGOLIAD, 1935
the more normal you are

the easier it is to follow
the rules
RJS
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky so I felt. Just as any of you
is one of a living crowd I was one of a crowd. Just as you are refreshed by the
gladness of the river, and the bright flow, I was refreshed. Just as you stand and
lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried.
26, 1892)
The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries
of virtues or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a
jest, informs us better of their character and inclinations.
PLUTARCH, GREEK BIOGRAPHER AND ESSAYIST (46?-120 AD)
Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair,

counsel’d with doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
26, 1892)
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- ON PURPOSE -
I see a good in such emphatic and universal calamity as the times bring, that they
dissatisfy me with society. Under common burdens we say there is much virtue in
the world, and what evil co-exists is inevitable. I am not aroused to say, “I have
sinned: I am in a gall of bitterness, and a bond of iniquity”; but when these full
measures come, it then stands confessed — society has played out its last stake; it
is checkmated. Young men have no hope. Adults stand like day laborers, idle on
the streets. None calleth us to labor. The old wear no crown of warm life on their
gray hairs. The present generation is bankrupt of principles and hope, as of
property. I see man is not what man should be. He is the treadle of a wheel. He is
a tassel at the apron string of society. He is a money chest. He is the servant of his
belly. This is the causal bankruptcy, this is the cruel oppression, that the ideal
should serve the actual, that the head should serve the feet. Then first, I am
forced to inquire if the ideal might not also be tried. Is it to be taken for granted
that it is impracticable? Behold the boasted world has come to nothing. Prudence
itself is at her wits’ end.
Pride, and Thrift, and Expediency, who jeered and chirped and were so well
pleased with themselves, and made merry with the dream, as they termed it, of
Philosophy and Love, — behold they are all flat, and here is the Soul erect and
unconquered still. What answer is it now to say, “It has always been so?” I
acknowledge that, as far back as I can see the widening procession of humanity,
the marchers are lame and blind and deaf; but to the soul that whole past is but
one finite series in its infinite scope. Deteriorating ever and now desperate. Let
me begin anew. Let me teach the finite to know its master. Let me ascend above
my fate and work down upon my world. [Response to the financial panic of 1837]
APRIL 27, 1882)
Instead of engaging in cutthroat competition, we should strive to create value. In

economic terms, this means a transition from a consumer economy –– the mad
rush for ownership and consumption –– to a constructive economy where all
human beings can participate in the act of creating lasting worth.
DAISAKU IKEDA, PRESIDENT OF SOKA GAKKAI INTERNATIONAL
(JANUARY 2, 1928-)
FOR THE SAKE OF PEACE: SEVEN PATHS TO GLOBAL HARMONY: A
BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE, 2001
You can have neither a greater nor a lesser dominion than that over yourself.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, FLORENTINE PAINTER, SCULPTOR, ARCHITECT AND
SCIENTIST (APRIL 15, 1452-MAY 2, 1519)
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Each day is like a work of art to him. [Annie Allix, girlfriend of Philippe Petit]
PHILIPPE PETIT, FRENCH HIGH WIRE ARTIST WHO WALKED BETWEEN THE
WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWERS IN 1974, (AUGUST 13, 1949-)
DAVID EDELSTEIN
“FOLIE Á DEUX: A HEIST PICTURE ABOUT ONE OF THE GREATEST STUNTS
IN NEW YORK HISTORY,” THE NEW YORK MAGAZINE, JULY 28-AUGUST 4,
2008
Could anyone else be your master? When you have gained control over yourself,
you have found a master of rare value.
BUDDHIST SCRIPTURE
Who overcomes himself his freedom finds.

JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON GOETHE, GERMAN MAN OF LETTERS AND
SCIENTIST (1749-1832)
… Only after knowing the goal of perfection where one should dwell, can one
have a definite purpose in life. Only after having a definite purpose in life can one
achieve calmness of mind. Only after having achieved calmness of mind, can one
have peaceful repose. Only after having peaceful repose can one begin to think.
Only after one has learned to think, can one achieve knowledge. There is a
foundation and a superstructure in the constitution of things, and a beginning and
an end in the course of events. Therefore to know the proper sequence of relative
order of things is the beginning of wisdom. (Arthur Waley translation)
CONFUCIUS, CHINESE PHILOSOPHER (SEPTEMBER 28, 551 B.C.-479 B.C.)
The most important thing is to be able to enjoy your life without being fooled by
things.
SHUNRYU SUZUKI, JAPANESE ZEN PRIEST (MAY 18, 1904-DECEMBER 4,
1971)
NOT ALWAYS SO, 2002
by acts
of will or forgetfulness––
the sacred is
profaned
RJS
If I did not work,

these worlds would perish …
T H N D
BHAGAVAD-GITA, SONG OF GOD,SANSKRIT SACRED TEXT, 5 TO 2
CENTURY B.C.
... The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give
us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are
7
there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop
the other people.
RANDY PAUSCH, AMERICAN COMPUTER SCIENCE INNOVATOR
RANDY PAUSCH’S LAST LECTURE, CARNEGIE MELLON, 2007
During the Middle Ages, two stone masons were in Paris working on what would
become the Notre Dame Cathedral. When asked by a traveler what they were
doing, one answered, “Squaring a stone,” while the other replied, “I am building a
cathedral.”
ANECDOTE FROM THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES
As a medieval historian once said of Chartes Cathedral, it is best appreciated as a

spiritual rather than a religious building.
BRIAN HODGKINSON, BRITISH WRITER AND SCHOLAR (1938-)
THE ESSENCE OF VEDANTA: THE ANCIENT WISDOM OF INDIAN
PHILOSOPHY, 2006
Bless thee in all the work of thy hand which thou doest.
DEUTERONOMY 14:29
Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it
resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of
the gulf, in the darting to an aim .... Why then do we prate of self-reliance?
Inasmuch as the soul is present there will be power not confident but agent. To
talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which
relies because it works and it is. Who has more obedience than I masters me,
though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the
gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric when we speak of eminent value. We
do not yet see that virtue is height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic
and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all
cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.
APRIL 27, 1882)
SELF-RELIANCE, ESSAY, 1839-1840
Wunder kommen zu denen, die an sie glauben.

Wonder will come to help you, if you believe.
GERMAN PROVERB
The effect of the most perfect system of transportation is to reduce the distance
not only between different places but between different classes.
MICHEL CHEVALIER, FRENCH ENGINEER, 1833
8
The time has come to effect a revolution in female manners –– time to restore
them to their lost dignity and make them as a part of the human species.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, ENGLISH WRITER AND SOCIAL ACTIVIST (APRIL
27, 1759-SEPTEMBER 10, 1797)
A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN, 1792
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the
opportunity in every difficulty.
SIR WINSTON LEONARD SPENCER-CHURCHILL, BRITISH STATESMAN
(NOVEMBER 1874-JANUARY 24, 1965)
The greatest wealth is health.

APRIL 27, 1882)
From all eternity, God lies on a maternity bed giving birth. … What does God do
all day long? God gives birth.
MECHTHILD OF MADEBURG, GERMAN MEDIEVAL MYSTIC, A BEGUINE AND
CISTERCIAN NUN (1210-C. 1285)
Through these games, the world learned more about China, and China learned
more about the world. [close of Beijing Olympic games, August 24, 2008]
JACQUES ROGGE, PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC
COMMITTEE
The time to repair the roof is when the sun is still shining.
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY, 35TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
(MAY 29, 1917-NOVEMBER 22,1963)
Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, FRENCH GENERAL AND EMPEROR (AUGUST 15,
1769-MAY 5, 1821)
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T(HOMAS) S(TEARNS) ELIOT, BRITISH AMERICAN POET AND CRITIC
(SEPTEMBER 26, 1888-JANUARY 4, 1965)
… what [were the] people in all the so-called primitive societies doing when they
built their buildings. Most of these buildings were, at their best, beautiful, and at
the very least, harmless. They were building in a way that helped what I call
unfolding –– that was almost a given. People wanted to revere the earth, revere
God, and maintain the Whole. And that is not the motive now.
CHRISTOPOHER ALEXANDER, AMERICAN ARCHITECT
KAY BUTLER, EDITOR

“NATURE UNFOLDING,” TRICYCLE, SPRING 2008
9
A human being is a human being, and we can enjoy our life only with our limited
body. This limitation is vital. Without limitation nothing exists, so we should
enjoy it; weak body, strong body; man or woman. The only way to enjoy our life is
to enjoy the limitation that is given to us.
SHUNRYU SUZUKI, JAPANESE ZEN PRIEST (MAY 18, 1904-DECEMBER 4,
1971)
NOT ALWAYS SO, 2002
I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the
family but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be
constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest
designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be priced so that no man
making a good salary will be unable to afford one and to enjoy with his family the
blessings of hours of pleasure in God’s open spaces. [Introducing the Model T in
1909]
HENRY FORD, AMERICAN AUTOMOTIVE ENTREPRENEUR (JULY 30, 1863-
APRIL 7, 1947)
Whether they [English majors or any determined humanists] know it or not, ––

and whatever they eventually decide to do … they see developing moral
imagination as more important than securing economic self-justification.
MARK DANNER, AMERICAN REPORTER AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS WRITER
(NOVEMBER 10, 1958-)
“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THAT?,”THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF
BOOKS, JUNE 23, 2005
Difficult means doable.

LOK SUM
10
- HOW TO BE -
If there is a wind outside the window,

then I have a reason to fly!
SUN-HOO FOO, CHINESE-AMERICAN PHYSICIAN (1948-)
Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

Resist much, obey less.

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI (BORN LAWRENCE FERLING), AMERICAN POET
(MARCH 24, 1919-)
POETRY AS INSURGENT ART, 1975-2007
Don’t part with your illusions; when they are gone, you may still exist, but you
have ceased to live.
MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS), AMERICAN JOURNALIST,
LECTURER AND AUTHOR (NOVEMBER 30, 1835-APRIL 21, 1910)
Lester Bangs: The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share
with someone else when you are uncool.
ALMOST FAMOUS, AMERICAN MOVIE, 2000
As life is action and passion, it is required of man that he should share the passion
and action of his time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR., AMERICAN AMERICAN JURIST AND
SUPREME COURT JUSTICE (MARCH 8, 1841-MARCH 6, 1935)
What advice would you give to people who are looking to be happy? For
starters, learn how to cook.
CHARLES SIMIC, YUGOSLAVIAN-AMERICAN POET AND CRITIC – POET
LAUREATE OF THE UNITED STATES (MAY 9, 1938-)
DEBORAH SOLOMON, AMERICAN COLUMNIST FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

(AUGUST 9, 1957-)
“IN-VERSE THINKING,” THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 3,
2008
When it comes to food, the ethical choice is the delightful choice.

BARBARA KINGSOLVER, AMERICAN WRITER (APRIL 8, 1955-)
Let food be your medicine.

HIPPOCRATES, GREEK PHYSICIAN(460-377 B.C.)
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At the Kitchen we put it another way. We say, “It ain’t what you got, it’s what
you do with what you got.”
ROBERT EGGER, AMERICAN SOCIAL NOTFORPROFIT ENTREPRENEUR
BEGGING FOR CHANGE, 2002
If you can find a reason to be depressed,

definitely, you can also find
a good reason not to be depressed.
SUN-HOO FOO, CHINESE-AMERICAN PHYSICIAN (1948-)
God helps them that help themselves.

17, 1706-APRIL 17, 1790)
When you learn, teach.

When you get, give.
MAYA ANGELOU (MARGUERITE ANN JOHNSON), AMERICAN POET (APRIL
4, 1928-)
Life’s follies stem from the attempt to emulate that which we do not resemble.
SAMUEL JOHNSON, ENGLISH MAN OF LETTERS (SEPTEMBER 18, 1709-
DECEMBER 13, 1784)
You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you
are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to
be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who
are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in
God, as misers do in gold, and kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.
THOMAS TRAHERNE, ENGLISH POET AND RELIGIOUS WRITER (1636 OR
1637-SEPTEMBER 27, 1674)
CENTURIES, 1963
What fun
to inhabit a little dog and chase around
not for money, or blood, or abracadabra,
just a good romp up and down the cyclone fence, not asking
why it’s named for a disaster, just dashing
and brushing the grass with the ease of a shadow.
BARBARA RAS, AMERICAN POET
ONE HIDDEN STUFF, 2006
It is not easy being a human being. Unlike other species, we are not born with
enough programmed DNA to see us through our survival. The best choices we
make must come from intuition, cooperation and learning.
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MATTHEW FOX, AMERICAN PRISET AND THEOLOGIAN (1940-)
ONE RIVER, MANY WELLS: WISDOM SPRINGING FROM GLOBAL FAITHS,
2000
Rabbis say that the first word you should think of when you wake up in the
morning should be the word God. Not even thank you should precede it.
HUSTON CUMMINGS SMITH, AMERICAN SCHOLAR OF RELIGION AND
AUTHOR (MAY 31, 1919-) AND PHIL COUSINEAU, AMERICAN AUTHOR
THE WAY THINGS ARE: CONVERSATIONS WITH HUSTON SMITH, 2003
I learned early to value honest arrogance over hypocritical humility.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, AMERICAN ARCHITECT (JUNE 8, 1869-APRIL 9,
1959)
The harder you work, the luckier you are. I worked like hell.
T H
GERALD (RUDOLPH) FORD, 38 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (JULY
14, 1913-DECEMBER 26, 2006)
Acceptance is the key to happiness.

WILL JOHNSON, CANADIAN SPIRITUAL TEACHER
RUMI, GAZNIG AT THE BELOVED: THE RADICAL PRACTICE OF BEHOLDING
THE DIVINE, 2003
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

WALT (WALTER ELIAS) DISNEY, AMERICAN PRODUCER, DIRECTOR,
SCREENWRITER AND ANIMATOR (DECEMBER 5, 1901-DECEMBER 15, 1966)
And so, while wishing to do right,

We’ve ended in a tragic plight.
How to escape the web we’ve spun
Correct our faults, love everyone.
JESSMIN HOWARTH
FROM “ALAS,” FOR JIM AND LOUISE WELCH
DUSHKA HOWARTH, AMERICAN ENTREPRENEUR, DANCER AND WRITER

IT’S UP TO OURSELVES, MS., 2006
Being starts with well-being.

THE POETICS OF SPACE, 1958 (MARIA JOLAS TRANSLATION, 1964)
Simply trust––
Do not the petals flutter down,
Just like that?
(KOBAYASHI) ISSA, JAPANESE POET (JUNE 15, 1763-JANUARY 5, 1828)
It is gratefulness that makes the soul great.
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ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL, WARSAW-BORN AMERICAN RABBI (JANUARY
11, 1907–DECEMBER 23, 1972)
You are what you think; maybe that’s why some people need attitude adjustments.
YOGI (LAWRENCE PETER) BERRA, AMERICAN BASEBALL PLAYER (MAY 12,
1925-)
WHAT TIME IS IT? YOU MEAN NOW? 2002
If man cannot live by bread alone, still less can he live by disinfectant.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD, BRITISH PHILOSOPHER AND
MATHEMATICIAN (FEBRUARY 15, 1861-DECEMBER 30, 1947)
… whether a man loves a woman or another man, or a woman loves a man or

another woman, to God it is all love, and God smiles whenever we recognize our
need for one another.
DESMOND TUTU, ARCHBISHOP OF SOUTH AFRICA AND 1984 NOBEL PEACE
LAUREATE (OCTOBER 7, 1931-)
GOD HAS A DREAM, 2004
It is a day of joy: it is good to be joyful –– it is wrong to be otherwise. Let us seek

the grace of a cheerful heart, and even temper, sweetness, gentleness and
brightness of mind, as walking in His light and in His grace.
THE VENERABLE JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN, FEBRUARY 21, 1801-
AUGUST 11, 1890
ST, CLEMENT’S CHURCH, OXFORD
enebriated,
we share the sky
with gods.
RJS
Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.
HENRY FORD, AMERICAN AUTOMOTIVE ENTREPRENEUR (JULY 30, 1863-
APRIL 7, 1947)
It’s good to leave each day behind,

Like flowing water, free of sadness,
Yesterday is gone and its tale told.
Today new seeds are growing.
MEVLANA JELALUDDIN RUMI, SUFI POET AND SAINT (SEPTEMBER 30,
1207-DECEMBER 17, 1273)
He spent his life best who enjoyed it most.

SAMUEL BUTLER, BRITISH NOVELIST (DECEMBER 4, 1835-JUNE 18, 1902)
Spirituality means to me living the ordinary life extraordinarily well.
14
As the old church father said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
WILLIAM SLOANE COFFIN, AMERICAN CLERGYMAN AND PEACE ACTIVIST
(JUNE 1, 1924-)
CREDO, 2004
It is through comparing ourselves and our situation, and then competing with
others, that we create most of the stresses and problems that make us confused
and unhappy.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI, INDIAN SAGE (MAY 12, 1895-FEBRUARY 17, 1986)
Ah, yes Krishnamurti, very interesting man. Good man. I have coversations with
him before. Very interesting. Yes. Ah, yes. But he likes to live thirty-ninth floor,
no elevator.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI, INDIAN SAGE (MAY 12, 1895-FEBRUARY 17, 1986)
DUSHKA HOWARTH, AMERICAN ENTREPRENEUR, DANCER AND WRITER

IT’S UP TO OURSELVES, MS., 2006
I was hungry and you gave me food ... I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was
naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me. ...
MATTHEW 25:35-36
Our work is based on these words of Jesus.

MOTHER TERESA (AGNES GONXHA BOJAXHIU), ALBANIAN-BORN ROMAN
CATHOLIC NUN (AUGUST 27, 1910-SEPTEMBER 5, 1997)
IN MY OWN WORDS, 1996
Life is long if you know how to use it.

(LUCIUS ANNAEUS) SENECA, ROMAN PHILOSOPHER, STATESMAN AND
WRITER (C. 5 B.C.-65 A.D.)
If we go into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.

SIMONE WEIL, FRENCH THEOLOGIAN AND ESSAYIST (FEBRUARY 3, 1909-
1943)
15
- HOW TO THINK -
In August 1837, Charles Darwin opened his notebook and wrote, “I think.”
Underneath these words he sketched a crude –– but momentus –– tree of life.
Inking the thin lines, Darwin postulated that all life forms on earth are related
through common ancestry. Over millions of years, new species evolved from old.
CHARLES (ROBERT) DARWIN, ENGLISH NATURALIST (1809-1882)
Even though you say ‘water is water,’ it is not quite right.

(EIHEI) DOGEN (KIGEN), JAPANESE ZEN MASTER, POET, PAINTER
(JANUARY 19, 1200-SEPTEMBER 22, 1253)
We learn
like leaking pails––
& water our minds
RJS
None of us are as smart as all of us.

JAPANESE PROVERB
There is nothing difficult under the sun.

CHINESE PROVERB
There are some truths that can never be proven to be true.

KURT GÖDEL, AUSTRIAN-AMERICAN MATHEMATICIAN (APRIL 28, 1906–
JANUARY 14, 1978)
Every truth has an answering truth.

E(DGAR) L(AWRENCE) DOCTOROW, AMERICAN AUTHOR (JANUARY 6, 1931-
)
They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be

irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.
My philosophy is that everything is more complicated than you think.

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH, GHANANIAN-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER,
ESSAYIST AND NOVELIST (1954-)
Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, AMERICAN WRITER AND PHYSICIAN (AUGUST
29, 1809-OCTOBER 7, 1894)
16
The bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you refuse to take the turn.
ANONYMOUS
It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.

(APRIL 26, 1889-APRIL 29, 1951)
To imagine a doubt is not to doubt.

JULES HENRI POINCARÉ, FRENCH MATHEMATICIAN AND PHILOSOPHER OF
SCIENCE (APRIL 29, 1854-JULY 17, 1912)
Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child.
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, ROMAN STATESMAN (JANUARY 3, 106-
DECEMBER 7, 43 B.C.)
Avoid whatever is approved by the mob, and things that are the gift of chance.
Whenever circumstances bring some welcome thing your way, stop in suspicion
and alarm. … They are snares. … we think these things are ours when in fact it is
we who are caught. That track leads to precipices; life on that giddy level ends in
a fall.
(LUCIUS ANNAEUS) SENECA, ROMAN PHILOSOPHER, STATESMAN AND
WRITER (C. 5 B.C.-65 A.D.)
A very popular error: having the courage of one’s convictions; rather it is a matter
of having the courage for an attack on one’s convictions.
FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE, GERMAN PHILOSOPHER (OCTOBER 15,
1844-AUGUST 25, 1900)
All creation is a mine, and every man a miner.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 16TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (FEBRUARY
12, 1809-APRIL 15, 1865)
SPEECH, 1860
We understand, then, do we not? What I promised without mentioning it, have

you not accepted? What the study could not teach — what the preaching could
not accomplish is accomplished, is it not?
26, 1892)
A knowledge of history arms us with our best weapon against our own ignorance,
and makes possible the revolt against the arrogant oligarchy of those who merely
happen to be walking around.
G(ILBERT) K(EITH) CHESTERTON, ENGLISH ESSAYIST, NOVELIST AND
POET (MAY 29, 1874-JUNE 14, 1936)
17
Rejection is the basis of logical thinking. The rejection process is incorporated in
the concept of the negative. The negative is a judgment device. It is the means
whereby one rejects certain arrangements of information. The negative is used to
carry out judgment and initiate rejection. The concept of the negative is
crystallized into a definite language tool. This language tool consists of the words
no and not. Once one learns the function and use of these words one has learned
how to use logical thinking. The whole concept of logical thinking is
concentrated in the use of this language tool. Logic could be said to be the
management of NO.
EDWARD DE BONO
LATERAL THINKING: CREATIVITY STEP-BY-STEP, 1970
… as Wittgenstein said, when accused of shutting his eyes to the possibility of

doubt –– ‘They are shut’.
(APRIL 26, 1889-APRIL 29, 1951)
The truth is not the evidence.

RJS
Certainty is not clarity, but blindness.

CHRISTOPHER PHILLIPS, AMERICAN TEACHER OF PHILOSOPHY (JULY 15,
1959-)
SIX QUESTIONS OF SOCRATES, 2004
But, after all, who knows, and who can say

Whence it came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are later than creation,
So who knows truly whence it has arisen?
Whence all creation has its origin,
He, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
He, who surveys it all from the highest heaven,
He knows –– or maybe even he does not know.
HYMN OF CREATION
RIG VEDA, ANCIENT SANSKRIT SCRIPTURE, 1500-1000 B.C.
… revelation comes in two volumes: Nature and the Bible.

THOMAS AQUINAS, ITALIAN PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN (1225-
MARCH 7, 1274)
Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
18
Little flower –– but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all and all,
I should know what God and man is.
ALFRED TENNYSON, 1ST BARON, ENGLISH POET AND POET LAUREATE
(AUGUST 6, 1809-OCTOBER 6, 1892)
IDYLLS OF THE KING, 1856-1885
A scientific genius is not a person who does what no one else can do; he or she is
someone who does what it takes others to do. The genius is not a unique source of
insight; he is merely an efficient source of insight.
MALCOLM GLADWELL, AMERICAN AUTHOR
“IN THE AIR: WHO SAYS BIG IDEAS ARE RARE?” THE NEW YORKER, MAY
12, 2008
Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

EDWARD (EGBERT) R(OSCOE) MURROW, AMERICAN JOURNALIST (APRIL
25, 1908-APRIL 27, 1965)
We have a moral duty to keep history warm and alive in our minds, to brood over
it.
MAX BYRD, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
“GLOBALIZATION 3.0,” THE WILSON QUARTERLY, AUTUMN 2007
The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie ... but the myth.
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY, 35TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
(MAY 29, 1917-NOVEMBER 22,1963)
YALE COMMENCEMENT SPEECH
You will find all knowledge of the truth originates out of the senses, and the
senses are quite irrefutable. If sense is false, reason will have to be. ... All that
verbose harangue against the senses is utter absolute nothing.
(TITUS) LUCRETIUS (CARUS), ROMAN POET (99-55BC)
The activist historian who thinks he is deriving his policy from his history may in
fact be deriving his history from his policy, and may be driven to commit the
cardinal sin of the historical writer: he may lose his respect for the integrity, the
independence, the pastness of the past.
RICHARD HOFSTADTER, AMERICAN HISTORIAN (AUGUST 6, 1916-
OCTOBER 24, 1970)
In science we hold up beauty and elegance as the goal.

JANNA LEVIN, AMERICAN ASTROPHYSICIST AND AUTHOR
It’s all about evidence.

Facts and manipulation.
19
LOK SUM
Search for the truth we can and must, but own it––never.
(JUNE 1, 1924-)
CREDO, 2004
You don’t have to know what a concept is in order to have one.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER, AMERICAN SCIENTIST AND AUTHOR (FEBRUARY
15 1945-)
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure
long; but false views, if supported by little evidence, do little harm, for everyone
takes salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.
CHARLES (ROBERT) DARWIN, ENGLISH NATURALIST (FEBRUARY 12, 1809-
APRIL 19, 1882)
As Spock asked Kirk, don’t the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
ROBERT EGGER, AMERICAN SOCIAL NOTFORPROFIT ENTREPRENEUR
My dad once said to me, “Son, a fool with a plan can beat a genius with no plan.”
T(HOMAS) BOONE PICKENS, AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN (MAY 22, 1928-)
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun,

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand
… nor feed on spectres in books …
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of
books.
26, 1892)
SONG OF MYSELF
I love discourse. I’m dying to have my mind changed.

JACK NICHOLSON, AMERICAN ACTOR (1937-)
“WHAT I’VE LEARNED, 2004,” ESQUIRE MAGAZINE, JANUARY 2004
20
- HOW THINGS ARE -
It is the bird singing that makes us happy.

(MARCH 24, 1919-)
There are almost 23 million households like that in America, 60 million

individuals including 18 million children. They’ve gone virtually unmentioned in
this campaign. Obama and McCain both talk about the middle class. These
people are the forgotten class.
MICHAEL ZWEIG, AMERICAN PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND DIRECTOR
OF THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF WORKING CLASS LIFE
BILL MOYERS, AMERICAN JOURNALIST AND FORMER PRESIDENTIAL PRESS

SECRETARY (JUNE 6, 1934-)
“MICHAEL ZWEIG,” BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, OCTOBER 17, 2008
despair
is the bottom
of up
RJS
Mr. Bush said he was optimistic because the economy’s “foundation is solid” as
measured by employment, wages, productivity, exports and the federal deficit. He
was wrong on every count. On some, he has been wrong for quite a while.
Mr. Bush boasted about 52 consecutive months of job growth during his
presidency. What matters is the magnitude of growth, not ticks on a calendar.
The economic expansion under Mr. Bush — which it is safe to assume is now
over — produced job growth of 4.2 percent. That is the worst performance over a
business cycle since the government started keeping track in 1945.
Mr. Bush also talked approvingly of the recent unemployment rate of 4.8 percent.
A low rate is good news when it indicates a robust job market. The
unemployment rate ticked down last month because hundreds of thousands of
people dropped out of the work force altogether. Worse, long-term
unemployment, of six months or more, hit 17.5 percent. We’d expect that in the
depths of a recession. It is unprecedented at the onset of one.
Mr. Bush was wrong to say wages are rising. On Friday morning, the day he spoke,
the government reported that wages failed to outpace inflation in February, for
the fifth straight month. Productivity growth has also weakened markedly in the
past two years, a harbinger of a lower overall standard of living for Americans.
21
Exports have surged of late, but largely on the back of a falling dollar. The weaker
dollar makes American exports cheaper, but it also pushes up oil prices.
Potentially far more serious, a weakening dollar also reduces the Federal Reserve’s
flexibility to steady the economy.
Finally, Mr. Bush’s focus on the size of the federal budget deficit ignores that
annual government borrowing comes on top of existing debt. Publicly held federal
debt will be up by a stunning 76 percent by the end of his presidency. Paying back
the money means less to spend on everything else for a very long time.
EDITORIAL
“THROUGH BUSH-COLORED GLASSES,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, MARCH 16,
2008
The leverage party’s over for the masters of the universe. Shed a tear. When you
trade pieces of paper for other pieces of paper instead of trading them for real
things, one day someone wakes up and realizes the paper’s worth nothing. And
Lehman Brothers, after 158 years, has gone poof in the night.
We’re witnessing the passing of more than a venerable firm. We’re seeing the
death of a culture.
For years, accountants, rating agencies and Wall Street executives decided to
shoot craps and collect fees. Regulators, taking their cue from a distracted
President Bush, took a nap. The two M’s — Money and Me — became the
lodestones of the zeitgeist, and damn those distant wars.
The biggest single-day market drop since 9/11 reminded me that when trading
reopened on Sept. 17, 2001, and the Dow plunged 684.81 points, some executives
backdated their options to reprice them at this post-attack low to increase their
potential gains.
So that’s what “financial killing” really means. No better illustration exists of a
culture where private gain has eclipsed the public good, public service, even
public decency, and where the cult of the individual has caused the
commonwealth to wither.
ROGER COHEN NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST
“THE KING IS DEAD,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 17, 2008
Stupidity carried beyond a certain point becomes a public menace.

EZRA (WESTON LOOMIS) POUND, AMERICAN POET AND CRITIC (OCTOBER
30, 1885-NOVEMBER 1, 1972)
Last week, the Audubon Society released a new report describing the sharp and
startling population decline of some of the most familiar and common birds in
America: several kinds of sparrows, the Northern bobwhite, the Eastern
22
meadowlark, the common grackle and the common tern. The average decline of
the 20 species in the Audubon Society’s report is 68 percent.
Forty years ago, there were an estimated 31 million bobwhites. Now there are 5.5
million. Compared to the hundred-some condors presently in the wild, 5.5
million bobwhites sounds like a lot of birds. But what matters is the 25.5 million
missing and the troubles that brought them down — and are all too likely to bring
down the rest of them, too. So this is not extinction, but it is how things look
before extinction happens. ...
The trouble with humans is that even the smallest changes in our behavior
require an epiphany. And yet compared to the fixity of other species, the
narrowness of their habitats, the strictness of their diets, the precision of the
niches they occupy, we are flexibility itself.
We look around us, expecting the rest of the world’s occupants to adapt to the
changes that we have caused, when, in fact, we have the right to expect
adaptation only from ourselves.
VERLYN KLINKENBORG
“MILLIONS OF MISSING BIRDS, VANISHING IN PLAIN SIGHT,” THE NEW
YORK TIMES, JUNE 19, 2007
A decade ago, census demographers estimated that the nation’s population, which
topped 300 million in 2006, would not surpass 400 million until sometime after
mid-century. Now, they are projecting that the population will top 400 million in
2039 and reach 439 million in 2050.
So-called minorities, the Census Bureau projects, will constitute a majority of the
nation’s children under 18 by 2023 and of working-age Americans by 2039.
For the first time, both the number and the proportion of non-Hispanic whites,
who now account for 66 percent of the population, will decline, starting around
2030. By 2050, their share will dip to 46 percent.
Higher mortality rates among older native-born white Americans and higher
birthrates rates among immigrants and their children are already driving ethnic
and racial disparities.
“A momentum is built into this as a result of past immigration,” said Jeffrey S.
Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. “In the 1970s, ’80s and
’90s, there were more Hispanic immigrants than births. This decade, there are
more births than immigrants. Almost regardless of what you assume about future
immigration, the country will be more Hispanic and Asian.”
SAM ROBERTS
“IN A GENERATION, MINORITIES MAY BE THE U.S. MAJORITY,” THE NEW
YORK TIMES, AUGUST 14, 2008
23
Recent research has revealed a terrible fact: that an average British body carries a
cocktail of more than thirty toxic chemicals, acquired from sofas, carpets,
hairsprays, shampoos, computers, non-stick pans, canned foods, TV sets and much
besides. The Faustian contract not only persists, but the devil’s side is winning:
nearly 90 per cent of the 100,000 chemicals in industrial use in Europe have been
insufficiently researched for their human toxicity, and their use is growing in
relentless pursuit of providing ‘competitive’ (read ‘cheap) transport, food, clothing
and much else.
A(NTHONY) C(LIFFORD) GRAYLING, BRITISH PHILOSOPHER AND AUTHOR
(APRIL 3, 1949-)
S T
THE HEART OF THINGS: APPLYING PHILOSOPHY TO THE 21 CENTURY,
2005
Having accounted for nearly a quarter of the world’s population in 1950, the West
now accounts for barely 15 percent, and declining birthrates suggest that this
share will shrink further.
MARTIN WALKER, SENIOR SCHOLAR AT THE WILSON CENTER
In 1950, the world’s total GDP had a value of just over $1 trillion, and world
trade amounted to $130 billion, or about 13 percent of output. By 1970, global
GDP had surpassed the $3 trillion level and world trade was at $650 billion,
around 20 percent of output. By 1990, the value of world output was more than
$20 trillion, and that of world trade $7 trillion, or 35 percent of output. Last year,
with global output near $48 trillion, world trade reached $24 trillion, or 50
percent of output.
MARTIN WALKER, SENIOR SCHOLOR AT THE WILSON CENTER
… Of the world’s 20 most polluted cities, 16 are in China, and 90 percent of

China’s cities have contaminated groundwater. China’s Information Office of the
State Council, an administrative arm of the government, estimated that pollution
cost the country $200 billion in 2005, which translates into nearly 10% of its
GDP. The list goes on and on and includes very real evidence that China’s
environmental problems are increasingly being outsourced to the rest of the world
as well. Indeed, as much as 40 percent of the air pollution in Japan and South
Korea can be traced back to China. On some days, as much as 40 percent of the
pollution in Los Angeles is generated from across the Pacific, in China.
CHRIS WARREN
“CLEAN AND SOBERING: AFTER DECADES OF RUNAWAY ECONOMIC
EXPANSION, CHINA IS CONFRONTING THE RESULTING POLLUTION
PROBLEM,” AMERICAN WAY MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 15, 2008
24
The City of Chicago is preparing to pay nearly $20 million to four men who were
once sent to death row after interrogations that they say amounted to torture by
the Chicago police, the city’s law department said on Friday.
If the legal settlement is approved next week by the city’s aldermen, it will be a
crucial first effort to put a painful, notorious chapter in the city’s history behind it,
some officials here said.
The four men were among scores of black men who reported being tortured,
beaten with telephone books, and even suffocated with plastic typewriter covers
during police interrogations in the 1970s and 1980s, special prosecutors found last
year. The four men were pardoned by Gov. George Ryan in 2003.
Of the proposed settlement, Flint Taylor, a lawyer for one of the men, Leroy
Orange, said, “It speaks volumes about the seriousness of the systematic torture,
abuse and cover-up that went on in the city of Chicago for decades.”
MONICA DAVEY AND CATRIN EINHORN
“SETTLEMENT FOR TORTURE OF 4 MEN BY POLICE,” THE NEW YORK
TIMES, DECEMBER 8, 2007
About 6 in 10 Americans.according to a 2005 Harris Poll, believe in the devil and

hell, and about 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles
and of life after death. A 2006 survey at Baylor University found that 92 percent
of respondents believe in a personal God –– that is, a God with a distinct set of
character traits ranging from “distant” to “benevolent.”
ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, AMERICAN WRITER
PEACE IS THE WAY, 2005
25
- POLITICS -
It all began with democracy [in Britain]. Before we had the vote, all the power was
in the hands of the rich people. If you had money, you could have healthcare,
education, look after yourself when you were old. And what democracy did was to
give the poor the vote and it moved power from the marketplace to the polling
station, from the wallet to the ballot. And what people said was very simple:
During the 1930’s we had mass unemployment, but we don’t have unemployment
during the war. If you can have full employment killing Germans, why can’t you
have it by building hospitals, schools, recruiting nurses and teachers? If you can
find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.
(ANTHONY NEIL WEDGWOOD) “TONY” BENN, FORMER BRITISH MEMBER OF
PARLIAMENT (APRIL 3, 1925-)
MICHAEL MOORE, AMERICAN FILM PRODUCER

SICKO, 2007
We apologize for the inconvenience, but this is a revolution.

SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS

(MARCH 24, 1919-)
I was born for the storm and a calm doesn’t suit me.
ANDREW JACKSON, SEVENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND
AMERICAN GENERAL (MARCH 15, 1767-JUNE 8, 1845)
BILL MOYERS: Quickly connect the dots of this recent era for us, ballooning
debt, sliding home prices, recurrent money supply expansion, growing inflation,
peak oil, crumbling dollar, stagnant wages. What do they have in common?
KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, I think they're all part of something I'm starting to
think of as the mega bubble, 25 years of just pumping up the money supply and
deregulating and not worrying about the ordinary person but sort of faking him or
her out with friendly statistics and feel-good stuff. We are in an age of
disappointment. And I don't think that’s going to be eradicated easily. I’m not
sure it will be at all.
KEVIN PHILIPS, NIXON WHITE HOUSE STRATEGIST, POLITICAL AND
ECONOMIC CRITIC (NOVEMBER 30, 1940-)

“KEVIN PHILIPS,” BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, SEPTEMBER 7, 2008
It will be quiet on Tuesday. No speeches. No motorcades. No paid political

announcements. It’s a very special day, just for grown-ups. America votes
26
Tuesday…and . . . on Tuesday, the shouting and the begging and the threatening
and the heckling will be silenced. It’s very quiet in a voting booth. And nobody’s
going to help you make up your mind. So –– just for that instant –– you’ll know
what the man you’re voting for will do a thousand times a day for the next four
years. Now it’s your turn.
NEWSPAPER AD, ELECTION DAY, 1968
You grew up in Chicago where, it is famously said, four out of every two votes are
cast Democratic, right? And whereas we learned in 1960 you never count the
votes of the deceased until you know how many need, right? So you have some
experience with what can go wrong in elections. What can go wrong this
election?
MICHAEL CRISPIN-MILLER, AMERICAN PROFESSOR OF MEDIA, CULTURE
AND COMMUNICATION AT NYU

“MICHAEL CRISPIN-MILLER AND PROTECTING YOUR VOTE,” BILL MOYERS
JOURNAL, OCTOBER 17, 2008
As gifted as he [John McCain] is, he is essentially going to execute the Republican

agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda, with a new face and a maverick
approach to it, and he’d be quite good at it. But I think we need a generational
change.
COLIN (LUTHER) POWELL, AMERICAN MILITARY LEADER AND U.S.
SECRETARY OF STATE (APRIL 5, 1937-)
JEFF ZELENY
“DONATION RECORD AS COLIN POWELL ENDORSES OBAMA,” THE NEW
YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 19, 2008
“The political system does not do well with gradual, long-term problems,” Peter
Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, said. “It deals with crises,
often imperfectly, but it does deal with them. The current experience makes the
case.”
DAVID LEONHARDT
“A POWER THAT MAY NOT STAY SO SUPER,” THE NEW YORK TIMES,
OCTOBER 12, 2008
I’ve always believed that America’s government was a unique political system —
one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system
can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the
people charged to run it.
This is dangerous. We have House members, many of whom I suspect can’t
balance their own checkbooks, rejecting a complex rescue package because some
voters, whom I fear also don’t understand, swamped them with phone calls. I
27
appreciate the popular anger against Wall Street, but you can’t deal with this
crisis this way. …
I always said to myself: Our government is so broken that it can only work in
response to a huge crisis. But now we’ve had a huge crisis, and the system still
doesn’t seem to work. Our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have gotten so
out of practice of working together that even in the face of this system-
threatening meltdown they could not agree on a rescue package, as if they lived
on Mars and were just visiting us for the week, with no stake in the outcome.
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, AMERICAN AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST (JULY 20,
1953-)
“RESCUE THE RESCUE,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 30, 2008
“There are not a lot of things we can count on these days,” said Mark McKinnon,
a former adviser to Mr. McCain who stepped aside earlier this year because, he
told associates, he did not want to be part of a campaign tearing down Mr.
Obama. “But, the sun will rise. The sun will set. And presidential campaigns will
go negative.”
Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant known as an advocate for tough
campaigns, said: “At the end of the day, campaigns are campaigns. In the last five
days, it always comes down to a knife fight in a telephone booth.”
ADAM NAGOURNEY
“CAMPAIGNS SHIFT TO ATTACK MODE ON EVE OF DEBATE,” THE NEW
YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 6, 2008
RICK KARR: Michael Savage isn't the only right-wing talk-radio host who
launches blistering, even violent, verbal attacks on people and groups he doesn’t
like. Glenn Beck, for instance, fantasized about murdering a liberal filmmaker.
GLENN BECK:”I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore and I’m wondering if I
could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I
could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be
choking the life out of him. Is this wrong?”
RICK KARR: Michael Reagan, son of the former president, suggested that people
who claim that “nine-eleven was an inside job,” a U.S. government conspiracy,
deserve to die.
MICHAEL REAGAN: “Take them out and shoot them. They are traitors to this
country, and shoot them. But anybody who would do that doesn’t deserve to live.
You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them
dead. I’ll pay for the bullet.”
RICK KARR: Neal Boortz went after victims of Hurricane Katrina.
28
NEAL BOORTZ: “That wasn’t the cries of the downtrodden. That’s the cries of
the useless, the worthless. New Orleans was a welfare city, a city of parasites, a
city of people who could not, and had no desire to fend for themselves. You have
a hurricane descending on them and they sit on their fat asses and wait for
somebody else to come rescue them.”
RICK KARR: Muslims are some of Boortz's favorite targets.
NEAL BOORTZ:”It’s Ramadan and Muslims in your workplace might be
offended if they see you eating at your desk. Why? I guess it’s because Muslims
don’t eat during the day during Ramadan. They fast during the day and eat at
night. Sorta like cockroaches.”
RICK KARR: Reverend Chris Buice says he’s heard that kind of language before.
REVEREND CHRIS BUICE: If you look at the history of like situations like in
Rwanda in 1994, the talk radio was a big part of leading to the conditions that
created a genocide. The Hutu radio disc jockeys would call the Tutsi cockroaches.
There’s the sense that these aren’t human beings. You know, they’re not human
beings with children or grandchildren. These are cockroaches. And when you
hear in talk radio that liberals are evil, that they are traitors, that they are godless,
that they are on the side of the terrorist. That’s hate language. You don’t
negotiate with evil people. You don’t live in community with people you consider
to be traitors.
“RAGE ON THE RADIO,” BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, SEPTEMBER 12, 2008
I feel for Ms. Palin’s son who has been shipped off to the war in Iraq. But at his
deployment ceremony, which was on the same day as the Charlie Gibson
interview, Sept. 11, she told the audience of soldiers that they would be fighting
“the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands
of Americans.”
Was she deliberately falsifying history, or does she still not know that Iraq and
Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?
To burnish the foreign policy credentials of a vice presidential candidate who
never even had a passport until last year, the Republicans have been touting
Alaska’s proximity to Russia. (Imagine the derisive laughter in conservative
circles if the Democrats had tried such nonsense.) So Mr. Gibson asked Ms. Palin,
“What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does
the proximity of the state give you?”
She said, “They’re our next-door neighbors. And you can actually see Russia from
land here in Alaska. From an island in Alaska.”
29
Mr. Gibson tried again. “But what insight does that give you,” he asked, “into
what they’re doing in Georgia?”
BOB HERBERT, NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST
“SHE’S NOT READY,” THE NEW YORK TIMES,” SEPTEMBER 12, 2008
Ms. Palin talked repeatedly about never blinking. When Mr. McCain asked her
to run for vice president? “You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to
the mission,” she said, that “you can’t blink.”
Fighting terrorism? “We must do whatever it takes, and we must not blink,
Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we
target.”
EDITORIAL
“GOV. PALIN’S WORLDVIEW,” THE NEW YORK TIMES,” SEPTEMBER 13,
2008
“This election is not about issues, so much as the candidate’s images,” said
McCain campaign manager [Rick] Davis, in one of the campaign’s most notable
announcements.
FRANK RICH, NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST
“PALIN AND MCCAIN’S SHOTGUN MARIAGE,” THE NEW YORK TIMES,”
SEPTEMBER 7, 2008
BILL MOYERS: There was an interview that Chris Wallace [television

commentator] did with John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, in which
Davis comes out and says, you know, they’re not going let Sarah Palin be
interviewed until the media learn to afford her some respect and deference.
“MEDIA ANALYSIS,” BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, SEPTEMBER 12, 2008
Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing Talk Radio star, delivered this verdict: “Babies,
guns and Jesus. Hot damn!”
ALEXI MOSTROUS IN WASILLA, ALASKA
“SARAH PALIN, THE PASTOR AND THE PROPHECY: JUDGMENT DAY IS NOT
FAR AWAY,” TIMES ONLINE, SEPTEMBER 10, 2008
My fellow Americans: We are a country in debt and in decline — not terminal,

not irreversible, but in decline. Our political system seems incapable of producing
long-range answers to big problems or big opportunities. We are the ones who
need a better-functioning democracy — more than the Iraqis and Afghans. We
are the ones in need of nation-building. It is our political system that is not
working.
I continue to be appalled at the gap between what is clearly going to be the next
great global industry — renewable energy and clean power — and the inability of
30
Congress and the administration to put in place the bold policies we need to
ensure that America leads that industry.
“America and its political leaders, after two decades of failing to come together to
solve big problems, seem to have lost faith in their ability to do so,” Wall Street
Journal columnist Gerald Seib noted last week. “A political system that expects
failure doesn’t try very hard to produce anything else.”
1953-)
“ANXIOUS IN AMERICA,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, JUNE 29, 2008
Beginning with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, “the occupant of the
White House has become a combination of demigod, father figure and, inevitably,
the betrayer of inflated hopes. Pope. Pop star. Scold. Scapegoat. Crisis manager.
Commander in Chief. Agenda settler. Moral philosopher. Interpreter of the
nation’s charisma. Object of veneration. And the butt of jokes. All rolled into
one.”
ANDREW J. BACEVICH, PROFESSOR OF FOREIGN RELATIONS, BOSTON
UNIVERSITY (1947-)
THE LIMITS OF POWER: THE END OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, 2008

“ANDREW J. BACEVICH,” BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, AUGUST 15, 2008
Thus we see there is a basic principle for the sovereign: Through sincerity and
faithfulness, he maintains his rule, and through pride and self-indulgent living he
loses it. (Arthur Waley translation)
CONFUCIUS, CHINESE PHILOSOPHER (SEPTEMBER 28, 551 B.C.-479 B.C.)
31
- ON BUSINESS -
He was there at the top… impervious, untouchable, insulated… a master of the

universe. A great height to view the rest of the world. A great height from which
to fall.
(THOMAS KENNERLY) TOM WOLFE (JR.), AMERICAN AUTHOR AND
JOURNALIST (MARCH 2, 1931-)
BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, 1987
There is an element in the readjustment of our financial system, more important

than currency, more important than gold, and it is the confidence in the people
themselves. Confidence and courage are the essentials in carrying out our plan.
Let us unite in banishing fear. Together we cannot fail.
N D
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, 1932, 32 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES (JANUARY 30, 1882-APRIL 12, 1945)
S T
1 FIRESIDE CHAT, MARCH 12, 1933
Challenge capitalism masquerading as democracy.

(MARCH 24, 1919-)
You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste. It’s an opportunity to do important

things you would otherwise avoid.
RAHM ISRAEL EMANUEL, AMERICAN POLITICIAN AND OBAMA CABINET
CHIEF OF STAFF (NOVEMBER 29, 1959-)
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

WARREN BUFFETT, AMERICAN FINANCIER (AUGUST 30, 1930-)
Somehow the genius quants — the best and brightest geeks Wall Street firms
could buy — fed $1 trillion in subprime mortgage debt into their supercomputers,
added some derivatives, massaged the arrangements with computer algorithms
and — poof! — created $62 trillion in imaginary wealth. It’s not much of a
stretch to imagine that all of that imaginary wealth is locked up somewhere inside
the computers, and that we humans, led by the silverback males of the financial
world, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, are frantically beseeching the monolith
for answers. Or maybe we are lost in space, with Dave the astronaut pleading,
“Open the bank vault doors, Hal.”
RICHARD DOOLING, AMERICAN AUTHOR OF “RAPTURE FOR THE GEEKS:
WHEN A.I. OUTSMARTS I.Q.”
“THE RISE OF THE MACHINES,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 12, 2008
32
But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power
over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we
do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position
of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to
accept all of the machines’ decisions. ... Eventually a stage may be reached at
which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that
human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the
machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the
machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off
would amount to suicide.
THEODORE KACZINSKI, AMERICAN TERRORIST, KNOWN AS THE
UNIBOMBER

When Treasury Secretary Paulson (looking very much like a frightened primate)
came to Congress seeking an emergency loan, Senator Jon Tester of Montana, a
Democrat still living on his family homestead, asked him: “I’m a dirt farmer. Why
do we have one week to determine that $700 billion has to be appropriated or this
country’s financial system goes down the pipes?”
“Well, sir,” Mr. Paulson could well have responded, “the computers have
demanded it.”
Our entire economy is in danger.

R D
GEORGE WALKER BUSH, 43 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (JULY 6,
1946-)
PETER S. GOODMAN
“CREDIT ENTERS A LOCKDOWN,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 25,
2008
My friend Rob Watson, the head of EcoTech International, has a saying about
Mother Nature that goes like this: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and
physics. That’s all she is.” And because of that, says Rob, you cannot spin Mother
Nature. You cannot bribe Mother Nature. You cannot sweet talk her, and you
cannot ignore her. She’s going to do with the climate whatever chemistry, biology
and physics dictate. And Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats a
thousand.
There is a parallel with markets. At their core, markets are propelled by fear and
greed. They’re just the balance at any given moment of those two impulses. Over
the long run, you cannot spin the market. You cannot sweet talk it into going up
33
or beg it not to go down. It’s going to do whatever it’s going to do — which ever
way greed and fear tug it. And the market always bats last and it always bats a
thousand.
What am I saying? We are where we are today because we went on a credit binge
and we’re now paying the price. Because it was the biggest credit binge the world
has ever been on, a lot of wealth is going to be wiped out. Now what you’re
witnessing is the market re-evaluating and re-pricing every asset in the world,
without mercy, telling each stock, bond and bank what its value is in a post-credit
binge world.
1953-)
“THE POST-BINGE WORLD,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 12, 2008
“One thing seems probable to me,” Peer Steinbrück, the German finance
minister, said recently. “The U.S. will lose its status as the superpower of the
global financial system.” At another time, that remark might have sounded like
mere nationalist bluster. Right now, it doesn’t seem ridiculous to ask whether
2008 will come to be seen as the first year of a distinctly non-American century.
DAVID LEONHARDT
“A POWER THAT MAY NOT STAY SO SUPER,” THE NEW YORK TIMES,
OCTOBER 12, 2008
Before he [Richard Fuld, Chairman of Lehman Brothers] took up the top post at
Lehman, he found himself in a Las Vegas casino when a bad gambler blew $4
million. The gambler was following a classic strategy: when the cards go against
you, double up the bet, because eventually things are sure to turn your way. Fuld
took notes on a cocktail napkin as the gambler imploded, reaching the conclusion
that bad luck can always continue longer than seems reasonable. “I don’t care
who you are,” he wrote later. “You don’t have enough capital.”
JIM JAMIESON
“HOW THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE RAN AMOK AND COST US THE
EARTH,” THE SCOTSMAN, SEPTEMBER 16, 2008
Are you capable of taking a perfectly good 158-year-old company and turning it
into dust? If so, then you may not be earning up to your full potential.
You should be raking it in like Richard Fuld, the longtime chief of Lehman
Brothers. He took home nearly half-a-billion dollars in total compensation
between 1993 and 2007.
Last year, Mr. Fuld earned about $45 million, according to the calculations of
Equilar, an executive pay research company. That amounts to roughly $17,000 an
hour to obliterate a firm. If you’re willing to drive a company into the ground for
less, apply by calling Lehman Brothers at (212) 526-7000.
34
Oh, nevermind.
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOL, NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST
“NEED A JOB? $17,000 AN HOUR. NO SUCCESS REQUIRED,” THE NEW YORK
TIMES, SEPTEMBER 17, 2008
No other nation ever had it quite so good. Before the dollar, the pound sterling
was the pre-eminent monetary brand. But when Britannia ruled the waves, the
pound was backed by gold. You could exchange pound notes for gold coin, and
vice versa, at the fixed statutory rate.
Today’s dollar, in contrast, is faith-based. Since 1971, nothing has stood behind it
except the world’s good opinion of the United States. And now, watching the
largest American financial institutions quake, and the administration fly from one
emergency stopgap to the next, the world is changing its mind.
JAMES GRANT
“THE BUCK STOPPED THEN,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 23, 2008
“The global financial crisis endangers all our work,” said the secretary general,
Ban Ki-moon, who used his opening remarks at the General Assembly to question
the reliance on free markets. “We need a new understanding on business ethics
and governance, with more compassion and less uncritical faith in the ‘magic’ of
markets.”
BAN KI MOON, KOREAN-BORN SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE UNITED
NATIONS (JUNE 13, 1944-)
NEIL MACFARQUHAR
“UPHEAVAL ON WALL ST. STIRS ANGER AT U.N.,” THE NEW YORK TIMES,
SEPTEMBER 23, 2008
… our bank crisis is not over. Two weeks ago, Goldman Sachs analysts said that
U.S. banks may need another $65 billion to cover more write-downs of bad
mortgage-related instruments and potential new losses if consumer loans start to
buckle. Since President Bush came to office, our national savings have gone from
6 percent of gross domestic product to 1 percent, and consumer debt has climbed
from $8 trillion to $14 trillion.
1953-)
“ANXIOUS IN AMERICA,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, JUNE 29, 2008
Investors are like hyperactive first graders playing musical chairs. [September 14,
2008]
SAM STOVALL, STANDARD AND POOR’S EQUITY RESEARCH
FLOYD NORRIS: The government is nationalizing companies. They nationalized

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And that made a little bit of sense, since we’d
always thought Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had an implicit government
35
guarantee, whatever that meant. And now they’ve nationalized AIG. They own
eighty percent of the company. They have lent money to the company at very
strict terms.
For this company to somehow pay that loan back will require amazing
competence in managing things. And I don’t think anybody expects them to ever
do that. They’re probably going to liquidate AIG. It amazes me. I’m not sure it
was unnecessary, as I said. But I can only envision what the right wing would be
saying if a liberal Democrat had decided to nationalize the biggest insurance
company in America. I don’t think you’d be hearing a lot of praise for it.
GRETCHEN MORGENSON: The ugly thing about this is privatizing gains and
socializing losses. So when things are going well, the managements make out, the
shareholders make out, the counterparties are fine. All the private sector people
do well. But when something goes wrong, when decisions are made that turn out
to be bad decisions, the U.S. taxpayer has to take on the problem.
And there’s something very wrong about that. Because all of those people that
made all that money are running off here into the distance with the money,
carrying it in their bags. And the United States taxpayer is on the hook.
FLOYD NORRIS, NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESS & FINANCIAL COLUMNIST
GRETCHEN MORGENSON, NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESS & FINANCIAL

COLUMNIST

“WALL STREET WOES,” BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, SEPTEMBER 19, 2008
The only repectable type of socialism in America is socialism for the rich.
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH, AMERICAN-CANADIAN ECONOMIST
(OCTOBER 15, 1908-APRIL 29, 2006)
… Alan Greenspan [Federal Reserve Chairman, 1987-2006] has finally decided to

admit, you know, this [financial meltdown] may be one of those once-a-century
biggies. Well, what makes it fascinating is that I sometimes use the description
“seven sharks.” There are seven sharks in the tank with the economy.
And the first is financialization because we’re so dependent on this industry that’s
sort of half lost its marbles. The second is that you have this huge buildup of debt,
absolutely unprecedented anywhere in the world. The third is you've now got
home prices collapsing. The fourth is you’ve got global commodity inflation
building up.
The fifth is you’ve got flawed and deceptive government economics statistics. The
sixth is that you’ve got what they call peak oil where the world is, to some extent,
running out of oil. So it’s not just commodity inflation, it’s a shortage of oil. And
then the last thing is the collapsing dollar. Now, whenever you get this sort of
36
package in one decade, you got a big one. And when Greenspan says it’s a once a
century, I think it’s another variation but on a par with the Thirties.

Voluntary regulation of investment banks does not work, Securities and Exchange
Commission Chairman Christopher Cox testified on Capitol Hill today.
“The last six months, during which the SEC and the Federal Reserve have worked
collaboratively with each of the firms pursuant to our memorandum of
understanding — have made abundantly clear that voluntary regulation doesn’t
work,” Mr. Cox said in prepared testimony at a hearing of the Senate Banking
Committee on turmoil in the U.S. credit markets.
He referred to the SEC’s program of voluntary supervision for investment bank
holding companies, the Consolidated Supervised Entity program, which was put
in place by the SEC in 2004.
“The failure of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to give regulatory authority over
investment bank holding companies to any agency of government was, based on
the experience of the last several months, a costly mistake,” Mr. Cox said in his
testimony.
Gramm-Leach-Bliley allowed banks, brokerage firms and insurers to combine after
years of separation that was required under Depression-era laws.
The $58 trillion notational market in credit default swaps is “another similar
regulatory hole that most be immediately addressed to avoid similar
consequences,” Mr. Cox testified.
SARA HANSARD
“COX: VOLUNTARY REGULATION DOESN’T WORK,” INVESTMENT NEWS,
SEPTEMBER 23, 2008
KEVIN PHILLIPS: … We are on the wrong track. I wish I could say that there’s a
blueprint that would get us back on the right track. But my sense of the histories
of leading world economic powers is that you don’t get back on the right track.
… You go through a painful adjustment process. The British were absolutely top
dog in the world in 1914. Two world wars and 35 years later, after World War II,
they were having food rationing, the pound sterling crashed, dukes were giving
guided tours of their castles because they couldn’t afford to maintain them
otherwise. Doesn’t take long. And I’m afraid the United States is coming right
into that period which marks a couple of decades coming up that are going to be
very difficult for America.
37

Yes, life’s getting better. Just not better than it used to be.
JOHN ALEXANDER THAIN, CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF MERRILL LYNCH (MAY
26, 1955-)
I want everyone to have a healthy dose of paranoia. [October 2008]

WARREN MULA, AMERICAN INSURANCE BROKERAGE EXECUTIVE
What client would want to pay for this?

ANON.
the heart & the mind of a company are considered inefficiences. … as is the
conscience.
RJS
I have no idea what the stock market is going to do next month or in six months
from now. I do know that the American economy over time, will do very well,
and people who own a piece of it will do well.
WARREN BUFFETT, AMERICAN FINANCIER (AUGUST 30, 1930-)
38
- TRADITION -
The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other
nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
ALEXIS (CHARLES HENRI MAURICE CLÉEL) DE TOCQUEVILLE, FRENCH
SOCIOLOGIST (JULY 29, 1805-JULY 16, 1859)
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, 1840
If Westerners feel dazed and confused upon exiting the plane at the new
international airport terminal here [in Beijing], it’s understandable. It’s not just the
grandeur of the space. It’s the inescapable feeling that you’re passing through a
portal to another world, one whose fierce embrace of change has left Western
nations in the dust.
The sensation is comparable to the epiphany that Adolf Loos, the Viennese
architect, experienced when he stepped off a steamship in New York Harbor more
than a century ago. He had crossed a threshold into the future; Europe, he
realized, was now culturally obsolete.
NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
“IN CHANGING FACE OF BEIJING, A LOOK AT THE NEW CHINA,” THE NEW
YORK TIMES, JULY 13, 2008
To be patient and gentle, ready to teach, returning not evil for evil: that is the
strength of character of the people of the southern countries. It is the ideal place
for the moral man. To lie under arms and meet death without regret; that is the
strength of character of the people of the northern countries. It is the ideal of
brave men of your type. Wherefore the man with the true strength of moral
character is one who is gentle, yet firm. How unflinching is his strength!
CONFUCIUS, CHINESE PHILOSOPHER (551-497 B.C)
In exalting competition, Americans often forget that cooperation and collective

effort are the foundation of freedom.
BENJAMIN R. BARBER, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
“THE LOST ART OF COOPERATION,” THE WILSON QUARTERLY, AUTUMN
2007
“It is not enough that I win,” proclaims the hubris-driven American competitor,
“others must lose.”
BENJAMIN R. BARBER, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
“THE LOST ART OF COOPERATION,” THE WILSON QUARTERLY, AUTUMN
2007
Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the War against Terror was to persuade
the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. When the
39
maddened King stamps his foot, slaves tremble in their quarters. So, standing here
today, it’s hard for me to say this, but “The American Way of Life” is simply not
sustainable. Because it doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.
DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (JULY 9, 1932-)
ARUNDHATI ROY, INDIAN WRITER (NOVEMBER 24, 1961-)

“COME SEPTEMBER,” SPEECH, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO, SEPTEMBER 2002
They are cowshit farmers, these New Englanders

who built our red barns so admired as emblems,
in photograph, in paint, of America’s imagined
past (backward utopians that we’ve become).
But let me tell how it is inside those barns.
Warm. Even in dead of winter, even in the
dark night solid with thirty below, thanks
to huge bodies breathing heat and grain sacks
stuffed under doors and in broken windows, warm,
and heaped with reeking, steaming manure, running
with urine that reeks even more, the wooden channels
and flagged aisles saturated with a century’s
excreta.
“MARSHALL WASHER,” TOWARD THE DISTANT ISLANDS: NEW AND SELCTED
POEMS BY HAYDEN CARRUTH, 2006
Frankly, I worry that enemies of Senator Obama will seize upon details like his
grandfather’s Islamic faith or his father’s polygamy to portray him as an alien or a
threat to American values. But snobbishness and paranoia ill-become a nation of
immigrants, where one of our truest values is to judge people by their own merits,
not their pedigrees. If we call ourselves a land of opportunity, then Mr. Obama’s
heritage doesn’t threaten American values but showcases them.
The stepgrandson of an illiterate, barefoot woman in this village of mud huts in
Africa may be the next president of the United States. Such mobility — powered
by education, immigration and hard work — is cause not for disparagement but
for celebration.
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, AMERICAN COLUMNIST FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
“OBAMA’S KENYAN ROOTS,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, FEBRUARY 25, 2008
… why did Rome fall? Because of things interior and exterior. The interior part
was less and less just taxation. More and more it was the poor and the middle class
that bore the burden of taxation. And the wealthy and very wealthy pretended to
pay but didn’t actually. And I think we are in a very similar situation with regard
to that. Then the other thing was –– the external thing was that you had all of
these Germanic barbarians who we think of as marauders and all that. They just
40
wanted in. They were on the wrong side of the river. And they knew it. They
wanted to have farms and vineyards like the Romans had. They thought it looked
great. They wanted to cross the river. You know, what they were? They were
immigrants. That’s who they were, not at all unlike the situation today at the
borders of our country and the borders of Europe.
… And what happened was despite the unjust taxation or despite –– taxation in
any form, the Romans could not pay to keep them out. No matter what they did
they couldn’t make those walls high enough and strong enough to keep out the
barbarians. If people really want to get in they’re going to find a way in.
THOMAS CAHILL, AMERICAN SCHOLAR AND WRITER

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, PBS, DECEMBER 28, 2007
Have you noticed all these new nonfiction books on “happiness”? It’s an
industry. It’s really frightening. People need to read a book on how to be happy?
It’s completely an American thing. Can you imagine people in Naples sitting on a
bus or in a trattoria reading a book about happiness?
CHARLES SIMIC, YUGOSLAVIAN-AMERICAN POET AND CRITIC – POET
LAUREATE OF THE UNITED STATES (MAY 9, 1938-)
DEBORAH SOLOMON, AMERICAN COLUMNIST FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

(AUGUST 9, 1957-)
“IN-VERSE THINKING,” THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 3,
2008
… Americans are careless to this day about little things and about big things.
They’re careless about being on time for example … They’re careless about big
things. Heaven knows, they’ve been careless about the environment from the
beginning. They’ve laid waste the American environment from the very earliest
time in our history.
HENRY STEELE COMMAGER, AMERICAN HISTORIAN (OCTOBER 25, 1902-
MARCH 2, 1998)

“A CONVERSATION WITH HENRY STEELE COMMAGER,” BILL MOYERS
JOURNAL, EDUCATIONAL BROADCASTING CORPORATION, MARCH 26, 1974
Has there ever been a society so exquisitely rigged for implosion?

JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER, AMERICAN AUTHOR
WORLD MADE BY HAND, 2008
If, we can identify a single moment when the Western dominated Globalization
2.0 gave way to Globalization 3.0, it may have been when China acceded to
WTO [World Trade Organization] membership on or about December 11, 2001. A
new era of globalization dawned. Now the West must cede command to others.
MARTIN WALKER, SENIOR SCHOLOR AT THE WILSON CENTER
41
Uncomfortable with access to immense stores of fact, amerikans prefer spin.

RJS
“Oprah dresses conservatively,” explained Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, a

co-owner of a women’s spa in Riyadh called Yibreen and a daughter of Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States. “She
struggles with her weight. She overcame depression. She rose from poverty and
from abuse. On all these levels she appeals to a Saudi woman. People really idolize
her here.”
KATHERINE ZOEPF
“SAUDI WOMEN FIND AN UNLIKELY ROLE MODEL: OPRAH,” THE NEW YORK
TIMES, SEPTEMBER 19, 2008
Stigler’s Law: No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.

STEPHEN STIGLER, AMERICAN STATISTICIAN
MALCOLM GLADWELL, AMERICAN AUTHOR

“IN THE AIR: WHO SAYS BIG IDEAS ARE RARE?” THE NEW YORKER, MAY
12, 2008
The miracle of Christmas is that, like the distant and very musical voice of the
hound, it penetrates finally and becomes heard in the heart.
E(LWYN) B(ROOKS) WHITE, AMERICAN WRITER (JULY 11, 1899-OCTOBER
1, 1985)
NOTES ON OUR TIMES, 1937-1954
By the time of the American Revolution there was already a robust plebeian
resentment of the aristocrat as parasite, a priviledged nonproducer living off the
hard labor of those he lorded over.
STEVE FRAZER, AMERICAN AUTHOR
WALL STREET: AMERICA’S DREAM PALACE, 2008
… There’s a very great sense of guilt about the negro –– about slavery –– which
was not present in the past, on the whole, in the 19th century, and in the
mistreatment of blacks from the end of slavery on to the present day –– a sense
that we have betrayed the promise of freedom.
We have a sense of guilt about what we did to the Indian. … And we have a
sense of guilt, I think –– a very deep one –– about Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos,
as indeed we should have. We have some sense of guilt –– although I don’t know
how widespread it is –– about being the only people so far who have used the
atomic bomb. We keep worrying about the Russians and the Chinese using it, but
we are the only people who ever did.
MARCH 2, 1998)
42
… there is less harmony in our society –– to my mind –– than at any time since
Reconstruction. And I think this is a very ominous development. … Perhaps the
pressures of modern life, and the requirement that all intelligent people have in
mind everything that goes on in modern life –– perhaps those pressures are now
intolerable, and they are impairing the surface concensus that did obtain in the
past.
MARCH 2, 1998)

… almost all the emergencies turn out not to be –– just as almost all the
requirements of national security, like the break-in to Dr. Fieldings’s office, turn
out not to be. Certainly, there was no emergency, I think , at the time of the Bay
of Pigs. Mr. Kennedy went along with that, and later regretted it. He knew it was
a mistake. If you set up elaborate systems which are almost guaranteed to mislead
you, you invite being misled, and invite the misuse of power. And the C.I.A., and
perhaps the Secret Service, and so forth, are systems whose vested interest it is to
mislead the country into believing there’s a crisis, and therefore, justifying their
conclusions about things.
MARCH 2, 1998)

43
- THE EXISTENTIAL -
… I did somezing magnificent and mysterious … and ze beauty of eet is zat I don’t
have a “why.”
PHILIPPE PETIT, FRENCH HIGH WIRE ARTIST WHO WALKED BETWEEN THE
WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWERS IN 1974, (AUGUST 13, 1949-)
DAVID EDELSTEIN
“FOLIE Á DEUX: A HEIST PICTURE ABOUT ONE OF THE GREATEST STUNTS
IN NEW YORK HISTORY,” THE NEW YORK MAGAZINE, JULY 28-AUGUST 4,
2008
The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus
happy.
ALBERT CAMUS, FRENCH NOVELIST AND PHILOSOPHER (NOVEMBER 7,
1913-JANUARY 4, 1960)
THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS, 1955
… working without a why

MEISTER ECKHART, GERMAN CHRISTIAN MYSTIC (1260-1329)
Life confronts us point-blank.

JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET, SPANISH WRITER, PHILOSOPHER AND POET (MAY
9, 1883-OCTOBER 18, 1955)
why not practice

becoming a cloud
with each breath
before you need to?
RJS
It avails not neither time or place. Distance avails not. I am with you, you men
and women of a generation or ever so many generations hence. I project
myself. Also I return. I am with you and know how it is.
26, 1892)
If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything

there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced
everything great or inconsequential, if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay
hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?
SØREN (AABYE) KIERKEGAARD, DANISH PHILOSOPHER (MAY 5, 1813-
NOVEMBER 11, 1855)
FEAR AND TREMBLING (FRYGT OG BAEVEN), 1843
44
By the end of his life, Leibnitz had come to view 0 and 1 in zenlike terms, as part
of the complex interaction of life and consciousness –– 1 representing God, he
believed, and 0 representing the void.
BARON GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNIZ, GERMAN PHILOSOPHER,
MATHEMATICIAN AND STATESMAN (1646-1716)
PHILIP TOSHIO SUDO, JAPANESE-AMERICAN MUSICIAN

ZEN COMPUTER, 1999
6.44. It is not how things are in the world that is mysterious, but that it exists.
(APRIL 26, 1889-APRIL 29, 1951)
TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS, 1921
The one space reaches through all Beings,

World inner space. The birds fly silently
through us. Oh, I want to grow,
I look outside, and in me grow the tree.
RAINER MARIA RILKE, AUSTRO-GERMAN POET (DECEMBER 4, 1875-
DECEMBER 29, 1926)
“ES WINKT ZU FÜHLUNG”, “EVERYTHING BECKONS TO US TO PERCEIVE
IT”
I am told there is a saying in the Torah that many who are now in their graves
believed that life would not continue without them. But it did.
DEBORAH SONTAG
“THE PALESTINIAN CONVERSATION,” THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE,
FEBRUARY 3, 2002
… the wise man looks into space,

and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too big;
for he knows there there is no limit to dimensions.
LAO TZU, CHINESE PHILOSOPHER (C. 604-531 B.C.)
There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go –– if there are
no doors or windows, he walks through a wall.
BERNARD MALAMUD, AMERICAN NOVELIST (APRIL 26, 1914-MARCH
18,1986)
The more comprehensible reality becomes, the more meaningless.

STEVEN WEINBERG, AMERICAN PHYSICIST (MAY 3, 1933-)
Knoweth thou not that the sun thou seeth with thine eyes is but a reflection
of the sun behind the veil.
MEVLANA JELALUDDIN RUMI, SUFI POET AND SAINT (SEPTEMBER 30,
1207-DECEMBER 17, 1273)
45
The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life and that in turn another,
until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will
be felt.
FREDERICK BUECHNER, AMERICAN MINISTER AND WRITER (JULY 11,
1926-)
Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the Gates of Heaven.
JOHN BUNYAN, ENGLISH WRITER AND PREACHER (NOVEMBER 28, 1628-
AUGUST 31, 1688)
PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, 1678
… if it told us the answer, it would take our freedom away from us.
NOVEMBER 11, 1855)
It ain’t over till it’s over.

1925-)
Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are
irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This
tendancy leads the philosopher into complete darkness.
(APRIL 26, 1889-APRIL 29, 1951)
The world rushes on over the strings of the lingering heart making the music of
sadness.
SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE, HINDU PHILOSOPHER AND POET (MAY 7,
1861-AUGUST 7, 1941)
STRAY BIRDS, XLIV
I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains

And with my hand turn fortune’s wheel about.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, ENGLISH POET AND PLAYWRIGHT (FEBRUARY
26, 1564-MAY 30, 1593)
TAMBURLAINE, 1587
Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.
1913-JANUARY 4, 1960)
LE MYTHE DE SISYPHE (THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS), 1942
... This is how it must live: severed, detatched.

LAURIE SHECK, AMERICAN POET
STEPHEN KUUSISTO, DEBORAH TALL, DAVID WEISS

THE POET’S NOTEBOOK, 1995
46
Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, but we never will.
JAPANESE COMPUTER SCREEN HAIKU
I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection
of something frightful –– of a crisis like no other before on earth, of the
profoundest collision of conscience.
FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE, GERMAN PHILOSOPHER (OCTOBER 15,
1844-AUGUST 25, 1900)
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1886
Your hearts are taken up with worldly gain from the cradle to the grave. But you
shall know. You shall before long come to know. Indeed, if you knew the truth
with certainty, you would see the fire of hell ...
MUHAMMED, PROPHET AND FOUNDER OF ISLAM (570-632)
THE HOLY QUR’ÀN, MUSLIM SACRED SCRIPTURE
This life of hers was as cold as an attic that looks north; and boredom, quiet as a
spider, was spinning its web in the shadowy places of her heart.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, FRENCH NOVELIST (DECEMBER 12, 1821-MAY 8,
1880)
MADAME BOVARY, 1857
And the Days Are Not Full Enough

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.
EZRA (WESTON LOOMIS) POUND, AMERICAN POET AND CRITIC (OCTOBER
30, 1885-NOVEMBER 1, 1972)
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

1913-JANUARY 4, 1960)
THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS, 1942, TRANSLATED BY JUSTIN O’BRIEN
Flow, flow, flow, the current of life is ever onward …

KOBODAISHI-ZAZO, JAPANESE CULTURAL MONUMENT
Afflictions bow me to earth …

Hence viper thoughts that coil around my mind,
Reality’s dark dream.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, ENGLISH LITERARY CRITIC AND POET
(OCTOBER 21, 1772-JULY 25, 1834)
God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.
47
MEISTER ECKHART, GERMAN CHRISTIAN MYSTIC (C. 1260-C. 1329)
Where men can’t live, gods fare no better.

CORMAC MCCARTHY, AMERICAN NOVELIST
THE ROAD, 2006
We’re lost. But at least we’re making good time!

1925-)
For some people the day comes

when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him: and saying it
he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he’d still say no. Yet that no –– the right no ––
drags him down all his life.
CONSTANTINE P. CAVAFY, GREEK POET (1863-1933)
“CHE FECE … IL GRAN RIFIUTO,” TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK BY
EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD
DAISY GOODWIN, ENGLISH TELEVISION PRODUCER

101 POEMS THAT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF EMOTIONAL
FIRST AID, 2003
O the mind, mind has its mountains; cliffs of fall

Frightful, sheer, no man fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there.
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, ENGLISH POET AND PRIEST (JULY 28,1844-
JUNE 8, 1889)
Man is condemned to be free.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, FRENCH PHILOSOPHER AND NOVELIST (JUNE 21,
1905-APRIL 15, 1980)
EXISTENTIALISM AND HUMANISM, 1946
Listening to the monkey’s cry

what would he say about a baby
abandoned to the autumn wind
MATSUO BASH , JAPANESE POET (1644-NOVEMBER 28, 1694)
JANE REICHHOLD, AMERICAN HAIKU POET

BASH : THE COMPLETE HAIKU, 2008
48
- OUR IDEALS -
For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the

American saga: a belief that we are connected as one people.
BARACK (HUSSEIN) OBAMA, JR., AMERICAN SENATOR FROM ILLINOIS
(AUGUST 4, 1961-)
SPEECH, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION, 2004
Oh, is he the fellow who knows that a thing can’t be done and still wants to do it?
The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street,
the meaning of the household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It
is a sign — is it not? — of new vigor, when the extremities are made active, when
currents of warm life run into the hands and feet .... Let me see every trifle
bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the shop,
the plow and the ledger referred to the like cause by which light undulates and
poets sing.
APRIL 27, 1882)
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, A SPEECH AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 1837
When the Great Principle prevails the world is a Commonwealth in which rulers
are selected according to their wisdom and ability. Mutual confidence is promoted
and good neighborliness is cultivated. Hence men do not regard as parents only
their own parents nor do they treat as children only their own children; provision
is secured for the aged till death; employment of the able bodied and the means of
growing up for the young. Helpless widows and widowers, orphans and the lonely,
as well as the sick and the disabled are well cared for. Men have their respective
occupations and women their homes. They do not like to see wealth lying idle,
yet they do not keep it for their own gratification. They despise indolence, yet
they do not use their energies for their own benefit. In this way selfish schemings
are repressed and robbers thieves and other lawless men no longer exist, and there
is no need for people to shut their outer doors. This is the great harmony.
THE CHAPTER OF GREAT HARMONY (TA TUNG)
I wish for eyes, ever young, that can see what might be.
NOVEMBER 11, 1855)
… you ever see the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory [1971]? Willy Wonka
and The Chocolate Factory? Where Gene Wilder says to the little boy Charlie, he’s
49
about to give him the chocolate factory. He says “Well Charlie, did anybody ever
tell you the story of the little boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted?”
Charlie’s eyes get like saucers and he says, “No, what happened to him?” Gene
Wilder says, “He lived happily ever after.”
RANDY PAUSCH, AMERICAN COMPUTER SCIENCE INNOVATOR
RANDY PAUSCH’S LAST LECTURE, CARNEGIE MELLON, 2007
I stand for the sunny point of view, the joyful conclusion.

26, 1892)
I’m not remotely interested in just being good.

(VINCENT THOMAS) VINCE LOMBARDI, AMERICAN FOOTBALL COACH
(JUNE 11, 1913-SEPTEMBER 30, 1970)
Excellence means doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

JOHN W. GARDNER, AMERICAN EDUCATOR (OCTOBER 8, 1912-FEBRUARY
8, 2002)
Goodness of itself is generous.

THOMAS AQUINAS, ITALIAN PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN (1225-
MARCH 7, 1274)
We never really say

we can’t.
CORA K.S. FUNG
“Why does not Mrs. Smith come to be photographed?” she wrote to a friend about
a lady in London whom she had never met. “I hear she is beautiful. Bid her come,
and she shall be made immortal.”
JULIA MARGARET CAMERON, ENGLISH PHTOGRAPHER (FL. 1860’S)
SUSAN SONTAG, AMERICAN WRITER AND CRITIC (1933-2004)

WHERE THE STRESS FALLS, 2001
Anything not worth doing well is not worth doing.

WARREN BUFFETT, AMERICAN BUSINSESS ENTRPRENEUR AND INVESTOR
(AUGUST 30, 1930-)
ROBERT EGGER, AMERICAN SOCIAL NOT-FOR-PROFIT ENTREPRENEUR

It matters not what you try to carry out, but once you try to carry out a thing you
must never give up until you have done it thoroughly and well. If another man
succeed by one effort, you will use a hundred efforts. If another man succeed by
ten efforts, you will use a thousand efforts.
50
... Morrie knew better. He saw right to the core of the problem, which was human
beings wanting to feel that they mattered.
MORRIS SCHWARTZ, AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY PROFESSOR
MITCH ALBOM, AMERICAN SPORTS WRITER (1958-)

TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE, 1997
Hope your ‘sick’ turn bad

That means your body turn well.
(Ha Ha Ha)
VIVIAN LEE, HONG KONG STUDENT
Knowledge is power.
S T
FRANCIS BACON, 1 VISCOUNT OF ST. ALBAN, ENGLISH PHILOSOPHER,
STATESMAN AND WRITER (JANUARY 22, 1561-APRIL 9, 1626)
Perhaps the best press he [Dick Cheney] has ever received from the national media
came during the 2004 campaign when he broke with Bush and supported his
younger daughter, Mary, who is gay, by expressing his distaste for a constitutional
amendment banning gay marriage saying, “Freedom means freedom for
everybody.”
(RICHARD BRUCE) DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES, AMERICAN BUSINESSMAN AND POLITICIAN (JANUARY 30, 1941-)
TODD S. PURDUM, AMERICAN WRITER AND CORRESPONDENT FOR THE

NEW YORK TIMES
“A FACE ONLY A PRESIDENT COULD LOVE,” VANITY FAIR, JUNE 2006
Lastly, there are truly moral men who unconsciously live a life in entire harmony
with the universal moral order and who live unknown to the world and unnoticed
of man without any concern. It is only men of holy, divine natures who are
capable of this.
The ghosts will show up eventually.

DEREK JETER, AMERICAN YANKEE BASEBALL PLAYER
2003 PLAYOFF GAME, YANKEES LOSING 5-2 AND RISE UP TO WIN GAME
Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul ...
EMILY DICKINSON, AMERICAN POET (DECEMBER 10, 1830-MAY 15, 1886)
whatever you think i said,

whatever you interpret as having happened,
i wish only to love you & bring your heart
peace.
51
RJS
The greatest poverty is not to live

In a physical world.
WALLACE STEVENS, AMERICAN POET AND BUSINESSMAN (OCTOBER 2,
1879-AUGUST 2, 1955)
… His affection is capacious and generous; everything worthy has a home in it.
As he knows, everything worthy is fragile and under threat, is prey to time and
invisible to power, and yet affection keeps the accounting in the black. Worthy
things, invested with affection, pass into “the now / which is eternal.” I don ‘t
know how this can be, and I don’t think Hayden knows. And yet I believe it is so;
I believe that Hayden believes that it is so.
WENDELL BERRY, AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS AND FARMER (AUGUST 5,

1934-)
“MY FRIEND HAYDEN,” AMERICAN POET: JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN
ACADEMY OF POETS, VOLUME 33, FALL 2007
If thou conceivest a small minute Circle, as small as a Grain of Mustard-seed, yet

the Heart of God is wholly and perfectly therein: and if thou are born in God,
then there is, in thyself, (in the Circle of thy Life), the whole Heart of God
undivided ...
JACOB BOEHME, GERMAN MYSTIC AND SHOEMAKER (1575-1624)
I want there to be democracy… I am looking for a life worth living …

TWENTY-FOUR YEAR OLD ZAPATISTA GUERILLERO
CHRISTOPHER PHILLIPS, AMERICAN TEACHER OF PHILOSOPHY (JULY 15,

1959-)
SIX QUESTIONS OF SOCRATES, 2004
Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is
he.
PROVERBS 29:18
Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

GEORGE S. PATTON, JR., AMERICAN GENERAL (NOVEMBER 11, 1885-
DECEMBER 21, 1945)
I was looking at a meadow. Suddenly the realization came that during my years of
wandering I had searched in vain for such a combination of leaves and flowers as
was here and that I have been always yearning to return. Or, to be precise, I
understood this after a huge wave of emotion had overwhelmed me, and the only
name I could give it now would be –– bliss.
52
CZESLAW MILOSZ, POLISH-AMERICAN POET (JUNE 30, 1911-AUGUST 14,
2004)
“HAPPINESS,” TO BEGIN WHERE I AM, 2001
The devil is always suggesting that we compromise our high calling by substituting
good in place of the best.
(JUNE 1, 1924-)
CREDO, 2004
Nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

APRIL 27, 1882)
… Far off in her chair,

Erect, compact, our teacher sits at ease.
She vivifies the atoms of the air…
… and of our flesh. Slovenly chaos groans
As one by one the molecules awake.
Her beam illuminates our very bones
And shows us what we are until we ache,
And then amid our awkward strugglings
We scorn to change our joyous state with kings.
MARTHA HEYNEMAN, AMERICAN AUTHOR
FROM “”TO MRS. HOWARTH ON HER NINETIETH BIRTHDAY FROM A PUPIL
OF FORTY YEARS,” THE BREATHING CATHEDRAL
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

APRIL 27, 1882)
Millions of mountains before the eyes,

One step forward –– blue skies.
CHINESE PROVERB
53
- WHIMSY -
Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

17, 1706-APRIL 17, 1790)
... the present is in perpetual motion, leaves us as soon as it arrives, ceases to be

present before its presence is well perceived, and is only known to have existed by
the effects which it leaves behind.
SAMUEL JOHNSON, ENGLISH MAN OF LETTERS (SEPTEMBER 18, 1709-
DECEMBER 13, 1784)
... It’s hard to avoid getting stuck on mysticism’s stickiness!

ILLYA KUTIK, RUSSIAN-AMERICAN PROFESSOR AND WRITER
HIEROGLYPHIS OF ANOTHER WORLD, 2000
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
DOROTHY PARKER, AMERICAN WRITER AND POET (1893-1967)
A woman called and said, “I need to fly to pepsi-cola on one of those computer
planes.” I asked if she meant to fly to Pensacola on a commuter plane. She said,
“Yeh, whatever.”
ANON.
Behind that bumbling buffoonish exterior there lurks a bumbling buffoonish

interior.
BRITISH TORY POLICIAL REMARK
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS), AMERICAN JOURNALIST,
LECTURER AND AUTHOR (NOVEMBER 30, 1835-APRIL 21, 1910)
Cast ye a stone upon the water and behold

... it sinks.
J. D. HASKELL, AMERICAN INSURANCE BROKER
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards,if you
disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
T H
RONALD WILSON REAGAN, 40 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
(FEBRUARY 6, 1911-JUNE 5, 2005)
Into love
and out again,
54
Thus I went,
and thus I go.
DOROTHY PARKER, AMERICAN WRITER AND POET (1893-1967)
“THEORY”
Mrs. America works with her own “independent telecommunications consultant,”

Bob “Know Your Equipment” Schuck. Mr. Schuck’s anti-telemarketing
suggestions are more technical, such as deploying your touch-tone phone as an
annoying musical instrument. “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a favorite (6-5-4-5 6-
6-6; 5-5-5; 6-6-6. 6-5-4-5 6-6-6-6 5-5-6-5-444444444444444.). [Try it! ed.]
JOE SHARKEY
‘ANSWERING THE PHONE AS AN ACT OF REVENGE’, NEW YORK TIMES,
JUNE 22, 1997
I’m not young enough to know everything.

SIR JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE, 1ST BARONET, SCOTTISH NOVELIST AND
DRAMATIST (MAY 9, 1860-JUNE 19, 1937)
This taught me a lesson, but I'm not quite sure what it is.
JOHN MACENROE, AMERICAN TENNIS PLAYER (FEBRUARY 16, 1959-)
SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement.

AMBROSE (GWINETT) BIERCE, AMERICAN JOURNALIST AND WRITER (JUNE
24, 1842-1914)
THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY, 1906
Money
That money talks
I won’t deny.
I heard it once.
It said, “Goodbye.”
RICHARD ARMOUR
DAISY GOODWIN, ENGLISH TELEVISION PRODUCER

101 POEMS THAT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF EMOTIONAL
FIRST AID, 2003
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post
how it feels about dogs.
CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON
There is a woman who swam around Manhattan, and I asked her, “Why? She
said, “It hadn’t ever been done before.” Well, she didn’t have to do that. If she
wanted to do something no one had ever done before, all she had to do was
vacuum my apartment.
55
RITA RUDNER, AMERICAN COMEDIAN (SEPTEMBER 17, 1953-)
Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.

GOLDA MEIR, ISRAELI STATESWOMAN AND PRIME MINISTER (MAY 3, 1898-
DECEMBER 3, 1978)
There was a young fellow of Deale

Who said, “Although pain isn’t real,
When I sit on a pin and it punctures my skin
I dislike what I think I feel.
ANON.
We play tonight, we win tonight.

T-SHIRT WORN BY NEW YORK YANKEES MANAGER, JOE TORRE, 1996
A British soldier in Iraq, after hearing that Geoff Hoon had compared Umm Qasr
to Southamptom, disagreed with the Defence Minister: ‘There’s no beer, no
prostitutes, and people are shooting at us,’ he said. ‘It’s more like Portsmouth.’
THE IDLER BOOK OF CRAP TOWNS: THE 50 WORST PLACES TO LIVE IN
THE UK, 2003
What is the opposite of nuts?

It’s soup! Let’s have no ifs or buts.
In any suitable repast
The soup comes first, the nuts come last.
Or that is what sane folk advise;
You’re nuts if you think otherwise.
RICHARD WILBUR, AMERICAN POET
FROM OPPOSITES, 1973
A prisoner paints a landscape on the wall of his cell showing a miniature train
entering a tunnel. When his jailers come to get him, he asks them “politely to
wait a moment, to allow me to verify something in the little train in my picture.
As usual, they started to laugh, because they considered me to be weak minded. I
made myself very tiny, entered into my picture and climbed into the little train,
which started moving, then disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. For a few
seconds, a bit of flaky smoke could be seen coming out of the round hole. Then
this smoke blew away, and with it the picture, and with the picture, my person ...”
HERMANN HESSE, GERMAN NOVELIST AND POET (JULY 2, 1877-AUGUST 9,
1962)
FONTAINE #57 [FRENCH LITERARY REVIEW PUBLISHED IN ALGIERS THEN
IN FRANCE DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR]
56
Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building
block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen...
FRANK ZAPPA, AMERICAN MUSICIAN, RECORD PRODUCER AND FILM
DIRECTOR (DECEMBER 21, 1940-DECEMBER 4, 1993)
When you’re working on one thing and yearn for another, imagine that the thing
you’re working on would be the one you would be yearning for if you were
working on the other.
JUAN RAMÓN JIMÉNEZ, SPANISH POET (DECEMBER 24, 1881-MAY 29, 1958)
THE COMPLETE PERFECTIONIST, CHRISTOPHER MAURER, EDITOR (1997)
Do what you will, this

Life’s a Fiction
And is made up of
Contradiction.
WILLIAM BLAKE, ENGLISH ENGRAVER AND POET (1757-1827)
Nobody goes there any more. It’s too crowded.

1925-)
On Wall Street today, news of lower interest rates sent the stock market up, but
then the expectation that these rates would be inflationary sent the market down,
until the realization that lower rates might stimulate the sluggish economy pushed
the market up, before it ultimately went down on fears that an overheated
economy would lead to a reimposition of higher interest rates.
MANKOFF
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE, 1981
$100 placed at 7 percent interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase
to more than $100,000,000 –– by which time it will be worth nothing.
ROBERT ANSON HEINLEIN, AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION AUTHOR (1907-
1988)
THE NOTEBOOKS OF LAZARUS LONG
“I see nobody on the road,” said Alice.

“I only wish I had such eyes,” the King
remarked in a fretful tone. “To be able to
see Nobody! And at that distance too!
Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people,
by this light!”
LOUIS CARROLL (CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON), ENGLISH WRITER AND
MATEHMATICIAN (1832-1898)
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, 1872
57
The largest Fire ever known
Occurs each afternoon.
EMILY DICKINSON, AMERICAN POET (DECEMBER 10, 1830-MAY 15, 1886)
My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor

SIR ALEC GUINNESS, BRITISH ACTOR (APRIL 2, 1914-AUGUST 5, 2000)
When you reach a crossroad, take it.

1925-)
Have a nice day, unless you’ve made other plans.

ANON.
The Universe is but a Thing of Things

The things but balls all going round in rings
Some of them mighty huge, some mighty tiny
All of them radiant and mighty shiny.
ROBERT (LEE) FROST, AMERICAN POET (MARCH 26, 1874-JANUARY 29,
1963)
ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE
I’m afraid of the dark, and suspicious of the light.

WOODY ALLEN (ALLEN STEWART KONIGSBERG), AMERICAN FILM ACTOR,
DIRECTOR AND COMEDIAN (DECEMBER 1, 1935-)
... Prophets of doom: do not give up hope.

JOHN D. BARROW, ENGLISH PHYSICIST AND COSMOLOGIST (NOVEMBER
29, 1952-)
THE BOOK OF NOTHING, 2000
I cut the orange in two, and couldn’t make the two parts equal. To which was I
unjust? I’m going to eat them both!
FERNANDO ANTÓNIO NOGUEIRA PESSOA (ALBERTO CAEIRO),
PORTUGUESE POET (JUNE 13, 1888-NOVEMBER 30, 1935)
58
...After you die
You hover near the ceiling above your body
And watch the mourners awhile. A few days more
You float above the heads of the ones you knew
And watch them through a twilight. As it grows darker
You wander off and find your way to the river
And wade across. On the other side, night air,
Willows, the smell of the river, and a mass
Of sleeping bodies all along the bank,
A kind of singing from among the rushes
Calling you forward in the dark.
You lie down and embrace one body, the limbs
Heavy with sleep reach eagerly up around you
And you make love until your soul brims up
And burns free out of you and shifts and spills
Down over into that other body, and you
Forget the life you had and begin again
On the same crossing––maybe as a child who passes
Through the same place. But never the same way twice.
ROBERT PINSKY, AMERICAN POET

THE WANT BONE (1997)
59

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THE ETERNAL RIDDLE

Albert Einstein, German-American Physicist (March 14, 1879-April 18, 1955)

as they marry the dusty bodies of the pitch-pines.

Mary Oliver, American poet

to explore the fundamental human questions of living & being;

to share in the wisdom of all places & all times;

to be touched by the words, thoughts & feelings of human kind;

to responsively engage in the process of thinking;

to excite the possibility of changing your life.

THE ETERNAL RIDDLE

- HOW THINGS ARE - 21

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people …

FREDERIC FRANCK, DUTCH-AMERICAN PAINTER, SCULPTOR AND AUTHOR

There is only one man in the world

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhnattan the son,

KRISTA TIPPETT, PRODUCER

People all smile in the same language.

Sensitive inhabitants of the forests of ourselves.

GASTON BACHELARD, FRENCH PHILOSOPHER (1884-1962)

there is God-energy in all of us.

In the manner of men of the past

GASTON BACHELARD, FRENCH PHILOSOPHER (1884-1962)

I’m not funny, what I am is brave.

I see a man notching a cedar post

What I’ve seen

the tin man

A friend is another self.

But do your own thing and I shall know you.

The characteristic of the biography of famous men is that they wanted to be

the more normal you are

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair,

Instead of engaging in cutthroat competition, we should strive to create value. In

Who overcomes himself his freedom finds.

If I did not work,

As a medieval historian once said of Chartes Cathedral, it is best appreciated as a

Wunder kommen zu denen, die an sie glauben.

The greatest wealth is health.

KAY BUTLER, EDITOR

Whether they [English majors or any determined humanists] know it or not, ––

Difficult means doable.

If there is a wind outside the window,

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

Resist much, obey less.

DEBORAH SOLOMON, AMERICAN COLUMNIST FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

When it comes to food, the ethical choice is the delightful choice.

Let food be your medicine.

If you can find a reason to be depressed,

God helps them that help themselves.

When you learn, teach.

I learned early to value honest arrogance over hypocritical humility.

Acceptance is the key to happiness.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

And so, while wishing to do right,

DUSHKA HOWARTH, AMERICAN ENTREPRENEUR, DANCER AND WRITER

Being starts with well-being.

It is gratefulness that makes the soul great.

… whether a man loves a woman or another man, or a woman loves a man or

It is a day of joy: it is good to be joyful –– it is wrong to be otherwise. Let us seek

It’s good to leave each day behind,

He spent his life best who enjoyed it most.

Spirituality means to me living the ordinary life extraordinarily well.

DUSHKA HOWARTH, AMERICAN ENTREPRENEUR, DANCER AND WRITER

The Eternal Riddle '08

The Eternal Riddle '08