Nothing for Something

Image by mrtruffle via FlickrThe highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing. – St. Thomas Aquinas




When someone gets something for nothing. Someone else gets nothing for something. – anonymous



Someone has suggested that America’s greatest gifts to civilization are three: cornflakes, Kleenex, and credit. – Louis T. Benezet



When a merchant speaks of sheep he means the hide. – Swiss Proverb



No nation was ever ruined by trade. – Benjamin Franklin



Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce. – Abraham Lincoln



Piracy, n: commerce without its folly-swaddles – just as God made it. – Ambrose Bierce

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The Curse of the Drinking Class

Image by xjyxjy via FlickrLuck is what you have left over after you give 100%. – Langston Coleman




When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose? – Donal Robert Perry Marquis



Work is the curse of the drinking class. – Oscar Wilde



My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don’t deny it. I’d rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh – anything but work. – Abraham Lincoln



Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. – C. Northcote Parkinson



Times have changed. Forty years ago people worked 12 hours a day, and it was called economic slavery. Now they work 14 hours a day and it’s called moonlighting. – Robert Orben



Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence. – Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull

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Never Insult an Alligator

Image by Chickenboots via FlickrTell not all you know, believe not all you hear, do not all you are able. – Italian Proverb




There is no way to catch a snake that is as safte as not catching him. -–Jacob M Braude



Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river. – Cordell Hull



I had rather ride on an ass that carries me than a horse that throws me. – George Herbert



It is best to read the weather forecasts before we pray for rain. – Mark Twain



When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run. – Abraham Lincoln



Dig a well before you are thirsty. – Chinese Proverb

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A Rat May Drown a Nation

Image via WikipediaPerseverance is the most overrated of traits, if it is unaccompanied by talent: beating your head against a wall is more likely to produce a concussion in the head than a hole in the wall. – Sydney Harris




I’m a slow walker, but I never walk back. – Abraham Lincoln



When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems ou could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. – Harriet Beecher Stowe



One may go a long way after one is tired. – French proverb



Perseverance is a silent power that grows irresistibly greater with time. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



By gnawing through a dyke, even a rat may drown a nation. – Edmund Burke



‘Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause, and obstinacy is a bad one. – Laurence Sterne

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Routine = Organization?

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No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent. – Abraham Lincoln




A bully is always a coward. – Proverb



He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself. – Philip Massinger



Don’t agonize. Organize. – Florence R. Kennedy



Two essential qualities in a good organizer are a throough and constant perception of the end in view, and a power of dealing with masses of details, never forgetting that they are details, and not becoming their slave. – Sir Arthur Helps



Specialization and organization are the basis of human progress. – Charlotte Perkins Gilman



Routine is not organization, any more than paralysis is order. – Sir Arthur Helps

An Expression of Human Immaturity?

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Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity. – Vera Brittain




The ballot is stronger than the bullet. – Abraham Lincoln



Politics as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. – Henry Adams



The buffaloes were the original engineers, as they followed the lay of the land and the run of the water. These buffalo paths became Indian trails, which always pointed out the easiest way across the mountain barriers. The white man followed in these footpaths. The iron trail finished the road. – Gracy Hebard



The first piece of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts. – Paul Ehrlich



One trouble with Americans is that we’re fixers rather than preventers. – General James Doolittle

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Who Am I?

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Few great leaders encountered defeat so consistently before enjoying ultimate victory as did this individual. A frequently reported listing of these failures includes the following:
Failed in business in 1831
Ran for legislature and lost in 1832
Failed in business in 1834
Sweetheart died in 1835
Had a nervous breakdown in 1836
Lost political campaign in 1838
Defeated for Congress in 1843
Defeated for Congress in 1846
Defeated for Congress in 1848
Defeated fof U.S. Senate in 1855
Defeated for Vice President in 1856
Defeated for U.S. Senate in 1858

Elected as 16th president of the United States – 1860 – Abraham Lincoln

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It's Possible to Own Too Much

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You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can get with a kind word. – Al Capone

Drive thy business or it will drive thee. - Benjamin Franklin

It’s possible to own too much. A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never sure. – Lee Sagall

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it is best to let him run. – Abraham Lincoln

Every organization has a Siberia. – Warren G. Bennis

The doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only davise his client to plant vines. – Frank Lloyd Wright

We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge. – John Naisbitt

But I do Have to Know the Letters

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The best audience is intelligent, well-educated, and a little drunk. – Albert W. Barkley

A recent government publication on the marketing of cabbage contains, according to one report, 26,941 words. It is noteworthy in this regard that the Gettysburg Address contains a mere 279 words while the Lord’s Prayer comprises but 67. – Norman R. Augustine

It’s not the most intellectual job in the world, but I do have to know the letters. – Vanna White – TV game-show hostess

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad things you did do – well, that’s memoirs. – Will Rogers

Gutenberg made everybody a reader. Xerox makes everybody a publisher. – Marshall McLuhan

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves. – Don Marquis

I read part of it all the way through. – Samuel Goldwyn

Vilify! Vilify!

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As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do. – Andrew Carnegie

Anger is just one letter short of danger. – anonymous

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They know how it’s done; they’ve see it done every day; but they’re unable to do it themselves. – attributed to Brendan Behan

Vilify! Vilify! Some of it will always stick. – Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais

The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you. – Frank McKinney

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I ever met. – Abraham Lincoln

I like the way you always manage to state the obvious with a sense of real discovery. – Gore Vidal

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Opportunity’s Natural Assassin

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Don’t wait for your ship to come in; swim out to it. – anonymous

It is better to begin in the evening than not at all. – English proverb

You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. – Abraham Lincoln

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits. – Thomas Edison

The fox that waited for the chicken to fall off their perch died of hunger. - Greek proverb

Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin. – Victor Kiam

Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week. – Spanish proverb

I Was Alarmed at my Doctor’s Report

I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand. – Confucius

An old poacher makes a good gamekeeper. – anonymous

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? – Abraham Lincoln

No rich man is ugly. – Zsa Zsa Gabor

I base my fashion taste on what doesn’t itch. – Gilda Radner

Every generation laughs at the old fashions but religiously follows the new. – Henry David Thoreau

Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m a schizophrenic, and so am I. – anonymous

I was alarmed at my doctor’s report: he said I was sound as a dollar. – William Proxmire

Darkly Comical Quotes

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Anybody can become angry – that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy. – Aristotle

The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it. – C.C. Scott

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you cannot accept regret. – Amiel

Opposition inflames the enthusiast, never converts him. – Schiller

The man who follows a crowd will never be followed by a crowd. – Donnell

The parent’s job year in and year out, here a little and there a little, is to build up a disposition of good sportsmanship, of taking one’s medicine, of facing the music, of being reviled and reviling not. This sense of not always being right or recognition that perhaps we’ve made a mistake, seems left out of some grown-up children. – Samuel Smith Drury

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed. – Abraham Lincoln

Perfectionism is a dangerous state of mind in an imperfect world. The best way is to forget doubts and set about the task at hand. If you are doing your best, you will not have time to worry about failure. – Robert Hillyer