"Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening."

- Barbara Tober

...."And when you look up into the sky and see the sun, moon, and stars--all the forces of heaven--don't be seduced by them and worship them. The Lord your God designated these heavenly bodies for all the peoples of the earth."

A 'book' Jesus read
-Deuteronomy 4, vs 19

"A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad."

- Bob Edwards

"Everything is a spin on this program. There's nothing wrong with that. You do it with great style. You're sort of a Rush Limbaugh with perfume."

- John Shelby Spong (on Bill O'Reilly)

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

- Steven Weinberg

We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
- Judith Martin

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
- Eric Hoffer

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
- Andy Rooney

From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
- Groucho Marx

"There's something to be said for the things I have done. And when those things are said, I'll likely be dead by then."

~ Hans Goodfried

"If cats could talk, they wouldn't."

- Nan Porter

"People do not seek truth. It is the truth that pursues people who run away and will not look around."

- Lincoln Steffens

Happy 200th birthday Honest Abe!

"Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure."

- Abraham Lincoln

'If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.'

...--April 4, 1864

Abraham Lincoln letter to Albert Hodges

Happy 200th birthday Chuck!

“An American Monkey after getting drunk on Brandy would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.”

- Charles Darwin

Edwin Markham. 1852–

Lincoln, the Man of the People

WHEN the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,
She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down
To make a man to meet the mortal need.
She took the tried clay of the common road—
Clay warm yet with the genial heat of earth,
Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy;
Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears;
Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff.
Into the shape she breathed a flame to light

That tender, tragic, ever-changing face.
Here was a man to hold against the world,
A man to match the mountains and the sea.

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth;
The smack and tang of elemental things:
The rectitude and patience of the cliff;
The good-will of the rain that loves all leaves;
The friendly welcome of the wayside well;
The courage of the bird that dares the sea;
The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;
The pity of the snow that hides all scars;
The secrecy of streams that make their way
Beneath the mountain to the rifted rock;
The tolerance and equity of light
That gives as freely to the shrinking flower
As to the great oak flaring to the wind—
To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn
That shoulders out the sky.

Sprung from the West,
The strength of virgin forests braced his mind,
The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul.
Up from log cabin to the Capitol,
One fire was on his spirit, one resolve:—
To send the keen axe to the root of wrong,
Clearing a free way for the feet of God.
And evermore he burned to do his deed
With the fine stroke and gesture of a king:
He built the rail-pile as he built the State,
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow;
The conscience of him testing every stroke,
To make his deed the measure of a man.

So came the Captain with the mighty heart;
And when the judgment thunders split the house,
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest,
He held the ridgepole up, and spiked again
The rafters of the Home. He held his place—
Held the long purpose like a growing tree—
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise.
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

And...
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html

And:

O Captain My Captain
a poem by Walt Whitman

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.