#406 Bon Mots 4 of 5

More bits that I saved because they tickled my mind or my funny bone.  If I didn't agree with the sentiment expressed, I at least admired the way it was expressed, and the way it made me mull the topic.  (I am amused that some of the very old political comments still apply.)

Note - all titles are in italics, regardless of whether it is for a book, story, magazine, TV show, whatever.  I don't discriminate.  If something is unattributed, either it is a common saying, or I don't remember where I found it and I apologize to the author.  If it is attributed, it is a direct quote, warts and all.

For Bon Mots 1 of 5 - click here.
For 2 of 5, click here.
For 3 of 5, click here.

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It's impossible to learn what you think you already know.

Howard A. Brown, letter to US News & World Reports, 12/27/99, paraphrased:  It's easier to make a smart gun than a smart person.

Why aren't southern schools teaching the difference between "when" and "whenever"?  "Ever" and "every"?  How do they understand each other?

Washington DC is the city of southern efficiency and northern hospitality.

Me:  Nerds make the best lovers.  They are intelligent, honest, faithful, and best of all, grateful.

Abigail VanBuren:  A church is not a museum for saints - it's a hospital for sinners.

Fenton Johnson, 1996:  The mystery of love and life and death is really grander and more glorious than human beings can grasp, much less legislate.

Stephen Jay Gould:  Competent leaders have always understood the crucial difference between public proclamations and private bargains.

Jewish Proverb:  A ditch can't be filled with dirt from its sides.

Jewish Proverb:  A guest for a while sees a mile.

Cats:  With cats, one rule is true.  Don't speak until you're spoken to.

Scott Turow, Burden of Proof, Sandy's daughters describe his love life as:  a tom-tom network of females wailing over his shortcomings late into the night.

Me:  It's not enough to come up with a good idea; you have to come up with the good idea at the right time.  Many people with a good idea present it too soon, before anyone is ready to accept it, and then drop the idea when they meet resistance.  When the world is ready, someone else puts forth the same idea and gets all the credit.  (Worse, nobody will remember that you had it first.)

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

Harold Nickel, Mensa Bulletin, May 2000:  People do not do things for logical reasons, people find logical reasons to do things they want, and the more intelligent the people, the better the reasons they come up with.

L. P. Hartley:  The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Derrick Jensen, The Sun, July 2000:  A friend of mine says that science is an even better means of control than Christianity, because if you don't believe in Christianity, you're simply doomed to burn in a hell you don't think exists, whereas if you don't believe in science, you're presumed to be stupid.

Life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.

If you want to be seen, stand up.  If you want to be heard, speak up.  If you want to be appreciated, shut up.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  [I have no attribution for this, but the application is so broad, it must be Chinese.]

Jean-Pierre Deriaud, on French laws:  It is forbidden, but possible.

Javier Pascual Salcedo:  Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.

Denis Johnson, "The Small Boy's Unit", Harper's, Oct. 2000, on the meaning of "everything is arranged" in Africa:  Everything is arranged doesn't mean you should expect to get anywhere or accomplish anything.  In fact for sanity's sake these two ideas have to be banished.  Everything is arranged means that all is complete, the great plan of the universe is unfolding before our eyes.  So eat, drink, sleep.  Everything is arranged.

When the elephants dance, the mice get trampled.

Ghandi:  You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

A man's perception is his reality.

One of the saddest things to happen was the optioning of morality by religion.

Wang Yang Ming:  To know and not to do is not to know.

We can never predict the outcome of our actions, which is why every action must be acceptable in itself, and not as part of a stratagem.

It is better to be wanted by the police than not wanted at all.

Alan Greenspan, to Congress:  I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Peter Ho Davies:  Stories are simple sequences of events, plots are about causes, motivation ..., what stories mean.  ...life is all stories, and fiction is all plots.....

Flip Wilson, as Geraldine:  You don't have to be a thing of beauty to be a joy forever.

A Chorus Line:  I thought about committing suicide, but in Buffalo, suicide is redundant.

Barbara Kingsolver's character Adah in The Poisonwood Bible points out that God created vermin and microbes as well as humans, and "He's not necessarily rooting for just the humans."

~~Silk
Links in this entry:
http://journals.aol.com/jaykolb/Moraine/entries/1711
http://journals.aol.com/jaykolb/Moraine/entries/1712
http://journals.aol.com/jaykolb/Moraine/entries/1719