Teaching Category Archives :: Consider This

Mr. Rogers and Success

The thing I remember best about successful people I've met through the years is their obvious delight in what they're doing...and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what their doing and they love it in front of others.
—Fred Rogers

Source: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes 2008 Calendar by Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN-13: 978-0-7407-6680-0
See also:
> The World According to Mr. Rogers by Fred Rogers 2003 ISBN 1-4013-0106-1
> Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

Is Your Aim Too High?

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
—Michaelangelo

Source: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes 2008 Calendar by Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN-13: 978-0-7407-6680-0

Happy Birthday William Shakespeare

The quality of mercy is not strain'd;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea,
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.
—Portia in Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice Act 4, scene 1, 180–187

Source: Shakespeare Quotes at enotes.com The quality of mercy is not strained.
> Also: The Merchant Of Venice Act 4, scene 1, 180–187
> It is the believed to be birthday of William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-on-Avon, England in 1564. He died on April 23, 1616.
> See: Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Quick Reference: Metric Conversions

centimeters x 0.3937 = inches
inches x 2.54 = centimeters

meters x 3.281 = feet
feet x 0.3048 = meters

miles x 1.609 = kilometers
kilometers x 0.6214 = miles

kilograms x 2.2046 = pounds
pounds x 0.45359 = kilograms

Pursue a dream

What do you pack to pursue a dream, and what do you leave behind?
—Sandra Sharpe

Source: Reach for the Stars window card series, by Compendium, Inc.

Do What You Can

Do what
You can,
Where
You are,
With what
You have!
—Theodore Roosevelt

Source: quotablecards: A card I gave myself on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2008 in Portland, Oregon.

Finish Each Day

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes Daily calendar Thursday, February 7, 2008 Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN-13: 9780-7407-6680-0

Are You a Leader?

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.
—John Quincy Adams

Source: Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes Daily calendar Monday, January 28, 2008 Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN-13: 9780-7407-6680-0

Hate Corrodes - Hate Destroys

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Source: The Quotations Page – Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes
Today, Jan. 15^th is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia, USA in 1929. He died in Memphis, Tennessee having been assassinated on April 4 , 1968.
See also:
> Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2008.
> New York Times Obituary Martin Luther King Jr.: Leader of Millions in Nonviolent Drive for Racial Justice by Murray Schumach published April 5, 1968

Giving Credit

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
—Sir Isaac Newton

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Friday, January 4, 2008
It is the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton who was born in Woolsthorpe, England in 1643. He died on 31 March 1727 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
See also:
> The BBC's Historic figures: Isaac Newton

Not Made Any of Us Safer

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.
—New York Times Editorial Staff

Source: The New York Times editorial Looking at America [free subscription required] published Monday, Dec. 31, 2007.

Let's Dance

It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!
—Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, December 26, 2007
It is the birthday of Henry Miller who was born in New York City in 1891. He died June 7, 1980 in Pacific Palisades.
See also:
> Valentine Miller's Henry Miller: A Personal Collection
> Wikipedia's Henry Miller

Thousands of Small, Routine Tasks

And tragically, since the onset of the scientific and technological revolution, it has seemingly become all too easy for ultrarational minds to create an elaborate edifice of clockwork efficiency capable of nightmarish cruelty on an industrial scale. The atrocities of Hitler and Stalin, and the mechanical sins of all who helped them, might have been inconceivable except for the separation of facts from values and knowledge from morality. In her study of Adolf Eichmann, who organized the death camp bureaucracy, Hannah Arendt coined the memorable phrase "the banality of evil" to describe the bizarre contrast between the humdrum and ordinary quality of the acts themselves—the thousands of small, routine tasks committed by workaday bureaucrats—and the horrific and satanic quality of their proximate consequences. It was precisely the machinelike efficiency of the system that carried out the genocide which seemed to make it possible for its functionaries to separate the thinking required in their daily work from the moral sensibility for which, because they were human beings, they must have had some capacity. This mysterious, vacant space in their souls, between thinking and feeling, is the suspected site of the inner crime. This barren of the spirit, rendered fallow by the blood of unkept brothers, is the precinct of the disembodied intellect, which knows the way things work but not the way they are.

It is my view that the underlying moral schism that contributed to these extreme manifestations of evil has also conditioned our civilization to insulate its conscience from any responsibility for the collective endeavors that invisibly link millions of small, silent, banal acts and omissions together in a pattern of terrible cause and effect. Today, we enthusiastically participate in what is in essence a massive and unprecedented experiment with the natural systems of the global environment, with little regard for the moral consequences. But for the separation of science and religion, we might not be pumping so much gaseous chemical waste into the atmosphere and threatening the destruction of the earth's climate balance. But for the separation of useful technological know-how and the moral judgments to guide its use, we might not be slashing and burning one football field's worth of rain forest every second. But for the assumed separation of humankind from nature, we might not be destroying half the living species on earth in the space of a single lifetime. But for the separation of thinking and feeling, we might not tolerate the deaths everyday of 37,000 children under the age of five from starvation and preventable diseases made worse by failures of crops and politics.
—Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, 1992

Source: Quotations Collected by David Conner, Part 2

More Nothing Than Something

An atom (and thus all matter) is mostly empty space.
—Encyclopedia Britannica

Contrary to our perception and belief, there is more nothing than something, even in things that appear to have more something than nothing.
—Peter McWilliams

Everything is always in motion, even things that don't appear to have moved in millions of years.
—Peter McWilliams

The perception that things are solid and stationary is an illusion.
—Peter McWilliams

Source: The Portable Life 101: 179 essential lessons from the New York Times bestseller Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned in Life In School—But Didn't by Peter McWilliams 1995 ISBN: 0-931580-41-2

No Mistakes; No Discoveries

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.
We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do;
and probably he who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
—Samuel Smiles

Source: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better. Herter Studio. Running Press. 2006 ISBN 13: 978-0-7624-2514-3

Making Mistakes and Feeling Good About Them

While one person hesitates because he feels inferior; the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.
—Henry C. Link

Source: The Portable Life 101: 179 essential lessons from the New York Times bestseller Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned in Life In School—But Didn't by Peter McWilliams 1995 ISBN: 0-931580-41-2

Our Own Behavior

We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
—Henry Miller

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8

Is There Good Judment in Politics?

Good judgment in politics, it turns out, depends on being a critical judge of yourself. It was not merely that the president did not take the care to understand Iraq. He also did not take the care to understand himself. The sense of reality that might have saved him from catastrophe would have taken the form of some warning bell sounding inside, alerting him that he did not know what he was doing. But then, it is doubtful that warning bells had ever sounded in him before. He had led a charmed life, and in charmed lives warning bells do not sound.

People with good judgment listen to warning bells within. Prudent leaders force themselves to listen equally to advocates and opponents of the course of action they are thinking of pursuing. They do not suppose that their own good intentions will guarantee good results. They do not suppose they know all they need to know. If power corrupts, it corrupts this sixth sense of personal limitation on which prudence relies.

A prudent leader will save democracies from the worst, but prudent leaders will not inspire a democracy to give its best. Democratic peoples should always be looking for something more than prudence in a leader: daring, vision and — what goes with both — a willingness to risk failure. Daring leaders can be trusted as long as they give some inkling of knowing what it is to fail. They must be men of sorrow acquainted with grief, as the prophet Isaiah says, men and women who have not led charmed lives, who understand us as we really are, who have never given up hope and who know they are in politics to make their country better. These are the leaders whose judgment, even if sometimes wrong, will still prove worthy of trust.
—Michael Ignatieff

Source: Getting Iraq Wrong [requires paid subscription] by Michael Ignatieff published August 5, 2007 in the New York Times Magazine.

Three "Rs" Enough?

The three Rs — reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic — are no longer enough. We must add the three C's — computing, critical thinking, and capacity for change.
—Fred Gluck, former manager director, McKinsey & Co.

Source: Number 164: The Pursuit of WOW!: Every Person's Guide to Topsy-Turvy Times by Tom Peters Vintage 1994. ISBN: 0-679-75555-1

Give & Take in Life

The idea that life is take, take, take (learn, learn, learn) needs to be balanced with the idea that life is also giving (teaching). Receiving and giving (learning and teaching) are two parts of a single flow, like breathing in (receiving) and breathing out (giving). One cannot take place without the other.
—Peter McWilliams

Life is something like a trumpet.
If you don't put anything in,
you won't get anything out.
—W. C. Handy

Source: The Portable Life 101: 179 essential lessons from the New York Times bestseller Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned in Life In School—But Didn't by Peter McWilliams 1995 ISBN: 0-931580-41-2
See also:
⇒ University of North Alabama Library's W. C. Handy Biography
⇒ Memorial for Peter McWilliams, 1950—2000

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By age: 34-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Is This the Best Part of Your Life?

We hear that youth is wasted on the young. People who say this are accepting the myth that only the young can enjoy life to the fullest. The truth is that older people do not consider their young days to be their best days; most enjoy their senior years more than any other part of their life.
—David Niven, Ph.D. in You have not finished the best part of your life.: Number 98 of The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People

Researchers conducted a long-term study of Northern Californians, interviewing subjects multiple times over three decades. When asked when they had been the happiest in their lives, each time eight out of ten answered "right now."
—Field D. 1997. "Looking Back, What Period of Your Life Brought You the Most Satisfaction?." International Journal of Aging and Human Development 45: 169.

Source: The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It. by David Niven, Ph.D. 2000 HarperCollins ISBN: 0-06-251650-7
See also: Country Inns & Suites by Carlson Read & Return It program.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By age: 33-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

My daughter, Jennifer, celebrates her thirty-third birthday this month.

Don't Give Up the Ship

US Navy Historical Center

USS Lawrence (DDG-4) underway

USS Lawrence (DDG-4) underway near Cape Henry, VA May 3, 1973. DDG-4 was one of five US Navy ships named in honor of Captain James Lawrence, War of 1812 naval hero.

Fight her 'til she sinks and don't give up the ship
—James Lawrence, Captain, USN

Source: New York Times On This Day for June 1, 2007: See 1813.
See also:
⇒ Wikipedia's James Lawrence.
⇒ Wikipedia's USS Chesapeake.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Age / 25-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Letters We Should Have Burned

'Lives' of great men oft remind us as we o'er their pages turn,
That we too many leave behind us –
Letters that we ought to burn.
—Thomas Hood

Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, May 23, 2007.
See also:
⇒ Wikipedia's Thomas Hood who was born on this day in London in 1799. He died on May 3, 1845 in Camberwell, England.
⇒ Consider This March 10, 2004 entry Lives Sublime quote by Longfellow.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Age / 23-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

You Count

When you become part of something, in some way you count. It could be a march; it could be a rally, even a brief one. You're part of something, and you suddenly realize you count. To count is very important.
—Studs Terkel

Source: BrainyQuote.com's Studs Terkel Quotes.
It is the birthday of StudsTerkel, born Louis Terkel in the Bronx, New York City in 1912.
See also:
⇒ Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, May 16, 2007.
⇒ Wikipedia.org's Studs Terkel

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Age / 21-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Can Dogs Please?

When signs go up saying "No dogs please", only one person in a thousand bothers to point out that actually, as a statement, "no dogs please" is an indefensible generalisation, since many dogs do please, as a matter of fact; they rather make a point of it.
—Lynne Truss in her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Source: Eats, Shoots & Leaves daily calendar, Thursday, May 3, 2007 entry.
See also:
⇒ Lynne Truss's Home page and;
⇒ Her Eats, Shoots & Leaves page.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Age / 18-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Pleasure of Reading

The pleasure we derive from the written word is unique in that we must labor for it. Other forms of art provide us with stimulus and ask nothing more than our emotional response. Reading is an active pastime that requires an investment of emotion as well as our concentration and imagination.
—extract from the DailyOM for Thursday, May 3, 2007

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM A Whole New World: Reading For Pleasure published Thursday, May 3, 2007.

The experiment entrusted to American People

I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire, since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.
—President George Washington, New York City, April 30, 1789

Source: Yale Law School's, The Avalon Project First Inaugural Address of George Washington.
See also:
⇒ Library of Congress Presidential Inaugurations George Washington, First Inauguration, April 30, 1789.
⇒ White House's Biography of George Washington.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Marines
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

ANZAC Day, 2007

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
—John McCrae

Source: Australian War Memorial's Commemoration customs of ANZAC Day, April 25^th.
⇒ ANZAC Day - 25 April - is probably Australia's most important national occasion. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as ANZACs, and the pride they soon took in that name endures to this day.

When war broke out in 1914 Australia had been a federal commonwealth for only fourteen years. The new national government was eager to establish its reputation among the nations of the world. In 1915 Australian and New Zealand soldiers formed part of the allied expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli peninsula to open the way to the Black Sea for the allied navies. The plan was to capture Constantinople (now Istanbul), capital of the Ottoman Empire and an ally of Germany. They landed at Gallipoli on 25 April, meeting fierce resistance from the Turkish defenders.
See: Australian War Memorial The Anzac Day Tradition [Australian War Memorial]

⇒ On this Anzac Day, April 25, 2007, I honor the memory of my Uncle Fred, my Mom's brother, who served in the RAAF during World War II and his service to Australia. Years later on a visit to the states, Uncle Fred and my Dad (who served in the US Army in the Pacific Theater) comparing notes discovered that they had been in the same place in New Guinea at the same time during the War. A small world indeed!
⇒ I also honor the service of all the men and women who served in the defence of Australia, particularly the RAN naval officers and RAN public servants I had the privilege of serving with in the late 1980's at Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, DC.

Truth: Truth?

Say not, 'This is the truth' but 'So it seems to me to be as I now see things I think I see.'
—Unknown – Above a doorway at the German Naval Officers School, in Kiel

Source: John McPhee Annals of the Former World, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG), New York, 2000, p.356 ISBN-13: 978-0-374-51873-8
⇒ www.johmmcphee.com
⇒ John McPhee's page for Annals of the Former World.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Date / 2007
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Women and the Glass Ceiling

Mr. President, I don't know why it took us 200 years for one of us to get the job [of ambassador].
—Shirley Temple Black

Source: Creative Quotations from Shirley Temple Black
⇒ Shirley Temple Black was born on this day in 1928 in Santa Monica, California.
⇒ See WikiPedia's Shirley Temple.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Air Force
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Punctuation Can Make a Difference!

Consider the difference:
"The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness:
Prepare ye the way of the Lord." And:
"The voice of him that crieth:
In the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord."
—Lynne Truss in her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Source: Eats, Shoots & Leaves daily calendar, Thursday, April 20, 2007 entry.
See also:
⇒ Lynne Truss's Home page and;
⇒ Her Eats, Shoots & Leaves page.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Age / 50-year-olds and older
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Apostrophe Abolition

The day after the abolition of the apostrophe, imagine the scene. Triumphant abolitionist sits down to write, "Goodbye to the apostrophe, we're not missing you a bit!" and finds that he can't.
—Lynne Truss in her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Source: Eats, Shoots & Leaves daily calendar, Saturday, April 7, 2007 entry.
See also:
⇒ Lynne Truss's Home page and;
⇒ Her Eats, Shoots & Leaves page.

My Father, So Ignorant; When I Was 14

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
—Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi" Atlantic Monthly, 1874

Source: QuoteGarden.com's Father Quotes, Sayings about Fathers.
⇒ The Mark Twain House and Museum's The Man | Biography.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Navy
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Universe Out of Control

Understand that the universe
is forever out of control,
and that trying to dominate events
goes against the river's current.
If you believe in yourself,
will you need the belief of others?
If you are content with yourself,
will you need the approval of others?
If you accept yourself,
who will not accept you?
—Tao Te Ching

Source: Professor Frank Pajares Home at Emory University, and specifically, his Tao Te Ching page.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Coast Guard
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Teaching & Learning?

What a teacher thinks she is teaching often has little to do with what students learn.
—Susan Ohanian

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8
See also:
⇒ Susan Ohanian Speaksout.

Knowledge vs. Wisdom

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit,
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
—Ruba

Source: Ruba's Profile [requires free registration] on Sitepoint forums.

Run for It

What I admire is her optimism. Rationally considered, she could not have packed all her stuff into the house in one trip. But there are times when people will not accept rational limitations. Go for it. Because you just might pull it off. And she did. Mostly.

What's this about?
In such moments as these I see the pilot light of reckless courage fire reserves of fuel to meet the small challenges of daily life. A stubborn refusal to accept obvious limitations. A delight in taking risks and defying odds. She didn't notice me across the street. It wasn't a performance, but an innate personal response to a challenge. It's a miniscule example of what's brought to bear in far more heroic situations. People run into burning buildings to save a life out of the same inclination. It's just a matter of scale.

That's a good thing about us. Something to like. What seems improbable just might be possible. More often than not, given the options, we don't play it safe and dry. We run for it.
—Robert Fulghum

Source: RUN FOR IT published March 05, 2007, Written Sunday, March 4, 2007 Seattle, Washington by Robert Fulghum.

Protecting Free Thought We Hate

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Source: BrainyQuote's Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes
⇒ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was born on this day in 1841, in Boston, Massachusetts. He died of pneumonia in Washington, D.C. on March 6, 1935.
⇒ See his New York Times Obituary, Washington Holds Bright Memories of Justice Holmes's Long and Useful Life.
⇒ Also, Arlington National Cemetery's biography, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Captain and Brevet Colonel, U.S. Army, Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court.

150 Years Since the Horrid Dred Scott Decision

The words 'people of the United States' and 'citizens' are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the 'sovereign people,' and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate [60 U.S. 393, 405] and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.
—Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, March 6, 1857

Source: U.S. Supreme Court DRED SCOTT v. SANDFORD, 60 U.S. 393 (1856) on FindLaw.com
⇒ Dred Scott Decision on the US National Archives and Records Administration Web site.
⇒ "The decision of Scott v. Sandford, considered by legal scholars to be the worst ever rendered by the Supreme Court, was overturned by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, which abolished slavery and declared all persons born in the United States to be citizens of the United States."—US National Archives and Records Administration
⇒ Dred Scott Case Collection of the Washington University in Saint Louis.

Teaching and Learning

Men learn while they teach.
—Seneca

Source: March 4^st entry: Office Perpetual Calendar by Judy Johannesen, Haymarket, Virginia

Every Relationship is Different

If you've been disappointed by strained relations with a friend or loved one, you must realize that each relationship is unique. Don't let tensions with one person convince you that you lack the ability to be a good friend or a loving family member.
—David Niven, Ph.D. in Every Relationship is Different: Number 28 of The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People

Researchers found there were no differences in overall happiness between those who mainly relyed upon friends for companionship and those who maily relied upon family. People have the capacity to create happiness from the relationships available to them and do not need all their relationships to fit an ideal image.
—Takahashi, K., J. Tamura, and M. Tokoro. 1997. "Patterns of Social Relationships and Psychological Well-Being Among the Elderly" International Journal of Behavioral Development 21:417.

Source: The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It. by David Niven, Ph.D. 2000 HarperCollins ISBN: 0-06-251650-7
See also: Country Inns & Suites by Carlson Read & Return It program.

Happy Birthday, FDR

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want--which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt

Source: Annual Message to Congress, January 6, 1941 [commonly referred to as the Four Freedoms Speech] by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Thirty-Second President 1933-1945.
President Roosevelt was born on this day in 1882 in Hyde Park, New York. He died: April 12, 1945 in Warm Springs, Georgia.
See WhiteHouse.gov's very short biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On Exporting Democracy

Because of our basic unity, we can afford to be divided on specific issues. Democracy is about differences and contesting them in the public sphere, and it only works when there is basic agreement about the fundamentals. We should feel fortunate that we have a democratic history and set of beliefs. Those beliefs can be imported by those who want them and don’t have them, but they can’t be exported. We can only create a context where others would want to import them.
—Michael Mandelbaum in his book, The Case for Goliath

Source: A Hanging and a Funeral by Thomas L. Friedman published in the New York Times, Wednesday, January 3, 2007. [requires registration and subscription for op-ed piece]
See also:
The Case for Goliath: How American Acts as the World's Government in the Twenty-First Century by Michael Mandelbaum at Powell's Books.

Forgiveness

Understanding is often a prelude to forgiveness, but they are not the same, and we often forgive what we cannot understand (seeing nothing else to do) and understand what we cannot pardon.
—Mary McCarthy (1912 - 1989) US novelist, critic

Source: The Writing on the Wall and Other Literary Essays; on Creative Quotations by Mary McCarthy See also:
» Mary McCarthy on Wikipedia
» Featured Author: Mary McCarthy on the New York Times online. [Requires free registration and log-in]

Love and Gratitude of George Washington

With a heart full of love and gratitude I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable…I…shall feel obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.
—General George Washington

Source: Washington's farewell to his officers, December 4, 1783, as he received the officers of the victorious Continental Army in the Long Room of Fraunces Tavern, on the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets, in lower Manhattan, New York City.
See also:
» Fraunces Tavern Museum article Washington Said Farewell To Officers At Fraunces Tavern At War's End
» Library of Congress American Memory for Today in History: December 04

Cannot Escape History

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it.

We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free,--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just,--a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
—Abraham Lincoln

Source: State of the Union Address to United States Congress by President Abraham Lincoln on December 1, 1862. These are President Lincoln's concluding paragraphs to this address.
See: State of the Union Addresses by Abraham Lincoln at the Gutenberg Project
See also: Biography of Abraham Lincoln at WhiteHouse.gov.

Believe in Freedom of Speech?

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
—Noam Chomsky

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8
See also: The Noam Chomsky Web site

Rains All the Time?

For all the fame of the rain in this soggy city, conversations about climate often lead to local defensiveness: Seattle, which averages about 38 inches of rain annually, is far from the country’s wettest big city. Atlanta, Boston, Houston, Miami and New York are just some of the others that get more rain.
—New York Times byline – SEATTLE, Nov. 26

Source: New York Times article Seattle Journal: City That Takes Rain in Stride Puts on Hip Boots published Monday, November 26, 2006. [Requires registration.]
See also: Rains All the Time: A Connoisseur's History of Weather in the Pacific Northwest by David Laskin Sasquatch Books June 1997 ISBN: 1570610630

Life: Your Teacher

The people and situations we encounter every day have much to teach us when we are open to receiving their wisdom. Often we don't recognize our teachers because they may not look or act like our idea of a guru, yet they may embody great wisdom. In addition, some people teach us by showing us what we don't want to do. All the situations in our lives, from the insignificant to the major, conspire to teach us exactly what we need to be learning at any given time. Patience, compassion, perseverance, honesty, letting go-all these are covered in the classroom of the teacher that is your life.
—extract from the DailyOM for Friday, November 24, 2006

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM Life: Your Perfect Teacher published November 24, 2006

Kristallnacht: Lest We Forget the Horror

Today is the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when German Nazis coordinated a nationwide attack on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. It's generally considered the official beginning of the Holocaust. Before that night, the Nazis had killed people secretly and individually. After Kristallnacht, the Nazis felt free to persecute the Jews openly, because they knew no one would stop them.
—Garrison Keillor

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, November 9, 2006
See also: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Kristallnacht: The November 1938 Pogroms

Contracting Before Expanding

Sometimes our lives contract before they expand. We may be working hard on ourselves spiritually, doing good in the world, following our dreams, and wondering why we are still facing constrictions of all kinds-financial, emotional, physical. Perhaps we even feel as if we've lost our spirituality and are stuck in a dark room with no windows. We may be confused and discouraged by what appears to be a lack of progress. But sometimes this is the way things work. Like a caterpillar that confines itself to a tiny cocoon before it grows wings and flies, we are experiencing the darkness before the dawn.
—extract from the DailyOM for Monday, October 30, 2006

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM Going Through The Opening: Contracting Before Expanding published October 30, 2006

See Things For What They are

Circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get.

Open your eyes: See things for what they really are, thereby sparing yourself the pain of false attachments and avoidable devastation.

When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it; you can either accept it or resent it.

Things and people are not what we wish them to be nor what they seem to be. They are what they are.
—Epictetus

Source: page 7 of The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness: A New Interpretation by Sharon Lebell 1995 by Sharon Lebell HarperSanFrancisco ISBN: 006-251322-2(cloth)
See also: The Internet Encylcopedia of Philosphy's Epictetus

Happy Birthday, US Naval Academy

On September 13, 1842, the American Brig Somers set sail from the Brooklyn Navy Yard on one of the most significant cruises in American naval history. It was a school ship for the training of teenage naval apprentice volunteers who would hopefully be inspired to make the Navy a career.

However, discipline deteriorated on the Somers and it was determined by a court of inquiry aboard ship that Midshipman Philip Spencer and his two chief confederates, Boatswains Mate Samuel Cromwell and Seaman Elisha Small, were guilty of a "determined attempt to commit a mutiny."

The three were hanged at the yardarm and the incident cast doubt over the wisdom of sending midshipmen directly aboard ship to learn by doing. News of the Somers mutiny shocked the country.

Through the efforts of the Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, the Naval School was established without Congressional funding, at a 10-acre Army post named Fort Severn in Annapolis, Maryland, on October 10, 1845, with a class of 50 midshipmen and seven professors. The curriculum included mathematics and navigation, gunnery and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French.

In 1850 the Naval School became the United States Naval Academy. A new curriculum went into effect requiring midshipmen to study at the Academy for four years and to train aboard ships each summer. That format is the basis of a far more advanced and sophisticated curriculum at the Naval Academy today. As the U.S. Navy grew over the years, the Academy expanded. The campus of 10 acres increased to 338. The original student body of 50 midshipmen grew to a brigade size of 4,000. Modern granite buildings replaced the old wooden structures of Fort Severn.
—USNA's A Brief History of the United States Naval Academy

Source: USNA's A Brief History of the United States Naval Academy

Honesty and Truth

When we promise more than we can deliver, hide from the consequences of our actions through falsehoods, or deny our true selves to others, we hurt those who were counting on us by proving that their faith was wrongly given. We are also hurt by the lies we tell and the promises we break. Integrity is the foundation of civilization, allowing people to live, work, and play side by side without fear or apprehension.
—DailyOM for Thursday, October 5, 2006

Source: DailyOM Power In Honesty: Staying True to Your Word published October 5, 2006

Political Party's Power

History suggests that once a political party achieves sweeping power, it will only be a matter of time before the power becomes the entire point. Policy, ideology, ethics all gradually fall away, replaced by a political machine that exists to win elections and dispense the goodies that come as a result.
—New York Times editorial page

Source: New York Times editorial The Foley Matter published October 3, 2006 [Requires registration and log-in]

Facing Facts on Iraq

While Iraq is a central issue in this year’s election campaigns, there is very little clear talk about what to do, beyond vague recommendations for staying the course or long-term timetables for withdrawal. That is because politicians running for election want to deliver good news, and there is nothing about Iraq — including withdrawal scenarios — that is anything but ominous.

In the real Iraq, armed Shiite and Kurdish parties have divided up the eastern two-thirds of the country, leaving Sunni insurgents and American marines to fight over the rest. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his “national unity cabinet” stretch out their arms to like-thinking allies like Iran and Hezbollah, but barely lift a finger to rein in the sectarian militias and death squads spreading terror across Baghdad and the Shiite south.

The civilian death toll is now running at roughly 100 a day, with many of the victims gruesomely tortured with power tools or acid. Over the summer, more Iraqi civilians died violent deaths each month than the number of Americans lost to terrorism on Sept. 11. Meanwhile, the electricity remains off, oil production depressed, unemployment pervasive and basic services hard to find.

Iraq is today a broken, war-torn country. Outside the relatively stable Kurdish northeast, virtually every family — Sunni or Shiite, rich or poor, powerful or powerless — must cope with fear and physical insecurity on an almost daily basis. The courts, when they function at all, are subject to political interference; street-corner justice is filling the vacuum. Religious courts are asserting their power over family life. Women’s rights are in retreat.

Growing violence, not growing democracy, is the dominant feature of Iraqi life. Every Iraqi knows this. Americans need to know it too.

Beyond the futility of simply staying the course lies the impossibility of keeping the bulk of American ground forces stationed in Iraq indefinitely. They have already been there for 42 months, longer than it took the United States to defeat Hitler. The strain is undermining the long-term strength of the Army and Marines, threatening to divert the National Guard from homeland security and emboldening Iran and North Korea. Yet with the military situation deteriorating, the Pentagon has had to give up any idea of significant withdrawals this year, or for that matter anytime in the foreseeable future.
—excerpt of a New York Times Editorial, published Sunday, September 24, 2006.

Source: New York Times Editorial, Facing Facts on Iraq of Sunday, September 24, 2006

On September 23, 2006, a Washington Post editorial observed, in part:
The president's steadfastness would be much more impressive if it seemed to be attached to a winning strategy. Sadly, the events of the past several weeks suggest otherwise, at least in Iraq. Gen. Abizaid candidly described the progress of a U.S. military campaign in Baghdad, where additional American forces have been concentrated in the hope of stopping rampant sectarian bloodshed, as slight. Asked by reporters if the war could be won, he replied, "Given unlimited time and unlimited support, we're winning the war."

The problem, as both Gen. Abizaid and Mr. Bush well know, is that neither time nor resources are unlimited. Reports in several newspapers yesterday said the continuing heavy deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan had prompted commanders to discuss whether to call up more National Guard units at the expense of breaking rules about how often they are deployed.

The same day Gen. Abizaid spoke, the chairmen of a bipartisan Iraq study group set up by Congress delivered a blunt message to the four-month-old Iraqi coalition government, which has been slow to take desperately needed steps toward national reconciliation. "The government of Iraq needs to show its own citizens soon, and the citizens of the United States, that it is deserving of continuing support," said former representative Lee H. Hamilton, who chairs the group along with former secretary of state James A. Baker III.

Unless that message is heeded, the sacrifice involved in holding U.S. troop levels steady for another six months -- in lives, above all -- is likely to be wasted.
—excerpt of Washington Post editorial published September 23, 2006.

Source: Washington Post editorial The Troops Stay On of September 23, 2006

Washington's Farwell to the Nation

To the efficacy and permanency of your union a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute. They must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay by the adoption of a Constitution of Government better calculated than your former for an intimate union and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This Government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government...

Toward the preservation of your Government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect in the forms of the Constitution alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what can not be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember especially that for the efficient management of your common interests in a country so extensive as ours a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to con-fine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.
—President George Washington, excerpt from his letter of September 17, 1796

Source: U.S. State Department's Basic Readings in Democracy, FAREWELL ADDRESS (1796), George Washington
Although his farewell was never given orally by the President, it was first published in Philadelphia's American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796. It was subsequently published in many newspapers throughout the United States
The U.S. Senate has had a tradition since 1896 of reading the President's Farewell on his birthday, February 22^nd in legislative session, according to the Senate's Art & History History Minutes.
I think this excerpt is particularly pertinent to the September 2006 debates before the House and Senate regarding President George W. Bush's proposed Military Commissions legislation.

Young Not Prudent and That's Fortunate for All

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible
–and achieve it, generation after generation.
—Pearl S. Buck, 1892-1973, Pulitzer (1932) and Nobel Prize (1938) Winning Author

Source: Pearl S. Buck on Achieving the Impossible of Sep. 12, 2006 at Brainfuel.tv
See also: Pearl Buck – Biography at NobelPrize.org
Also: Pearl Buck was awarded the 1932 Pulitzer Prize in Letters & Drama, Novel for The Good Earth, see: Pulitzer Prizes.org