Tag: quotes

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Best Einstein Quote of the Week? Year?

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Einstein had lots of great quotes, such as the famous “I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice” which is commonly paraphrased as “God doesn’t play dice.” I received one today though that might be favorite yet:

Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its entire life thinking it’s stupid.

Wee!
Wee!

The quote then made me think of something that my Yoga instructor said when I took Yoga for undergraduate gym credits. Her statement, which I’ve taken with me through life since the that time, can summed up in the following manner:

“Picture someone reading a book on the beach. Picture a fish in the water swimming near the shore. The fish has no ability to read, or even know what a book is. That being said, it doesn’t mean that the book doesn’t exist or that Shakespeare isn’t wonderful.”

I often invoke that phrase when trying to explain something that is outside my realm of comprehension, like parallel universes, God, etc. I use it to sum up the idea that “just because we can’t understand or even comprehend something doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.” The Einstein quote is sort of the same but reversed. It’s tremendous!
Via Anthony

ramblings

Being Present Part II

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Many years ago when I first started this blog I wrote about the idea of Being Present thinking that, “The importance of being present is beyond belief for life is brief and a day can be spent so easily” and I wondered, “Is it possible to be present with so much going on at once?” I wrote that post back before my life became the much more complex jumble of tasks, activities, wants and needs that it currently is so now, more than ever, I wonder about one’s ability to be and more importantly stay present.
My children get older each day and so do I, but while I have calcified to a degree they are rapidly changing. I’m the same from day to the next but they are different. As I was concentrating on how fractured I am right now, and how I have not been able to diligently put my thoughts down on what it means to be a father, to watch a little baby grow into a little person, one of my favorite sayings, one that I used to write into all of my school notebooks, popped into mind. I have never shared it on this blog and thought “if not now, when?” I’m going to try to keep it top of mind for the rest of the week. We’ll see if that makes a difference in how present I can be. Enjoy.

Yesterday is ashes.
Tomorrow is wood.
Only today the fire burns brightly.

Proverb via the Eskimos

humor

Line of the Week

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I am a big fan of humor quips. When I lived at home, one of the best parts of my week was the day “Newsweek” arrived in the mail and I got to read the quote and cartoons in its Perspectives column. Sports Illustrated has also had some good quotes – found either in its “Line of the Week” or “This Week’s Sign the Apocalypse is Upon Us” features.
Charles Barkley’s recent comment on being criticized for swearing during a TNT broadcast is especially post worthy:

“If me saying b.s. on television after midnight is going to push your little damn brat over the deep end, you’re just a crappy parent.”

movies

Who You Gonna Call?

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If the first thing you think of is “Ghostbusters!” when you read this post’s title, it means that either that you are a member of Ray Parker Jr.’s family or you are a huge fan of the Ghostbuster movies (or maybe just the first one as number two was just so-so).
It seems that a new GB movie is in the works and I am both very excited and very scared. While I think the premise is good, I’m not sure that having the 40 Year Old Virgin / Knocked Up / Superbad crew taking over for the “old guys” (aka Akroyd, Murray, Ramis and Hudson) as a sort of Ghostbusters: TNG will work out well.
As the latest Rocky, the latest Rambo, the latest Die Hard and the latest Indiana Jones all sucked donkey balls. I pray that the new Ghostbusters movie is at least as good as GB II, which isn’t saying that much mind you.
For your viewing pleasure, below is one of my favorite parts of the movie. I just have two words for you: mass hysteria!

Via Neu (once again)

ramblings

Being Everywhere At Once

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I’m smack dab in the middle of The Painted Bird, a novel that many people read while in junior or senior high school (for me however it was never included on any class’s reading list).
One passage in particular jumped out at me and I thought I’d share it. It’s about one of my favorite subject – religion:

“The church always overwhelmed me. And yet it was one of the many houses of God scattered all over the world. God did not live in any of them, but it was assumed for some reason that He was present in all of them at once. He was like the unexpected guest for whom the wealthier farmers always kept an additional place at their table.” ~ Jerzy Kosinkski

The book is unique and a well done. I wish I read it years ago….

music

Stronger in Many Ways

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Mr. “I’ve got a permanent beef with MTV” Kayne West is super hot and winning his album selling contest against 50 Cent because he took the beat from Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger and created a monster hit called “Stronger.” This song is my current favorite hip-hop tune by very wide margin. If you haven’t heard it yet, you are living in a cave.
For instance, it’s so popular that 30 Seconds to Mars covered “Stronger” in a really decent way on BBC Radio 1’s Jo Whiley show. You have to listen to some other music from the program but its worth it. You can skip ahead – the song is played about 25 minutes into the program.
Aside from the awesome opening of “Let’s get lost tonight – You can be my black Kate Moss tonight,” the start of the chorus is what I truly love about the song. The lyrics are, “N-now th-th-that that don’t kill me – Can only make me stronger” which paraphrases an ultra famous Nietzsche quote – “Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger” – which also happened to be my high school year book quote.
The idea that as long as you are alive, you can rise above and get past whatever life throws at you has been a guiding principal in my life. It has helped me get over and get past a lot of bad shit over the years. Not only are the words powerful on their own, but with the added bumping bass and catchy Kayne lyrics, I see listening to this song as the aural equivalent of slamming down two freshly brewed cups of espresso.

ramblings

Quote Series: #1

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I have a black and white old skool marble notebook with a Led Zeppelin “Houses of the Holy” sticker on it that houses a lot of good quotes and poems I’ve amassed over the past fifteen odd years. I think I’m going to start posting them because a number of them are really great. To start this project off, as I’m embarking on a trip to the Holy Land very soon, one passage about the how ridiculous some people are in the way they worship their chosen deity gave me pause and made me smile. It might do the same to you:

If God existed (a question concerning which he maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped ( a proposition which he found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to him to the point of redictio and absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed bye the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as “worship.”
– Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein

Tradition is one thing but some people truly go overboard in “worship.” Everyone should keep in mind the quote above and the simple adage that its not what you do inside a house of worship that matters, its how you conduct your life outside of it that matters.

ramblings

Quotes of the Day

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“First, you are drunk. Second, this is not a waltz; it is the Peruvian national anthem. And third, I am not a woman; I am the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima.” – response given to George Brown, an English Labor foreign secretary in the 1960’s, after he stumblingly(i.e. drunkenly) invited a guest in flowing purple robes at a reception in Peru to dance.

”It’s so interesting to me that people talk about late-night comedy being cynical. ‘What’s more cynical than forming an ideological news network like Fox and calling it ‘fair and balanced’? What we do, I almost think, is adorable in its idealism. It’s quaint.” – John Stewart, on his program “The Daily Show.”

ramblings

Quote of the Day

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”It’s so interesting to me that people talk about late-night comedy being cynical. ‘What’s more cynical than forming an ideological news network like Fox and calling it ‘fair and balanced’? What we do, I almost think, is adorable in its idealism. It’s quaint.”
– Jon Stewart, on his program “The Daily Show.”