Saturday, October 31, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-31


"In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients."

Thomas Szasz (1920-2012) The Manufacture of Madness

Witchcraft at Salem Village, illustration from Pioneers in the Settlement of America (1876)

Friday, October 30, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-30


"The measure of a man's real character, it has been said, is what he would do if he knew it would never be found out."

Thomas Tapper (1864-1958) The Music Life and How to Succeed in It

Thomas Babington Macaulay (April 1856) to whom this quote of often mis-attributed.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Monday, October 26, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-26


"The defect of equality is that we only desire it with our superiors."

Henri Becque (1837-1899) Conferenes, Notes, Poems, Letters

Mildred and Richard Loving in Washington, D.C. on January 9, 1965, before their case, Loving vs. Virginia, had reached the Supreme Court. (Photograph: Bettmann/CORBIS)

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-22


"No other man-made device since the shields and lances of the ancient knights fulfills a man's ego like an automobile."

Sir William Rootes (1894-1964) Quoted on the BBC-TV show Who Said That?January 14, 1958

Illustration by Michał Dziekan

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-21


"The best careers advice given to the young ... is 'Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.'"

Katharine Whitehorn (1926-    ) "The Ten-Hour Week is Here to Stay," The Observer, January 19, 1975

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the co-founders of Apple (circa 1976)

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-20


"A man's idee in a card game is war—crool, devastatin', an' pitiless. A lady's idee iv it is a combynation iv larceny, embezzlement, an' burglary."

Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936) "On the Game of Cards," Mr. Dooley on Making a Will

Judy Holliday and Broderick Crawford in the gin/rummy scene from Born Yesterday (1950).

Monday, October 19, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-19


"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are all embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate."

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "Freedom in Society," Harper's Monthly Magazine, March 1926

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher wave to photographers after their arrival in Camp David on December, 22 1984. (UPI/AFP/GettyImages)

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-18


"If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers."

Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808-1890) Les Guêpes, volume 6, January 1849

Mug shot of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted of murdering his three daughters by arson, and executed at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville on February 17, 2004. Subsequent investigations concluded his trial and rejected appeals were a gross miscarriage of justice.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-16


"The working of great administrations is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self-interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought."

Giorgio de Santillana (1902-1974) The Crime of Galileo

Political cartoon by John Cameron, mocking President Lincoln and his cabinet. Published by Currier and Ives. (c. 1864)

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-15


"What right have the Americans to be forecasting our weather?"

— John B. Harris, letter to The Times of London in response to news of weather satellites launched by the United States. July 18, 1963, page 11

Robert Fitzroy, British naval officer and father of modern weather forecasting.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-13


"Destroy him as you will, the bourgeois always bounces up. Execute him, expropriate him, starve him out en masse, and he reappears in your children."

Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) Quoted in The Observer, March 7, 1937

Banksy piece in the South Bronx, October 21, 2013

Monday, October 12, 2015

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-11


"Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it."

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) The Conquest of Happiness

Glenn Close as Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-10


"If you wou'd not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth reading,
Or do things worth the writing."

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Poor Richard's Almanack, 1738

Ernest Hemingway writing at a desk while on safari in Africa,1953. (Photo courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Library.)

Thursday, October 08, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-08


"I kno plenty ov folks who are so kondem kontrary, that if they should fall into the river, they would insist upon floating up stream."

Josh Billings (1818-1885) Affurisms: "Phish Bawls"

Fred Phelps (center), infamous leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, being creatively photobombed (circa 2006)

Wednesday, October 07, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-07


"When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him Vandal. When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him Sportsman."

Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970) "The Vandal and the Sportsman," The Great Chain of Life

Dr. Walter Palmer, dentist and avid big game hunter from Minnesota, who is accused of killing a protected lion named Cecil, in Zimbabwe in June 2015.

Monday, October 05, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-05


"No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother."

Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) Women and the New Race

Cover of the Birth Control Review for November 1923, from The American Birth Control League, the precursor to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Saturday, October 03, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-03


"We must be on our guard against giving interpretations [of scripture] which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers."

Saint Augustine (354-430) The Catholic Encyclopedia's terse distillation of De Genesi ad Litteram, volume 1, chapter 19, paragraph 39

Greeting card by Dan Regan for the Shoebox division of Hallmark.

Friday, October 02, 2015

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-02


"Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand stout country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse."

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) "On Prejudice," Sketches and Essays

Provenance of this image is unknown. If anyone knows its origin, please contact me and I will give proper credit.