September 12, 2014

Good Morning! Here are your daily birthday quotations...

H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956):

“Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.”

and

“Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”

and

“I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.”

and

“Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.”

Stanislaw Lem (1921 – 2006):

“Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way.”

and

“We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.”

Michael Ondaatje (1943 – ):

“All I ever wanted was a world without maps.”

and

“...the heart is an organ of fire.”

and

“We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.”

Leonard Peltier (1944 - ):

“I don’t know how to save the world. I don’t have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth’s inhabitants, none of us will survive—nor will we deserve to.”

and

“Only one thing’s sadder than remembering you were once free, and that’s forgetting you were once free.”

and

“Innocence has a single voice that can only say over and over again, "I didn't do it." Guilt has a thousand voices, all of them lies.”

Barry White (1944 – 2003):

“Disco deserved a better name, a beautiful name because it was a beautiful art form. It made the consumer beautiful. The consumer was the star.”

Ben Folds (1966 - ):

"Smile

Like you've got nothing to prove

No matter what you might do

There's always someone out there cooler than you"

Louis CK (1967 - ):

“I’m bored” is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless, it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say “I’m bored.”

Paul F. Tompkins (1968 - ):

"The Chick-fil-A same-sex marriage controversy is the perfect American conundrum, because it's like: ‘Ah, you know, we should be moving forward as a country, but also— I want to eat garbage, as much as I can.’ ”

and

“Long story short: The End.”

James Frey (1969 - ):

“Sometimes skulls are thick. Sometimes hearts are vacant. Sometimes words don't work.”

and

“Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on.”

And, on this day last year, NASA announced that Voyager I had left the heliopause and entered interstellar space. As West Wing character Josh Lyman said:

“Voyager, in case it's ever encountered by extra-terrestrials, is carrying photos of life on Earth, greetings in 55 languages and a collection of music from Gregorian chants to Chuck Berry. Including "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" by '20s bluesman Blind Willie Johnson, whose stepmother blinded him when he was seven by throwing lye in is his eyes after his father had beat her for being with another man. He died, penniless, of pneumonia after sleeping bundled in wet newspapers in the ruins of his house that burned down. But... his music just left the solar system.”