Quotes

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
           -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, "The Little Prince", 1943



I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
           -- Michel de Montaigne

It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.
           -- Eugene McCarthy
Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.
           -- Benjamin Franklin

Half of the modern drugs could well be thrown out of the window, except that the birds might eat them.
           -- Dr. Martin Henry Fischer
The penalty for success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you.
           -- Nancy Astor

One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.
           -- Randall Jarrell

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
           -- T. S. Eliot


We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
           -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Never answer a critic, unless he's right.
           -- Bernard M. Baruch


Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
           -- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905

Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.
           -- John F. Kennedy

None are so busy as the fool and knave.
           -- John Dryden, The Medal, 1682Humility is the embarrassment you feel when you tell people how wonderful you are.
           -- Laurence J. Peter

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
           -- Harry S Truman, Lecture at Columbia University, 28 Apr. 1959Few things are more satisfying than seeing your own children have teenagers of their own.
           -- Doug Larson

It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.
           -- Malcolm Forbes

Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of middle age.
           -- William Feather

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
          -- Lord Acton, Letter to Mary Gladstone, 1881
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
           -- A. H. Weiler
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
           -- Honore de Balzac
...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
           -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes)
A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.
           -- Alfred E. Wiggam
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
           -- P. B. Medawar

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.
           -- Albert Camus

shoes -do we really need them

In today's excerpt - some members of an emerging class of very long distance runners
known as ultrarunners have begun to advocate running barefoot or in thin-soled shoes:
"Running shoes may be the most destructive force to ever hit the human foot. ...
Consider these words by Dr. Daniel Lieberman, a professor of biological anthropology
at Harvard University: 'A lot of foot and knee injuries that are currently plaguing
us are actually caused by people running with shoes that actually make our feet
weak, cause us to over-pronate, give us knee problems. Until 1972, when the modem
athletic shoe was invented by Nike, people
ran in very thin-soled shoes, had strong feet, and had much lower incidence of knee
injuries.' ...
"We've shielded our feet from their natural position by providing more and more
support," [Stanford track head coach Vin] Lananna insisted. That's why he made sure
his runners always did part of their workouts in bare feet on the
track's infield. ... 'I think you try to do all these corrective things with shoes
and you overcompensate. You fix things that don't need fixing. If you strengthen
the foot by going barefoot, I think you reduce the risk of Achilles and knee and
plantar fascia problems.'
" 'Risk' isn't quite the right term; it's more like 'dead certainty.' Every year,
anywhere from 65 to 80 percent of all runners suffer an injury. That's nearly every
runner, every single year. No matter who you are, no matter how much you run, your
odds of getting hurt are the same. It doesn't matter if you're male or female, fast
or slow, pudgy or ripped as a racehorse, your feet are still in the danger zone.
Maybe you'll beat the odds if you stretch like a swami? Nope. In a 1993 study of
Dutch athletes published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, one group of
runners was taught how to warm up and stretch while a second group received no 'injury
prevention' coaching. Their injury rates? Identical. Stretching came out even worse
in a follow-up study performed the following year at the University of Hawaii; it
found that runners who stretched were 33 percent more likely to get hurt. ...
"In fact, there's no evidence that running shoes are any help at all in injury prevention.
... Runners wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123 percent more likely to get injured
than runners in cheap shoes, according to a study led
by Bernard Marti, M.D., a preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland's University
of Bern. ...
" 'The deconditioned musculature of the foot is the greatest issue leading to injury,
and we've allowed our feet to become badly deconditioned over the past twenty-five
years,' [the Irish physical therapist] Dr. Gerard Hartmann said. ... 'Putting your
feet in shoes is similar to putting them in a plaster cast,' Dr. Hartmann said.
'If I put your leg in plaster, we'll find forty to sixty percent atrophy of the
musculature within six weeks. Something similar happens to your feet when they're
encased in shoes.' When shoes are doing the work, tendons stiffen and muscles shrivel.
Feet live for a fight and thrive under pressure; let them laze around, as [miler]
Alan Webb discovered, and they'll collapse. Work them out, and they'll arc up like
a rainbow. ...
"[The change began in 1962 when Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman created] the most
cushioned running shoe ever created - the Cortez. ... Bowerman's deftest move was
advocating a new style of running that was only possible in his new style of shoe.
The Cortez allowed people to run in a way no human safely could before: by landing
on their bony heels. Before the invention of a cushioned shoe, runners through the
ages had identical form: Jesse Owens, Roger Bannister, Frank Shorter, and even Emil
Zatopek all ran with backs straight, knees bent, feet scratching back under their
hips. They had no
choice: the only shock absorption came from the compression of their legs and their
thick pad of midfoot fat. ...
"But Bowerman had an idea: maybe you could grab a little extra distance if you stepped
ahead of your center of gravity. Stick a chunk of rubber under the heel, he mused,
and you could straighten your leg, land on your heel, and lengthen your stride.
... He believed a 'heel-to-toe' stride would be 'the least tiring over long distances.'
If you've got the shoe for it."
Christopher McDougall, Born to Run, Knopf, Copyright 2009 by Christopher McDougall,
pp. 169-181.

quotes

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.
           -- Dick Cavett

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
           -- Thomas A. Edison

An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.
           -- Robert Benchley

If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect.
           -- Ted Turner
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
           -- George Orwell, Polemic, May 1946, "Second Thoughts on James Burnham"

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
           -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
           -- Noelie Altito
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.
           -- Margaret Bonnano

It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.
           -- Mick Jagger

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
           -- Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675

All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
           -- Sean O'Casey

Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.
           -- Phyllis Diller

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
           -- Robertson Davies
An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.
           -- Dylan Thomas, in Constantine Fitzgibbon, Life of Dylan Thomas (1965)

I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known.
           -- Walt Disney

 The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
           -- Sir Richard Francis Burton

If you don't know what to do, call the media and at least give the appearance of doing something.
           -- David Peterson


Never judge a book by its movie.
           -- J. W. Eagan

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
           -- Charles de Gaulle

The truth is more important than the facts.
           -- Frank Lloyd Wright
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
           -- Abraham Lincoln
There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.
           -- Edith Wharton, The Last Asset, 1904
England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
           -- George Bernard Shaw
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
           -- Thomas A. Edison, (attributed)

I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
           -- W. C. Fields
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
           -- Charles Austin Beard


I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means.
           -- Oscar Wilde, upon being told the cost of an operation

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
           -- Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
           -- Wernher von Braun

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
           -- George F. Will

I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.
           -- E. V. Lucas

If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
           -- Alfred North Whitehead

The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.
           -- Henry Stimson


Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible.
           -- Margaret Mead
Walking isn't a lost art: one must, by some means, get to the garage.
           -- Evan Esar




In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
           -- Peter Drucker
We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us.
           -- George Eliot

Cleopatra

In today's excerpt - although the Cleopatra of lore was portrayed primarily as a
seductress, the real Cleopatra was a skilled naval commander, a published medical
authority, and an expert royal administrator who was met with adulation throughout
the eastern Mediterranean, and was perhaps even seen by some as a messianic figure,
the hope for a future eastern Mediterranean free of Roman domination:
"Few personalities from classical antiquity are more familiar yet more poorly grasped
than Cleopatra VII (69-30 B.C.), queen of Egypt. Cleopatra VII was an accomplished
diplomat, naval commander, administrator, linguist, and author, who skillfully managed
her kingdom in the face of a deteriorating political situation and increasing Roman
involvement. That she ultimately lost does not diminish her abilities. ...
"Like all women, she suffers from male-dominated historiography in both ancient
and modern times and was often seen merely as an appendage of the men in her life
or was stereotyped into typical chauvinistic female roles such as seductress or
sorceress, one whose primary accomplishment was ruining the men that she was involved
with. In this view, she was nothing more than the 'Egyptian mate' of Antonius and
played little role in the policy decisions of her own world. ...
"Yet she was the only woman in all classical antiquity to rule independently - not
merely as a successor to a dead husband - and she desperately tried to salvage and
keep alive a dying kingdom in the face of overwhelming Roman pressure. Descended
from at least two companions of Alexander the Great, she had more stature than
the Romans whom she opposed. Depicted evermore as the greatest of seductresses,
who drove men to their doom, she had only two known relationships in 18 years, hardly
a sign of promiscuity. Furthermore, these connections - to the two most important
Romans of the period - demonstrated that her choice of partners was a carefully
crafted state policy, the only way that she could ensure the procreation of successors
who would be worthy of the distinguished history of her dynasty. ...
"Because there are no certain portraits of Cleopatra except the two dimensional
shorthand on her coinage, little can be said about her physical appearance. The
coins show a prominent nose (a family trait) and chin, with an intensity of gaze
and hair inevitably drawn back into a bun. That she was short is explicitly stated
in one source and perhaps implied in the famous bedsack tale. A notice by Plutarch
is often misquoted to imply that she was not particularly beautiful, but what was
actually written is that the force
of her personality far outweighed any physical attractiveness. Sources
agree that her charm was outstanding and her presence remarkable. ...
"[She was caught in a power struggle between Octavian (Augustus Caesar) and Antonius
(Mark Antony)], and when protracted negotiations between Octavian and the couple
failed to resolve anything, Octavian invoked the military option, invading Egypt.
Cleopatra, finding Antonius dispensable and hoping that she or her kingdom might
survive without him, tricked him into suicide, but when she found that she herself
was being saved to be exhibited in Octavian's triumph in Rome, she also killed herself.
In August Of 30 B.C.
the Ptolemaic kingdom came to an end.
"Some of the most familiar episodes of her career simply did not happen. She did
not approach Caesar wrapped in a carpet, she was not a seductress, she did not
use her charm to persuade the men in her life to lose their judgment, and she did
not die by the bite of an asp."
Duane W. Roller, Cleopatra, Oxford, Copyright 2010 by Oxford University Press, pp.
1-7.