Tim's Favorite Quotes, part 2

Why Snoopy Should be President

"Beneath all the great accomplishments of our time there is a deep current of despair. While efficiency and control are the great aspirations of our society, the loneliness, isolation, lack of freindship and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, feelings of emptiness and depression, and a deep sense of uselessness fill the hearts of millions of people in our success-oriented world.":
—Henri J. M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 20-21.

""We live in the most insolent city on the face of the globe. . . . People are too busy here. Materialism is rampant. If we meet a man on the street can we stop to take our hat off to him? Not at all."
— F. Hopkinson Smith, 1910

Photograph of Francis Hopkinson Smith, Library of Congress LC-USZ62-98127, PD

"Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency;
but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

—Benjamin Franklin to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, 13 November 1789

Franklin coin, United States Mint, PD

"One of the greatest ironies of the history of Christianity is that its leaders constantly gave in to the temptation of power . . . even though the continued to speak the name of Jesus, who did not cling to his divine power but empied himself and became as we are. The temptation to consider power an apt instrument for the proclamation of the Gospel is the greatest of all.
—Henri J. M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 58.

"I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible . . . . [which] teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. . . . I have endeavored to act on that instruction. I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons."
— John Brown, November 2, 1859, after being convicted of treason against the State of Virginia.

Photograph of John Brown, http://www.npg.si.edu/img2/awash/home4.gif, PD

"A man with clever words and an ingratiating appearance is seldom a man of humanity. . . .
A ruler who governs his state by virtue is like the north polar star, which remains in its place while all the other stars revolve around it. . . .
The superior man is broadminded but not partisan; the inferior man is partisan but not broadminded. . . .
In your government what is the need of killing? If you desire what is good, the people will be good. The character of a ruler is like wind and that of the people is like grass. In whatever direction the wind blows, the grass always bends."
— Confucius, The Analects, translated by Wing-Tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963)

drawing of Confucius, E.T.C. Werner, 1922, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15250

"Ah, sir, the people of the United States will believe any thing; and if one takes the proper way, it is as easy to lead them as it is to lead ringed ox."
— Anyonymous captain of Erie Canal boat

Albany New-York Statesman, 23 June 1820, quoted in Gerard Koeppel, Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and the American Empire (Philadelphia: DaCapo Press, 2009), 266.
photo: Promontory Road, 1937, Centre for Gippsland Studies, Monash University, PD.

"There are many 'leaders' among middle management, staff, and the next generation who could focus, inspire, and unleash the rest of us. . . . But they will never have the opportunity to do so until the rest of us begin valuing, developing, and promoting leaders instead of valuing, developing, and promoting those who can fabricate a profit margin in the next quarter."
— from a letter to the editor, The Atlantic, October 2009.

Insignia of U.S. Air Force Tech Controllers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Waterwalker.jpg, PD

"I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. . . . When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe . . . . Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."
— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

photograph of Rev. Dr. King, Marion Trikosko for U.S. News and World Report, Library of Congress LC-DIG-ppmsc-01269, PD

revised 28 February 2010; original 21 August 2009