Self-Improvement

“It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick the associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.”

–Warren Buffett    Read more »

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August 22 is Ray Bradbury’s Birthday

He would have been 92.

The Writer’s Almanac quotes Bradbury — arguably the greatest short story writer of the 20th Century  — saying at age 80:

“The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was 12.”    Read more »

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Ouch

“I have spent half my life trying to get away from journalism but I am still mired in it — a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world full of misfits and drunkards and failures. A group photo of the Top 10 journalists in America on any given day would be a monument to human ugliness.    Read more »

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Today’s Latin Phrase Is A Good Yardstick for Politicians

 

Bonitas Non Est Pessimis Esse Meliorem  

“It Is Not Goodness to be Better Than the Worst.”    Read more »

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Be The Bookworm

 

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all of the time — none, zero. You’d be amazed how much Warren (Buffett) reads — and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I am a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”    Read more »

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Too Often Too True

 

“Those who have not undergone minor disasters are usually being held in reserve for something major.”

— Gore Vidal, Creation    Read more »

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“To Strive , To Seek, To Find And Not to Yield”

August 6 is the birthday of English poet Alfred Tennyson whose ending line from Ulysess, the favorite poem of California’s Capitol, won a competition last year in England called, “Winning Words.”

The phrase is engraved on a wall in Olympic Village.

Tennyson also provided President Harry Truman with his favorite poem, several stanzas of “Locksley Hall,” a handwritten copy of which Truman kept in his wallet from the time he graduated from high school.    Read more »

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“When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro”

 

 July 18, 1937 is the birthday of Gonzo Journalist Hunter S. Thompson who also said:

“So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here — not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism.    Read more »

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Sage Advice from Old Pappy

 

“Like my old Pappy used to say: Love your fellow man and stay out of his troubles if you can.”

— Bret Maverick    Read more »

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George Herbert Walker Bush on Tax Pledges

Parade: During your presidency you gave in on your ‘no new taxes’ pledge. You’ve been vindicated in many respects for that decision. I wonder how you view the ‘no new tax’ pledge from Grover Norquist that seems to be requisite for GOP political candidates?

George Bush: The rigidity of those pledges is something I don’t like.    Read more »

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