Getting Yourself Out of the Way

It’s not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

— Edmund Hillary

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From the Reader’s Digest “Quotable Quotes” column. Date unknown.

Just Bust on Through

The best way out is always through.

– Robert Frost

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This quote is from one of the pages in an old Franklin Planner.

Our Humanity & Being Kind to Animals

Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

— Milan Kundera, novelist, playwright, and poet (b.1929)

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This was a Thought for the Day disseminated in the December 4, 2012, “A Word a Day” from Wordsmith.

Change and Growth

Sorry for the absence of SeeBee Sez these past few weeks.  We’re back now, and with plenty of good quotes! Enjoy.

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I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it.

— Maya Angelou

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From the September 14, 2012, issue of The Week.

Reprised Bonus Quote: “Inquire. Learn. Reflect.”

John Filo’s iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, a fourteen-year-old runaway, kneeling in anguish over the body of Jeffrey Miller minutes after he was shot by the Ohio National Guard

(We are repeating this quote today, the 43nd anniversary of the shootings at Kent State. There have been shootings on campuses since then — too many of them, unfortunately.  The difference here is that representatives of the state — in this case, the State of Ohio, not other students or mentally unstable private citizens — fired on unarmed students.  This should be a cautionary tale for our nation. We should never forget the lessons of Kent State. The original SeeBee Sez post from last year follows.)

On this date in 1970, four Kent State University students were fired on and killed by Ohio National Guardsmen during an antiwar demonstration.  Twenty years after the event, a May 4th memorial was built at Kent State.  The words “Inquire. Learn. Reflect.” are inscribed at the threshold to the memorial.

Neil Young wrote the song “Ohio” after reading about the shootings.

For more about the events at Kent State, check here.

Does Moral Certainty Hold Us Back?

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.”

— H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

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This was a Thought for the Day disseminated in the April 17, 2013, “A Word a Day” from Wordsmith.

Having a Short Memory

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.

— Doug Larson

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From the Reader’s Digest “Quotable Quotes” column. Date unknown.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow…What??

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, but enkindles the great.

-– Comte de Bussy-Robutin

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This quote is from one of the pages in an old Franklin Planner.

Finagle’s Third Law of Mistakes

Finagle’s Third Law:  In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.

Corollaries:

1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.

2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don’t want to hear, will see it immediately.

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This is a Unix Fortune.

Life in Three Words

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life.  It goes on.

—  Robert Frost

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From the Reader’s Digest “Quotable Quotes” column. Date unknown.