Since we don’t seem to be building any airplanes lately (that is soon to change) I thought I’d use this space to keep something else of mine I thought I’d lost.
Some years ago, back when I had zero kids and much more free time, I collected all my favorite quotes and put them on Facebook. Then sometime later, Facebook made one of it’s never ending series of changes and my quotes disappeared.
Today, while bumbling through Facebook looking for something completely different, I stumbled upon my list of quotes. I have no idea when or if they will disappear again, but since I HATE Facebook I’d rather have my quotes here anyway.
So without further ado, here are some of my favorite quotes, starting off with my very most favorite one right on top. This was said to me when I was 17 years old. I stood 6’5″ tall and weighed 210 pounds. I was bowing up to my father, who stood 5’7″ tall. In a fit of rage and stupidity, I told him that he couldn’t make me do something he wanted me to do. He, VERY calmly, looked me square in the eye and said:
“You’re right, I can’t ‘make you do it.’ But I can make you wish you had. ”
— My father
I’m still quivering when I think about that day. I’m not sure why he didn’t just go ahead and kill me then. It’s not like he didn’t already have a couple of sons. Fortunately I’m still around.
Now for the rest of my favorite quotes.
A man can get discouraged many times, but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.” – John Burroughs
If your business depends on you, you don’t have a business. You have a job – and you are working for a lunatic.
– Michael E. Gerber
The final test of a gentleman is his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.
William Lyon Phelps
Do not hurry, do not rest.
– Goethe
I spent 50% of my money on alcohol, women, and gambling. The rest I just wasted. – W.C. Fields
Talking about our problems is our greatest addiction. Break your habit. Talk about your joys. – Unknown
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to ones courage. – Anais Nin
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its life thinking it is stupid. – Albert Einstein
Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due. – Will Rogers
An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.
Augustine Birrell
The price for being a sheep is boredom, the price for being a wolf is loneliness, choose one or the other with great care.
“What is your host’s purpose for the party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they’d have sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.” P.J. O’Rourke
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” Mark Twain
History never looks like history when you are living through it.
John W. Gardner
I have noticed that nothing I never said ever did me any harm.
Calvin Coolidge
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.
Louis D. Brandeis
Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.
John Quincy Adams
There are no extraordinary men… just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.
William Halsey
Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark Twain
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Action is the foundational key to all success.
Pablo Picasso
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite time in the future.” General George S. Patton
“Show me a man who cannot bother to do the little things, and I’ll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do the big things.”
— Lawrence Bell, Bell Aircraft
“Be the man they’ll claim you were at your funeral.” me
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
— Robert A. Heinlein
“Aviation is not unsafe, but like the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness or neglect. C.R. Smith”
“The world is not interested in the storms you encounter but whether you bring in the ship.”
— Raul Armesto
“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort….”
— Herm Albright
“”Hope” is not a strategy.”
— Larry Barbour, President North State Bank
“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
— Theodore Hesburgh
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
— Groucho Marx
“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans … are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.”
— Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential)
“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
— Abraham Lincoln