“I am at our home in Morningside Country Club in Rancho Mirage.... swimming in my great pool. I keep it heated to an insanely high temperature.... I love swimming in it at night. I lie on my back and... watch the moon rise over the hedges. I look at the stars.... it is super pleasant and what did I ever do to deserve it? Who on earth deserves to live like this? I can imagine the prisoners at Auschwitz watching the same stars as they were worked to death and froze to death. I picture the Union soldiers lying wounded before Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg and dying of loss of blood and exposure and seeing the same stars (although maybe it was raining that night). And the Americans freezing at Bastogne as they held off the Nazis on Christmas Day and seeing the same stars. And here am I swimming in a heated pool watching the stars. It is incredible.... I hope we appreciate it.”
”Ben Stein’s Diary” in The American Spectator March 2006
In my latest National Post column I say don’t confuse malevolent stupidity with conspiracy.
“In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.”
Max De Pree quoted by Jeff Hayden on Inc. online (www.inc.com/jeff-haden/top-350-inspiring-motivational-quotes-to-tweet-and-share.html)
“And the nicest thing about that Simplicity is its useful wisdom, the what-is-there-to-eat variety – wisdom you can get at.”
Benjamin Hoff The Tao of Pooh
“James J. Hill’s phrase ‘the cost of high living’...”
Robert H. Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement.
“the only way to enjoy even a weed is to feel unworthy even of a weed.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Eric Scheske in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 #1 (September 2000)
“If human nature never changes, why is it that we not only don’t practice cannibalism any more, but don’t even want to?”
George Orwell, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail Feb. 27, 2002
“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”
Attributed to Tony Robbins (in this exact formulation) and many others in similar words on the Internet (for instance “Do what you have always done and you’ll get what you have always got” sourced to Sue Knight) - I have no idea who first said it or in what words. But a very large number of people have demonstrated its truth in practice... including me. Dang.