“I believe… That our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become…. I believe… That you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them…. I believe… That we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel…. I believe… That either you control your attitude, or it controls you…. I believe… That sometimes when I’m angry I have the right to be angry, but that doesn’t give me the right to be cruel.”

Somone emailed this “I believe” document to me as a Power Point presentation around August 2005. It seems to be extant online in various forms with “Author unknown” or words to that effect.

“People asked him [Thomas Edison, almost totally deaf from childhood] why he didn’t invent a hearing aid. Father always replied, ‘How much have you heard in the last twenty-four hours that you couldn’t do without?’ He followed this up with: ‘A man who has to shout can never tell a lie.’”

Edison’s son Charles in William Bennett The Book of Virtues

“for God, there are no throw-away people”

“Rev. André Drouin, a parish priest at Ste. Anne, a downtown Ottawa church” who worked among others with AIDS patients, quoted in Ottawa Citizen Dec. 1, 2000

“Why is it called tourist season if we can’t shoot at them?”

“More Unanswerables” in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #4 (1-2/04)

“The human psyche and human nature are artful dodgers.”

Sen. Anne Cools in a speech in the Senate March 13, 2001, quoted in Hansard Vol. 139

“Ride on the nightmare, if you prefer such horseflesh; only do not let the nightmare ride on you.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News May 15, 2009, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #6 (4-5/07)

“In 1945... the vaunted thousand-year rule of the Third Reich came to a brutal end. Great cities lay in ruins. Millions were exterminated; millions more were displaced and starving. A demon in human flesh had put the whole apparatus of the modern state to work to eradicate God’s people. The last victim of every murderous demon is its human host, so staying true to Satanic form, in the final days of war, Hitler and his leading Nazi henchman pulled the trigger on their own demise.”

David Kitz Psalms Alive!

“The Grate One”

Terry O’Neill in British Columbia Report July 30, 2001 [not referring to Wayne Gretzky, just adapting his nickname to insult any annoying person]