Quotation Saturday: Weather

quotationsaturdayMamacita says:  The weather forecast for Thursday night was a severe snowstorm.  It didn’t show up, so I mocked it.  On Friday, the snow started falling and hasn’t let up even as I write, which is 3:15 a.m.

I really don’t understand how it could possibly be snowing; I mean, we have plenty of milk and toilet paper.  Go figure.  This time, household supplies didn’t prevent the storm, but it did delay it.

I like severe weather, as long as it’s not life-threatening.  Weather is one of the few things that people can’t control.  All the money and power and elitism in the world doesn’t change the fact that when conditions are ripe for rain or snow or hail or sleet or cats & dogs or torrents or tornadoes or hurricanes or hot or cold or frost, that’s exactly what will happen.  We can hold weather away from us, but we can’t stop it from “being.”

Fie on you all, rich important people.  It’s snowing and you can’t do a thing about it.

The rain it raineth ev’ry day
Upon the just and unjust fellow
But mostly upon the just, because
The unjust hath  the just’s umbrella!

1. Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. -John Ruskin

2. Don’t knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn’t start a conversation if it didn’t change once in a while. –Kin Hubbard

3. Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet. –Roger Miller

4. Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger. — Saint Basil

5. The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? –J.B. Priestley

6. Any proverbs about weather are doubly true during a storm. –Ed Northstrum

7. It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain. –Mark Twain

8. A snowflake is one of God’s most fragile creations, but look what they can do when they stick together! –Author Unknown

9. Bad weather always looks worse through a window. –Tom Lehrer

10. What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance. –Jane Austen

11. Snowmen fall from heaven… unassembled. –Author Unknown

12. I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains. One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness. –Adeline Knapp

13. Too often man handles life as he does the bad weather, He whiles away the time as he waits for it to stop. — Alfred Polgar

14. Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative. — Oscar Wilde

15. Weather means more when you have a garden. There’s nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans. — Marcelene Cox

16. Among famous traitors of history one might mention the weather. — Ilka Chase

17. I get cold really quickly, but I don’t care. I like weather. I never understand why people move someplace so that they can avoid weather. — Holly Hunter

18. In Scotland, there is no such thing as bad weather – only the wrong clothes. — Billy Connelly

19. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. — Albert Einstein

20. It was so cold I almost got married. — Shelley Winters images

21. Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. — Oscar Wilde

22. All of us could take a lesson from the weather; it pays no attention to criticism. — Unknown

23. In India, “cold weather” is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. — Mark Twain

24. Few things are as democratic as a snowstorm. — Bern Williams

25. He had read somewhere that the Eskimos had over two hundred words for snow, without which their conversation would probably have got very monotonous. So they would distinguish between thin snow and thick snow, light snow and heavy snow, sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in flurries, snow that came in drifts, snow that came in on the bottom of your neighbour’s boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows of winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember from your childhood that were so much better than any of your modern snow, fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls in the morning, snow that falls at night, snow that falls all of a sudden just when you were going out fishing, and snow that despite all your efforts to train them, the huskies have pissed on. — Douglas Adams

26. Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer, we’d all have frozen to death. — Mark Twain

27. I think that’s how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said, ‘Gee, I’m enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn’t cold enough. Let’s go west.’ — Richard Jeni

28. On a gloomy, rainy morning, it came little eight-year-old Tommy’s turn to say the blessing at breakfast. “We thank Thee for this beautiful day,” he prayed. His mother asked him why he said that when the day was anything but beautiful. “Mother,” said he, with rare wisdom, “never judge a day by its weather.” — Unknown

29. Isn’t it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists? — Kelvin Throop

30. No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather. — Michael Pritchard

31. The color of springtime is in the flowers, the color of winter is in the imagination. –Ward Elliot Hour

32. Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation. — Sinclair Lewis

33. Perhaps I am a bear, or some hibernating animal underneath, for the instinct to be half asleep all winter is so strong in me. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

34. When one has faith that the spring thaw will arrive, the winter winds seem to lose some of their punch. — Robert L. Veninga

35. Winter is nature’s way of saying, “Up yours.” — Robert Byrne

36. The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. — Doug Larson

37. When there’s snow on the ground, I like to pretend I’m walking on clouds. — Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

38. I think winter wear is communal. You get some gloves and a scarf from a lost-and-found box, wash them, wear them for a while until you lose them. Then somebody else does the same thing. — Adrian Grenier

39. Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, “I’m going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that’s tough. I am going to snow anyway.” — Maya Angelou

40. The future lies before you, like paths of pure white snow. Be careful how you tread it, for every step will show. — Unknown

41. A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.– Marcel Proust

42. Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty. –Voltaire

43. I’ve lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate. — John Steinbeck

sun44. Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. –Russel Baker

45. It amazes me that most people spend more time planning next summer’s vacation than they
do planning the rest of their lives. — Patricia Fripp

46. Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” — Sam Keen

47. If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. — Anne Bradstreet

48. The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love. — Margaret Atwood

49. They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it? — Jeanette Winterson

50. You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake… This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.
— Chuck Palahniuk

It's Outrageous: Not Everyone Deserves A Real Diploma!

OutrageousMamacita says:  Does anyone else wonder why parents and teachers are spending so much time on topics such as red ink, dodgeball, and T-shirts, when it seems to me a much better topic for discussion might be, “Why are we allowing illiterate people to actually graduate from high school?”

Because I can’t think of a single reason why.  Nope, not one.

A person who can’t read, write, or do simple math has not earned a diploma and should not be given one.  A diploma does not represent self-esteem, attendance, money, exceptions, or desire to stand on a stage with peers.  A diploma represents earned credits awarded for proof of knowledge and skills.

At least, it should.  It used to.

Now, since pretty much everybody gets one whether they’ve earned it or not, a diploma has been turned into a piece of paper with somebody’s name on it, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.

No wonder businesses are crying foul.  I don’t blame them.

A diploma used to mean that a person was fully literate and possessed skills that would enable him/her to be a qualified candidate for many jobs.

Now, we’re graduating people who couldn’t even pass the square-peg-round-hole test, which has by now probably been labeled “politically incorrect” and done away with.

A lot of kids are figuring out the system way down in grade school: If I don’t do anything, I’ll still get to graduate with the kids who are working hard, so why should I work hard?  Or at all?

Many schools force teachers to give students who won’t work a 50% anyway.  Half-credit for zero work.  But zeroes are hurtful, you know, and even if that’s what the kid EARNED, we musn’t give him one.  Give him half.

I wonder what we as a culture would think if a parent came bounding down from the bleachers during a basketball game, demanding that her child be given a point for a ball that did not go through the basket.  You know, because he tried, and it’s not his fault he couldn’t get the ball in the basket, and it’s not his fault the other players were able to get the ball in the basket, and other kids got points, and his SELF ESTEEM will suffer if he doesn’t get some points, too.  You know, for trying.  And failing.

Everyone would laugh at such a request.  Deservedly so, too.  Why, then, do we give kids whose work ethic doesn’t go through the basket, some free points anyway?  As a society, we should be laughing at such a request, but people tend to get militant about zeroes. No work, no pay.

I say, if a person earns points, give them points, and give them credits, and give them awards and rewards and pats on the back and a good job,  and if a person doesn’t earn any points, don’t give them any points.  Pity points are worthless.  The kid knows he didn’t earn any points.  I have a feeling it’s not for the kids that such ridiculous policies exist, ifyouknowmommywhatImean.

I call foul ball.

Quotation Saturday: Censorship

quotationsaturday Mamacita says:  If I owned the biggest and best thesaurus in the universe, I still would not be able to find a word accurate enough to fully express my disgust and loathing of censorship, nor of the mentality of those who censor.  Yesterday’s post touched on this topic – or perhaps, more accurately, grabbed the topic by the balls neck and squeezed tightly enough to elicit a scream.  Or perhaps a squeamish, ladylike squeal, from those who advocate censorship.

1. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. — John Stuart Mill

2. The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. — Tommy Smothers

3. The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book. — Walt Whitman

4. Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too. — Voltaire

5. I am thankful for all the complaining I hear about our government because it means we have freedom of speech. — Nancie J. Carmody

6. Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. — Alfred Whitney Griswold

7. Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. — Heinrich Heine

8. Every burned book enlightens the world. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

9. Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself. — Dick Cavett

10. To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list. — John Aikin

11. God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide — Rebecca West

12. If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. — Noam Chomsky

13. I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. — Voltaire

14. If your library is not ‘unsafe’, it probably isn’t doing its job. — John Berry

15. Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission. — Arnold Bennett

16. There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. –Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky

17. Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion. — David Cronenberg

18. Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage. –Winston Churchill

19. You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken – unspeakable! – fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse – a little tiny mouse! -of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. –Winston Churchill

20. If librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas – and I believe that is the truest definition of what we do – it is crucial to remember that we must keep and make available, not just good ideas and noble ideas, but bad ideas, silly ideas, and yes, even dangerous or wicked ideas. –Graceanne A. Decandido

21. To prohibit the reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves. –Claude Adrien Helvetius, De l’Homme

22. Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is the loftiest form of cowardice.
–Holbrook Jackson

23. Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble. –Peter S. Jennison

24. Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.
–Lyndon Baines Johnson

25. The burning of an author’s books, imprisonment for an opinion’s sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time. –Joseph Lewis

26. Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.
–Clare Booth Luce

27. To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it. –Michel de Montaigne

28. Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot. –Eugene Gladstone O’Neill

29. All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship. –George Bernard Shaw

30. Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it. — Kurt Vonnegut

31. An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. –Oscar Wilde

32. Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice. — Henry Louis Gates

33. Everyone has an opinion, and the guy screaming for censorship may be the next guy to have his ideas cut off. — Richard King

34. Pontius Pilate was the first great censor and Jesus Christ the first great victim of censorship. — Ben Lindsey

35. The only thing that is obscene is censorship. — Craig Bruce

36. If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty. — John Fitzgerald Kennedy

37. We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder “censorship,” we call it “concern for commercial viability.” — David Mamet

38. Censorship: the reaction of the ignorant to freedom. — Unknown

39. He is always the severest censor of the merit of others who has the least worth of his own — Elias Lyman Maggon

40. Even to the present day, we so often condemn books that were written to fight the very things we claim to be fighting. Mark Twain’s (Samuel Clemens’) Huckleberry Finn is so often cited as being racist, when it was written against slavery and racism. — -Jamey Fletcher

41. The most common examples of book censorship are in schools and public libraries, and all those examples are most often involving children’s literature. Political groups attempt to remove books from library shelves because those books use ‘naughty’ words, do not have happy endings… or because they have too many rainbows. Rainbows are considered a sign of ‘New Age’ religiosity. Little Red Riding Hood was the 24th most banned book in the early 90’s mostly because she had a bottle of wine in her basket. Many organizations demanded a non-alcohol Little Red. They were successful sometimes in their efforts, by the way. –Herbert Foerstel

42. There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance. –Goethe

43. One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. –Golda Meir

44. The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventhday Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme. –Ray Bradbury

45. I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read.
–Robertson Davies

46. It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies. –William O. Douglas

47. Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory. –Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

48. We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. — American Library Association

49. The use of “religion” as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time. — Margaret Atwood

50. As to the evil which results from censorship, it is impossible to measure it, because it is impossible to tell where it ends. –Jeremy Bentham

51. Purveyors of political correctness will, in the final analysis, not even allow others their judgments… They celebrate “difference,” but they will not allow people truly to be different — to think differently, and to say what they think. –Mark Berley

52. In order to get the truth, conflicting arguments and expression must be allowed. There can be no freedom without choice, no sound choice without knowledge. — David K. Berninghausen

53. The censor believes that he can hold back the mighty traffic of life with a tin whistle and a raised right hand. For after all, it is life with which he quarrels. –Heywood Broun

54. We are not the keeper of our brother’s morals – only of his rights. –Judith Crist

55. To prevent inquiry is among the worst of evils. –Thomas Holcroft

56. The First Amendment says nothing about a right not to be offended. The risk of finding someone else’s speech offensive is the price each of us pays for our own free speech. Free people don’t run to court — or to the principal — when they encounter a message they don’t like. They answer it with one of their own. –Jeff Jacoby

57. Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. –Doris Lessing

58. If none of us ever read a book that was “dangerous,” had a friend who was “different,” or joined an organization that advocated “change,” we would all be the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants. — Edward R. Murrow

59. Obviously, the danger is not in the actual act of reading itself, but rather, the possibility that the texts children read will incite questions, introduce novel ideas, and provoke critical inquiry. –Persis M. Karim

60. Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won’t have as much censorship because we won’t have as much fear. — Judy Blume

Intercourse, Asses, and Dwarves in Gay Apparel

Mamacita says:  I loathe euphemisms and most political correctness.  They cheapen the language.

Euphemisms and PC are a kind of censorship, and censorship is the action of a weak, fearful,  and ignorant mind.  Smart people understand that many words have more than one meaning.  Weak and ignorant people can’t, and, unfortunately, weak and ignorant people seem to be in charge of the universe.

Understanding the concept of “context” is of vital importance, and “context” is something many people do not understand in the least.  Weak and ignorant people believe that each word has one meaning, by golly.

I use this example with my students; in fact, I’ve been using it as my AIM lifestream all week.

How important is context?  Well, it’s one thing for Bill to do the dishes, and quite another thing for Bill to do the upstairs maid.

Same word; different context.

Weak and ignorant people changed the last page of Dickens’ A Christmas CarolScrooge had no further intercourse with the spirits was changed to Scrooge did not ever meet any more spirits.

Bah, humbug.

Snow White doesn’t live in the woods with seven dwarves any more.  It’s politically incorrect.  Now, when the men are mentioned at all, they are referred to as little men. Well, pardon me, but a story about a young woman who lives deep in the woods with seven little men strikes me as a merry piece of porn, not a fairy tale.

We can’t call them fairy tales any more, either.  Again, politically incorrect.  Yeah, whatever.  Weak and ignorant people make me tired.

Oh, and there are no asses at the manger with Our Lord.  Now, only the ox and lamb may keep time.  And don’t even get me started on the idiot who changed don we now our gay apparel to don we now our best apparel.

Honestly, people’s brains are shrinking so fast, some people have nothing but a raisin in their skulls.

Even Anne Frank.  ANNE FRANK.  There’s a big brouhaha about The Definitive Edition of The Diary of a Young Girl, and the book has been removed from the shelves.  ONE PARENT complained, and now AnneFranknobody’s kids can read this book.  Disgraceful.  Listen, bitch concerned mommy, you have a perfect right to forbid your own children from reading any book, but your right to do that ends on your own doorstep. Keep your fear, ignorance, and faulty belief/value system away from everybody else’s children.

Why are people so afraid of controversy?  People should be welcoming questions, not forbidding them.  I sincerely believe that a belief/value system that can’t stand up under a few honest questions, or even a few baiting questions, is NOT a viable value/belief system.  If yours doesn’t like questions, I have a question for you:  Why on earth would you continue to cling to it?  A belief/value system that can’t cope with questions or deal happily with doubt and controversy is a faulty, lousy, ignorant belief/value system.  Please, let’s all strive NOT to associate ourselves with such a system.

Sadly, many people wear their association with these kinds of systems like a crown or badge.  Sigh.

I was a participant in a Twitter War tonight about censorship.  I was agin it.  Yes, I lowered myself to participate in an internet war.  I’m so embarrassed.  I was already pensive and feeling a bit off, and the combination has made me actually surly now.  If I were the 8th dwarf little man, I would probably be Surly. Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Bashful, Doc, and Surly.

But I won’t think about that today.  I’ll think about it tomorrow.  After all, tomorrow is another day!

Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a darn.

Ah, euphemisms and most PC.  Sprinkling glitter on a shit-pile and thinking that people won’t notice that it still stinks.

(Part of this post was first posted on Nov. 12, 2008, but it’s been updated and it cleaned up right nice.)

P.S.  The Diary of Anne Frank is a play, not the diary.  The diary is titled Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. And, totally unlike young girls of today, she often argued with her mother, had crushes on boys, worried about the future, wondered about her state of mind, and was curious about her body.  Just imagine.  Dear me, how abnormal of her.

Things I Still Haven't Done Yet

Things I Haven't Done Yet Mamacita says: Oh, I am such a backwards, provincial thing!

1.  I still have never used an ATM machine.  I have a feeling it might be a detrimental skill for me to learn.

2.  I still have never watched a single Survivor-type show.  They all seem more like fraternity hazings to me.

3.  I’ve still not watched Oprah.  Don’t care, either.

4.  I’ve still not given up on people, though Heaven knows I’ve reason enough to.  But no, I still love, trust, and cherish almost everyone I’ve ever known.  Almost.

5.  I still haven’t moved into a cardboard box under a bridge, although we’re getting closer daily.

6.  I’ve still never been to Mexico, although we did cross that big bridge into Canada and back many years ago.

7.  I still have a very difficult time taking seriously anyone who can’t spell or put a sentence together properly. (The occasional honest mistake doesn’t count.)

8.  The only reality show I watch daily is Twitter.  bobby-knight

9.  I still can’t remember that Bobby Knight isn’t here any more.  I’m not a fan; he was just a fixture here.

10.  I still haven’t taken the Christmas wreath off the front door.  I have to wait for it to dry out!  Besides, I’m not done looking at it yet.

11.  Whenever we have snow – like right now – I’m still not over hoping for a snow day, even though I don’t get them now.  The anticipation factor for snow days is too ingrained.  (At the college level, at least one of the four horsemen must be in view before classes are canceled.)

12.  Even though I drive past his house all the time,  and I’m not a fan, I still haven’t stopped getting all happy when I see John Mellencamp in the mall.  (Helloooo, cute bodyguard. . . .)

13.  I will NEVER get used to not going to French Lick for every holiday and staying in that huge fairy tale of a house with all of my in-laws for almost a week at a time.  It’s been many years now, but I still picture how it was, and wish it could be so again. . . .Darn you, Thomas Wolfe.  You’re right, of course, but I don’t have to like it.

Quotation Saturday: Heroes

quotationsaturday Mamacita says:  Heroes are all around us. We don’t know who they are until something happens and they leap into action. Ironically, the heroes don’t know they’re heroes until something happens, either.

We all hope that we’ll react heroically, but the fact is, NOBODY knows until after the fact whether he/she will even do the right thing, let alone go above and beyond the right thing.

When disaster strikes, many people shrug and go about their business, secure in the safety of geography and circumstance while others disregard both of those, rub their hands together, and set to. Jim Turner, jimfor example, wanted to do more than just watch people suffer on the news, and, with some help from WhatGives.com, did a 24-hour telethon to help the people of Haiti that is still being Twittered. Check for the hashtag #HART; that’s Jim’s telethon!  Jim’s a hero.  So are many others.

1. I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. — Bob Dylan

2. A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. —
Umberto Eco

4. Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and slip quietly away. — Tom Brokaw

5. Heroes come along when you need them. — Ronald Steel

6. A hero is a man who does what he can. — Roman Rollard

7. I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by…those who…struggle to make one small difference after another. — Ellen Goodman

8. Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win out in the end because they’ve stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments. — Kevin Costner

9. How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes! — Maya Angelou

10. The cowards think of what they can lose, the heroes of what they can win. –J. M. Charlier

11. I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel. –Florence Nightingale

12. The hero is known for achievements; the celebrity for well-knowns. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and media. Celebrities are people who make news, but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities. –Daniel J. Boorstin

13. A hero is simply someone who rises above his own human weaknesses, for an hour, a day, a year, to do something stirring. –Betty Deramus

14. True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost. –Arthur Ashe

15. The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. –Helen Keller

16. In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs. — Daniel J. Boorstin

17. Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion. — Calvin Coolidge

18. A boy doesn’t have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn’t like pie when he sees there isn’t enough to go around. — Edgar Watson Howe

19. The hero, in living her own life, in being true to herself; radiates a light by which others may see their own way. — Laurence G. Boldt

20. Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during the hard times when the ‘hero’ within us is revealed. — Bob Riley

21. Our young people look up to us. Let us not let them down. Our young people need us. Saving them will make heroes of us all. — Gale Sayers

22. Receiving far less attention are the working class heroes, who go about their solitary work routines with quiet dignity, come home from another grueling day, yet still find time to interact with their children. — Armstrong Williams

23. Man’s greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes – obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes. — Victor Hugo

24. We need more everyday heroes. Heroes are ordinary people who take a stand for what is right. — Blaine Jackson

25. What the world needs now, more than ever before, are every day heroes who are ready, willing and able to make a difference. — Greg Hickman

26. If you’re going to do anything that pioneering, you will get those arrows in the back, and you just have to put up with it. — Randy Pausch

27. If you’re never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances. — Julia Sorel

28. In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. — Unknown

29. If your purpose of life is security, you will be a failure. Security is the lowest form of happiness. — David Kekich

30. Dr. Martin Luther King is not a black hero. He is an American hero. — Morgan Freeman

31. A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for. — John A. Shedd,