Meandering in the mist . . .

Today is the birthday of John Keats (October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821), poet. He was one of the key figures of the Romantic movement and best known for his works La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Ode To A Nightingale and Ode On a Grecian Urn.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness." - John Keats

"Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and very fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid." - John Keats

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." - John Keats

"Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?" - John Keats


"My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk." - John Keats

"There is a budding tomorrow in midnight." - John Keats

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Meandering on the edge . . .

Today is the birthday of Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (October 30, 1885 – November 1, 1972), poet. Ezra Pound believed that poetry is the highest of arts and he is oft referred to as the poet's poet.

"All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty." - Ezra Pound

"If a patron buys from an artist who needs money, the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates." - Ezra Pound

"In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries." - Ezra Pound

"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand." - Ezra Pound

"When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder." - Ezra Pound

"Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one." - Ezra Pound

"If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays." - Ezra Pound

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Meandering in logic . . .

Today is the birthday of Alfred Jules Ayer (October 29, 1910 – June 27, 1989), philosopher. He is best known for his promotion of logical positivism and his books Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956).

It is purported that Alfred Jules Ayer had a near-death experience which has many asking: Did atheist philosopher see God when he died?

"The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved." - A. J. Ayer

"If the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted." - A. J. Ayer

"I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions." - A. J. Ayer

"Why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are?" - A. J. Ayer

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Meandering around . . .

Today is the birthday of Jonas Salk (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995), medical researcher and virologist. He is best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine.

"It's the sensitivity to pattern recognition that seems to me to be of great importance. It's a matter of being able to find meaning, whether it's positive or negative, in whatever you encounter." - Jonas Salk

"I see the triumph of good over evil as a manifestation of the error-correcting process of evolution." - Jonas Salk

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's." - Jonas Salk

"Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality." - Jonas Salk

"I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams." - Jonas Salk

"Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next." - Jonas Salk

"It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It's my partner." - Jonas Salk

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Meandering here and there . . .

Today is the birthday of Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (October 27/28, 1466/1469, Rotterdam – July 12, 1536, Basel), humanist.

"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other." - Desiderius Erasmus

"Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself." - Desiderius Erasmus

"What is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?" - Desiderius Erasmus

"I am a citizen of the world, known to all and to all a stranger." - Desiderius Erasmus

"Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself." - Desiderius Erasmus

"The desire to write grows with writing." - Desiderius Erasmus

"Your library is your paradise." - Desiderius Erasmus

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Today is the birthday of Dylan Marlais Thomas (October 27, 1914 – November 9, 1953), writer and poet.

"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light" - Dylan Thomas

"He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest." - Dylan Thomas

"The function of posterity is to look after itself." - Dylan Thomas

"Somebody's boring me. I think it's me." - Dylan Thomas

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Meandering in thought . . .

Today is the birthday of Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970), author. He is best known for his work, Think and Grow Rich, one of the best-selling motivational personal development and self-help books of all time.

"Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve." - Napoleon Hill

"Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along." - Napoleon Hill

"We are what we are, because of the vibrations of thought which we pick up and register, through the stimuli of our daily environment." - Napoleon Hill

"Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements." - Napoleon Hill

"All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea!" - Napoleon Hill

"Every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit." - Napoleon Hill

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Meandering in the stacks . . .

Today is the birthday of Anne Tyler (born October 25, 1941), novelist. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons.

"It's true that it's a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them." - Anne Tyler

"If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all." - Anne Tyler

"The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning." - Anne Tyler

"For me, writing something down was the only road out." - Anne Tyler

"I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get." - Anne Tyler

"People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have." - Anne Tyler

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Meandering in consciousness . . .

Today is the birthday of Denise Levertov (October 24, 1923–December 20, 1997), poet. She composed more than twenty volumes of poetry and four books of prose.

"Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering." - Denise Levertov

"The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has kinetic force, it sets in motion . . elements in the reader that would otherwise be stagnant." - Denise Levertov

"One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language." - Denise Levertov

"Peace as a positive condition of society, not merely as an interim between wars, is something so unknown that it casts no images on the mind's screen." - Denise Levertov

"Marvelous Truth, confront us at every turn, in every guise." - Denise Levertov

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Meandering forever . . .

Today is the birthday of John Michael Crichton (October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008), author, producer, director and screenwriter. His books have sold over 150 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted into films.

Michael Crichton, in 1994, became the only creative artist to have works simultaneously charting at #1 in television (as creator of ER), in film (with the adaptation of Jurassic Park) and in book sales (with Disclosure).

"We are all assumed, these days, to reside at one extreme of the opinion spectrum, or another. We are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. We are free traders or protectionist. We are pro-private sector or pro-big government. We are feminists or chauvinists. But in the real world, few of us holds these extreme views. There is instead a spectrum of opinion." - Michael Crichton

"The doctor is not a miracle worker who can magically save us but, rather, an expert adviser who can assist us in our own recovery." - Michael Crichton

"I was certain that some people, whether by accident of birth or some pecularity of training, could tune in to another source of information and could know things about people we didn't think were possible to know." - Michael Crichton

"This seems to me to confirm the idea that so-called psychic or paranormal phenomena are misnamed. There's nothing abnormal about them. On the contrary, they're utterly normal. We've just forgotten we can do them. The minute we do do them, we recognize them for what they are and think, So what?" - Michael Crichton

"Reality is always greater — much greater — than what we know, than whatever we can say about it." - Michael Crichton

"To give up responsibility for our lives is not healthy." - Michael Crichton

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Meandering about . . .

Today is the birthday of Doris May Lessing (October 22, 1919), writer. In October 2007, Doris Lessing became the eleventh woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in its 106-year history, and its oldest recipient ever.

"It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction." - Doris Lessing

"I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common ... this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it." - Doris Lessing

"In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools." - Doris Lessing

"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way." - Doris Lessing

"It isn’t only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It’s more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. They are refusing emotion because at the end of every emotion are property, money, power. They work and despise their work, and so freeze themselves. They love but know that it’s a half- love or a twisted love, and so they freeze themselves." - Doris Lessing

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Meandering in dreams . . .

Today is the birthday of Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born October 21, 1929), writer of science fiction and fantasy.

"You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow." - Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness." - Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"When things don't change any longer, that's the end result of entropy, the heat-death of the universe. The more things go on moving, interrelating, conflicting, changing, the less balance there is-and the more life... Life itself is a huge gamble against the odds, against all odds! You can't try to live safely, there's no such thing as safety. Stick your neck out of your shell, then, and live fully! It's not how you get there, but where you get to that counts. What you're afraid to accept, here, is that we're engaged in a really great experiment, you and I. We're on the brink of discovering and controlling, for the good of all mankind, a whole new force, an entire new field of antientropic energy, of the life-force, of the will to act, to do, to change!" - Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"When true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life." - Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

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Meandering . . .

Today is the birthday of Arthur "Art" Buchwald (October 20, 1925 – January 17, 2007), writer. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1982.

"If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it." - Art Buchwald

"We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time." - Art Buchwald

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it." - Art Buchwald

"Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got." - Art Buchwald

"The best things in life aren't things." - Art Buchwald

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Meandering in the shadows . . .

Today is the birthday of David John Moore Cornwell (born 19 October 1931), author. He is best known by his pseudonym, John le Carré and his novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963).

"History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose." - John le Carré

"We lie to one another every day, in the sweetest way, often unconsciously. We dress ourselves and compose ourselves in order to present ourselves to one another." - John le Carré

"Sometimes we do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions not answers." - John le Carré

"The only reward for love is the experience of loving." - John le Carré

"A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world." - John le Carré

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Meandering in mind-energy . . .

Today is the birthday of Henri-Louis Bergson (October 18, 1859 – January 4, 1941), philosopher. In 1927 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brillant skill with which they have been presented.

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly." - Henri Bergson

"The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause." - Henri Bergson

"Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality." - Henri Bergson

"There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation." - Henri Bergson

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." - Henri Bergson

"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought." - Henri Bergson

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Meandering . . .

Today is the birthday of Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005), playwright and essayist. He is best known for the play Death Of A Salesman (1949) and for his marriage to the actress Marilyn Monroe.

Arthur Miller received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1949.

"Can anyone remember love? It's like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume." - Arthur Miller

"The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less." - Arthur Miller

"The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes." - Arthur Miller

"I think it's a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one's self." - Arthur Miller

"Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets." - Arthur Miller

"An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted." - Arthur Miller

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Meandering here and there . . .

Today is the birthday of Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900), poet, playwright and author. He is best known as Oscar Wilde, the author/playwright of the popular play The Importance of Being Earnest and the novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).

"Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you." - Oscar Wilde

"No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist." - Oscar Wilde

"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence." - Oscar Wilde

"The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic." - Oscar Wilde

"Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life." - Oscar Wilde

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Meandering in thought . . .

Today is the birthday of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1848 – August 25, 1900), philosopher. He is often referred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers.

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!" - Friedrich Nietzsche

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"I tell you: one must have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"What does not destroy me, makes me stronger." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"What does man actually know about himself?" - Friedrich Nietzsche

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Meandering around . . .

Today is the birthday of Kathleen Mansfield Murry (October, 14 1888 – January 9,1923), writer. She is best known by her pen name of Katherine Mansfield.

"By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun. All that we mean when we speak of the external world. A want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it’s no good — there’s only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that." — Katherine Mansfield

"I have made it a rule of my life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to become a writer can afford to indulge in it." — Katherine Mansfield

"Would you not like to try all sorts of lives — one is so very small — but that is the satisfaction of writing — one can impersonate so many people." — Katherine Mansfield

"The world to me is a dream and the people in it are sleepers. I have known a few instances of intensity but that is all. I want to find a world in which these instances are united." — Katherine Mansfield

"I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing." — Katherine Mansfield

"The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books." — Katherine Mansfield

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Meandering in the wind . . .

Today is the birthday of Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941), singer-songwriter.

"I try to open up my heart as much as I can and keep a real keen eye out that I don't get sentimental. I think we're all afraid to reveal our hearts. It's not at all in fashion." - Paul Simon

"The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains." - Paul Simon

"A man sees what he wants to see, And disregards the rest." - Paul Simon

"Listen to the sound of silence." - Paul Simon

"Who am I to blow against the wind?" - Paul Simon

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Meandering in stardust . . .

Today is the birthday of Edward Alexander Crowley (October 12, 1875 – December 1, 1947), occultist and writer. He is best known as Aleister Crowley, the author of The Book of the Law, the central sacred text of Thelema.

"Black magic is not a myth. It is a totally unscientific and emotional form of magic, but it does get results — of an extremely temporary nature. The recoil upon those who practice it is terrific. It is like looking for an escape of gas with a lighted candle. As far as the search goes, there is little fear of failure! To practice black magic you have to violate every principle of science, decency, and intelligence. You must be obsessed with an insane idea of the importance of the petty object of your wretched and selfish desires. I have been accused of being a "black magician." No more foolish statement was ever made about me. I despise the thing to such an extent that I can hardly believe in the existence of people so debased and idiotic as to practice it." - Aleister Crowley

"A man may be misled by the enthusiasm of an illumination, and if he should find apparent conflict between his spiritual duty and his duty to honour, it is almost sure evidence that a trap is being laid for him and he should unhesitatingly stick to the course which ordinary decency indicates..." - Aleister Crowley

"I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle." - Aleister Crowley

"I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired, or, in the alternative, that it is an almost universal possession." - Aleister Crowley

"There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt. Love is the law, love under will." - Aleister Crowley

"Every man and every woman is a star." - Aleister Crowley

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Meandering forever . . .

Today is the birthday of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962), humanitarian and First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945.

"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself." - Eleanor Roosevelt

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Meandering about . . .

Today is the birthday of Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell (October 10, 1924 – September 7, 1994), novelist, screenwriter and director. He is best known as James Clavell and for his epic Asian Saga series of novels (Shogun, 1975; Tai Pan, 1966; Gai-jin, 1993; King Rat, 1962; Noble House, 1981; Whirlwind , 1986) and their televised adaptations, along with such films as The Great Escape and To Sir, with Love.

"All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and if they're any good, the ending is a beginning." - James Clavell

"The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox." - James Clavell

"The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world — and the most dangerous." - James Clavell

"To think good thoughts ... requires effort. This is one of the things that discipline — training — is about." - James Clavell

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Meandering on and on . . .

Today is the birthday of John Lennon and his son, Sean Lennon, musicians. Sean Lennon was born on John Lennon's 35th birthday.

John Winston Ono Lennon (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980), musician, singer-songwriter, author, and peace activist. He is best known as one of the founding members of The Beatles.

"We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it." - John Lennon

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but Im not the only one, I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will live as one." - John Lennon

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality." - John Lennon

"All we are saying is give peace a chance!" - John Lennon

"I really thought that love would save us all." - John Lennon

"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see." - John Lennon

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." - John Lennon

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination." - John Lennon

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Sean Taro Ono Lennon (born October 9, 1975), singer, songwriter, musician and actor. He is the son of musicians and peace activists John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

"I spend my time trying to figure art out. I was brought up to believe that the way one processes information is by making it into art. That's how I live my life." - Sean Lennon

"We live in a pretty bleak time. I feel that in the air. Everything is uncertain. Everything feels like its on the precipice of some major transformation, whether we like it or not." - Sean Lennon

"I like songs and film because you can turn your life into a sort of myth or dream." - Sean Lennon

"I like music because it's the only invisible art form." - Sean Lennon

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Meandering . . .

Today is the birthday of Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. (October 8, 1920 – February 11, 1986), author. He is best known for his science fiction novel Dune and its five sequels.

He won the 1966 Hugo Award and the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel. Dune is also the first bestselling hardcover science fiction novel, it is often cited as the world's best-selling science fiction novel.

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." - Frank Herbert

"Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain." - Frank Herbert

"One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is." - Frank Herbert

"Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken." - Frank Herbert

"Wealth is a tool of freedom, but the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery." - Frank Herbert

"To attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing the Darkness. It cannot be." - Frank Herbert

"The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand." - Frank Herbert

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Meandering in theory . . .

Today is the birthday of Niels Henrik David Bohr (October 7, 1885 – November 18, 1962), physicist. He is best known for his investigations - contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics.

Niels Bohr received the 1922 Nobel Prize for physics for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them.

"What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character ... We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly." - Niels Bohr

"Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are." - Niels Bohr

"Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it." - Niels Bohr

"There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them." - Niels Bohr


"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real." - Niels Bohr

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." - Niels Bohr

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Meandering around . . .

Today is the birthday of Glen David Brin (born October 6, 1950), scientist and author. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in astronomy. He followed this with a Master of Science in applied physics in 1978 and a Doctor of Philosophy in space science in 1981.

David Brin has received the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards. He is best known for his Uplift series of science fiction novels.

"It's said that "power corrupts," but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power." - David Brin

"The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal." - David Brin

"The advance of human knowledge has become — at long last — a vividly enjoyable spectator sport!" - David Brin


"When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else." - David Brin

"Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?" - David Brin

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Meandering in space . . .

Today is the birthday of Robert Hutchings Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945), scientist. He is considered the father of modern rocketry and is best known for his 1926 invention of the first rocket to use liquid fuel.

Robert H. Goddard was awarded 214 patents for his work, 83 of which came during his lifetime.

"The father of modern rocket propulsion is the American, Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard. Along with Konstantin Eduordovich Tsiolkovsky of Russia and Hermann Oberth of Germany, Goddard envisioned the exploration of space. A physicist of great insight, Goddard also had an unique genius for invention." quote source (1)

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow." - Robert H. Goddard

"Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and the wrong. Sometime in your life you will have been all of these." - Robert H. Goddard


"Just remember - when you think all is lost, the future remains." - Robert H. Goddard

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Meandering to and fro . . .

Today is the birthday of Damon Runyon (October 4, 1880 – December 10, 1946), newspaperman and writer. He is best known for Guys and Dolls (1931), a collection of stories about a racy section of Broadway written in the uniquely rendered slang that became his trademark and gave rise to the term Runyonesque. The book was adapted as a musical by Frank Loesser in 1950.

"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet." - Damon Runyon

"Always try to rub up against money, for if you rub up against money long enough, some of it may rub off on you." - Damon Runyon

"You can become a winner only if you are willing to walk over the edge." - Damon Runyon

"Trust, but verify." - Damon Runyon

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Future meandering . . .

Birthday Salute to Alvin Toffler (born October 3 (or 4), 1928), writer and futurist.

Alvin Toffler, together with his wife, Heidi, are best known for writing, Future Shock and The Third Wave.

"He coined the term “future shock” in an article that first came out in 1965 and then published a book of the same name in 1970. The phrase has now entered the vocabulary, referring to what happens to society when too much change happens in too short a time, when the ensuing confusion causes normal decision-making processes to break down." quote source (1)

"Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time." - Alvin Toffler

"It is better to err on the side of daring than the side of caution." - Alvin Toffler

"One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition." - Alvin Toffler

"The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn." - Alvin Toffler

"You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction." - Alvin Toffler

"Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life." - Alvin Toffler

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Today is the birthday of Thomas Clayton Wolfe (October 3, 1900 – September 15, 1938), author. He is considered one of the most important writers in modern American literature.

"Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man." - Thomas Wolfe

"If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed. If he uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he uses the whole of it, he has succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men ever know." - Thomas Wolfe

"Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you." - Thomas Wolfe

"It is very comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don't put psychotics in high places and we've got the problem solved." - Thomas Wolfe


"His enemy was time. Or perhaps it was his friend. One never knows for sure." - Thomas Wolfe

"You can't go home again." - Thomas Wolfe

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Meandering in prose . . .

Today is the birthday of Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955), poet. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955.

"How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture." - Wallace Stevens

"The first idea was not our own." - Wallace Stevens

"Two things of opposite natures seem to depend On one another, as a man depends On a woman, day on night, the imagined On the real." - Wallace Stevens

"After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends. No was the night. Yes is this present sun." - Wallace Stevens

"The world about us would be desolate except for the world within us." - Wallace Stevens

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Meandering in the stacks . . .

Today is the birthday of Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 – February 28, 2004), historian, professor, attorney, and writer. He received the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in history.

Daniel J. Boorstin was the twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress from 1975 until 1987.

"Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion." - Daniel J. Boorstin

"Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin

"Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know." - Daniel J. Boorstin

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