The Daily Honky Tonk
180th Edition
Thursday, January 7, 2010
12:18 AM
*Note: My address book seems to pick up email addresses that I don’t ask it to. . .but I don’t know on what pretext it does so. If you feel you have erroneously received the DHT feel free to request your name removed. I will proceed to discover that you are on my list and then remove you as requested. :)
The nature of the DHT has change over the course of the years that I have been writing. From the early days as a ploy to see emails appear in my inbox, to an emotional and thinking outlet for my high school years, and now I think my vision has changed. I still see the DHT as an outlet, especially for what I am thinking. I have become aware, that the DHT when published on a frequent basis, allows me to better sort and organize thoughts logically. As well as improving my writing skills. While these are selfish motives, I recognize that writing can and has had a powerful influence in the course and direction of our world. Speeches, letters, news articles, and many other forms of writing have drastically shaped the course of human events. In desiring to be a teacher, I would hope to be able to express ideas to students that will change the course of their lives and educations for the better. I made a goal, no matter how short, that I would try and write more frequently. And so, today I want to share a number of quotes that I have come to appreciate from the Word a Day emails, classes, and other sources:
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. -Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)
Naive you are / if you believe / life favours those / who aren't naive. -Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996)
“If we start right, it is very easy for us to go right all the time; but if we start wrong, we may go wrong, and it is a hard matter to get right.”- Joseph Smith
“A true principle makes decisions clear even under the most confusing and compelling circumstances.”- Elder Richard G. Scott- Marriage and Family Life class
“How a principle would best apply to one partner might not be the best application of that principles for the other partner.”- Professor Ken Mattheson- from powerpoint in Marriage and Family Life Class
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”- Martin Luther King Jr.- I have a dream speech
(Editorial Comment: I have to wander whether we still value as a society the importance of judging one by their character. If we judged people by the content of their character would we have such corrupt politics? Why do we vote people into office without virtue? The founders believed the people would select those whom are most virtuous. One may ask whether there are virtuous leaders to vote for.)
“ . . .an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”- Martin Luther King Jr. - Letter from Brimingham Jail
Our government doesn’t work anymore, or perhaps more accurately, when it does, it works for special interests and not the American people. Washington consistently stoops to legislate 10,000-page perversions of healthcare, regulatory reform, defense, and budgetary mandates overflowing with earmarks that serve a monied minority as opposed to an all-too-silent majority. You don’t have to be Don Quixote to believe that legislators – and Presidents – often do not work for the benefit of their constituents: A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll reported that over 65% of Americans trust their government to do the right thing “only some of the time” and a stunning 19% said “never.” What most politicians apparently are working for is to perpetuate their power – first via district gerrymandering, and then second by around-the-clock campaigning financed by special interest groups. - Bill Gross “Let’s Get Fisical” fromt the PIMCO Website
http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2010/Let%E2%80%99s+Get+Fisical+January+2010.htm
“It is impossible to overestimate the unimportance of most things”- source unknown, quoted to us by our home teacher Brother Steve Smith as a quote he keeps in his office as a professor at the U of I.
That’s all for now folks :)
The Editor,
MARK
