The notion that every well educated person would have a mastery of at least the basic elements of the humanities, sciences, and social sciences is a far cry from the specialized education that most students today receive, particularly in the research universities.

I've been looking at some video clips on YouTube of President Obama - then candidate Obama - going through Iowa making promises. The gap between his promises and his performance is the largest I've seen, well, since the Kardashian wedding and the promise of 'til death do we part.

Mitt Romney

To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible.

Charles Dickens

A travel agent offered me a 21 day special. He told me I would fly from New York to London. Then from Tokyo back to New York. I asked him...how am I supposed to get from London to Tokyo? He told me That is why we give you 21 days.

Rodney Dangerfield

Thankfully, beauty is easier to remove than apply, and a swipe of demaquillage in the right direction and you are you once again.

Margaret Cho

The Columbia is lost, but the dreams that inspired its crew remain with us.

Dick Cheney

I deal with the obvious. I present, reiterate and glorify the obvious -- because the obvious is what people need to be told.

Dale Carnegie

She was old too, when she went to school they didn't have history.

Rodney Dangerfield

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.

Samuel Johnson, J. Boswell The L

When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today.

Anthony de Mello

Creative risk taking is essential to success in any goal where the stakes are high. Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

Gary Ryan Blair

Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.

W. H. Auden

As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses.

Joan Baez