Title: What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years? Only verse: Nothing.

There was a time in my life when I did a fair bit of work for the tempestuous Lucretia Stewart, then editor of the American Express travel magazine, . Together, we evolved a harmless satire of the slightly driveling style employed by the journalists of tourism. 'Land of Contrasts' was our shorthand for it. ('Jerusalem: an enthralling blend of old and new.' 'South Africa: a harmony in black and white.' 'Belfast, where ancient meets modern.') It was as you can see, no difficult task. I began to notice a few weeks ago that my enemies in the 'peace' movement had decided to borrow from this tattered style book. The mantra, especially in the letters to this newspaper, was: 'Afghanistan, where the world's richest country rains bombs on the world's poorest country.'Poor fools. They should never have tried to beat me at this game. What about, 'Afghanistan, where the world's most open society confronts the world's most closed one'? 'Where American women pilots kill the men who enslave women.' 'Where the world's most indiscriminate bombers are bombed by the world's most accurate ones.' 'Where the largest number of poor people applaud the bombing of their own regime.' I could go on. (I think number four may need a little work.) But there are some suggested contrasts for the 'doves' to paste into their scrapbook. Incidentally, when they look at their scrapbooks they will be able to re-read themselves saying things like, 'The bombing of Kosovo is driving the Serbs into the arms of Milosevic.

Christopher Hitchens

If I don't get paid I'm going to take a whole lot of Marshall amps home with me on the plane.

Tommy Chong

Live to learn, learn to live, then teach others.

Doug Horton

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

Samuel Butler

For in itself a thought, a slumbering thought, is capable of years, and curdles a long life into one hour.

Lord (George Gordon) Byron

A strange and somewhat impassive physiognomy is often, perhaps, an advantage to an orator, or leader of any sort, because it helps to fix the eye and fascinate the mind.

Charles Horton Cooley

What you THINK about reveals what you ARE. Sometimes we need to do a check-up from the neck-up.

Source Unknown

If I knew in 1986 how much it was going to cost to keep Pixar going, I doubt if I would have bought the company.

Steve Jobs

Thus a man was born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he was born into a relation to his fellow-men and his religion... was simply one side of the general scheme of conduct prescribed for him by his position as a member of society.

William Robertson Smith

Work: a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing

Ambrose Bierce

Talk of joy: there may be things better than beef stew and baked potatoes and home-made bread -- there may be.

Ray Stannard Baker [David Grayso

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

William Shakespeare