Month: May 2008

  • Original Work and Attribution of Quotations

    This topic has troubled me since school.  It troubled me more than it ever troubled my instructors.  Trying to track down the source of a quotation used to be a matter of digging through books or card files.  Now that it is a matter of search engines and *ctrl-F*, I can find more quotations faster, but the correct attributions are as elusive as ever.

    I continue to seek a first print occurrence of the words:  "It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."  It is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, he might have said it in a speech, but he didn't leave a written record of it.  Some say it is a paraphrase of something from the Bible.  I'm told that it occurs in Mark Twain's writing, unattributed, and also H. L. Mencken's.  It's a viral meme at this point in history, its origin unknown.

    Yesterday, Scriveling pointed out that I had misattributed some quotations to Mother Theresa that were actually based on the work of Kent M. Keith.  When Dr. Keith was nineteen and a sophomore at Harvard, he wrote his first booklet for high school student leaders, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council, which included ten Paradoxical Commandments.

    These are the originals:

    1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.

    2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
    3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
    4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
    5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
    6. The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.
    7. People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
    8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
    9. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.
    10. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

    Mother Theresa is said to have had her version of the Paradoxical Commandments written or painted on a wall at her children's home in Calcutta.  Some sources say it was on the wall of her own room; others say on the wall of a public room.  A member of the U.S. Congress reported seeing them framed, hanging on a wall in the foyer or lobby of the home.  Below is Mother Theresa's version:

    People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.
    If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.
    If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.
    If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.
    What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.
    If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.
    The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.
    Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.
    In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.

    Source:  The Prayer Foundation

    A short list of some of the writers who have reprinted or paraphrased Dr. Keith's commandments, attributed, unattributed or misattributed, can be found on his website.

    Just for good measure today, a few more quotations:
    (Don't blame me if they are misattributed.)

    “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
    persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
    progress depends on the unreasonable man.”  ~George Bernard Shaw

    "Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown." ~Erwin Schrödinger

    "Every writer I know has trouble writing."  ~Joseph Heller

    "The coroner will find ink in my veins and blood on my typewriter keys."  ~C. Astrid Weber

    "There's nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."  ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

    "Writing is easy, you just sit down and open a vein." ~Ring Lardner, attributed by Dorothy Bryant

    "Writing is easy:  All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."  ~Gene Fowler

    "Be obscure clearly."  ~E.B. White

  • A Couple of Quotable People

    I'm going to be working on my quotes page today, until I have to move out of here to let Doug do his d20 gaming this afternoon.  I have so many new quotes I don't know what to do with them all, so I'll share some.

    He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.  

    Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

    My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities.

    It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

    Whoever can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.  

    --Albert Einstein
    People are generally irrational, unreasonable and selfish. They deserve to be loved, anyway.

    Your honesty and frankness will expose you to problems but your work should not stop for it means the world to so many people.

    Despite giving your best to the world, you may be kicked in the teeth. Give the best you've got anyway.

    Developed countries suffer from poverty of understanding, poverty of will, of loneliness, of lack of love and spirit. There is no greater disease in the world today than this.

    When you don't have anything, then you have everything.

    Agnes Gondža Bojadžiu
    AKA Mother Theresa

    *note:  The originality of some of the quotations attributed to Mother Theresa is questionable.  More on that, here.

  • Maybe I should have stayed in bed.

    Naaaah, that wouldn't have worked.  Then the kid would have gone to sleep on the couch and I wouldn't be able to sit down there and play when I'm done here. 

    The problem was that I was trying to make coffee before I'd had my morning coffee.  I wrecked the coffeemaker, put in the grounds and turned on the switch without putting water in.  It is burnt out, defunct, toast, and trash.  Now I'll never get the kid to make coffee for me again, because I'm back to doing it the old fashioned work intensive time consuming way with the teakettle and filter cone.  So, after this, to get my morning coffee without taking on hazardous tasks early in the morning, I'll need to make it at night and nuke it when I get up.

    Design by Feline

    Did you know that cats are lousy interior decorators?  What with my being incapacitated for approximately half a year, and Doug being overtaxed with taking care of me and keeping up with way too many new games, nobody has been picking up after the cats when they knock stuff down. 

    It wasn't such a big mess when all we had were the adults who were already used to blowgun discipline.  They don't often go where we don't want them to go, like the top bookshelf, or up the Navajo rug, or swinging on plant hangers, and when one of them starts in a forbidden direction, all we need to do is pick up the blowgun and she'll sit down and start displacement grooming.  **Who, me?  You must be imagining things.**

    The new kittens, the Piebeans, have yet to feel the sting of the stun dart often enough to have gotten the message.  For most of this winter, I haven't had enough wind for the blowgun, anyway.  This situation will require a two-pronged attack:  find homes for the Piebeans, and pick up the mess piece by piece.

    TGIF?

    If you work a regular 5 day week, you're probably happy today because you've got some time off coming.  Even when I was gainfully employed, it was usually in positions and places where nobody even considered taking time off on a weekend because that was the busiest time.  I'm happy today because I'm facing some rather unpleasant work in the next few days. 

    Enough ice and snow have melted that we can now try to get the car out of the driveway.  It has a flat tire and there are still some big rounds of firewood blocking it in.  When Doug wakes up this evening, we'll go see if it will start.  If so, we can use the DC inflater to see if the tire will hold air.  If the car won't start, or if the tire won't hold pressure, we will call AAA.

    Thanks to Greyfox, if the task turns really unpleasant on us, we have road service to help us get out of our driveway.  As Bob Marley said, "...soft, so soft."

    Have a pleasant weekend.  I'll be around here, but maybe you won't.