SMEDLEY BUTLER MARINE 33YRS. 1881-1940
WAR IS A RACKET: I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
WAR LIKE ANY OTHER RACKET, pays high dividends to the very few. The cost of operations is always transferred to the people who do not profit.
I spent thirty-three years in the Marines, most of my time being a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short I was a racketeer for capitalism.
WAR is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
WE MUST TAKE THE PROFIT OUT OF WAR.
EMMET FOX 1886-1951 “Power through Conscious Thinking”
WHAT YOU THINK UPON GROWS. WHATEVER you allow to occupy your mind you magnify in your life. Whether the subject of your thought be good or bad, the law works and the condition grows. any subject that you keep out of your mind tends to diminish your life, because what you do not use atrophies. The more you think of grievances, the more such trials you will continue to receive; the more you think of the good fortune you have had. the more good fortune will come to you.
ATTENTION IS THE KEY TO LIFE. Whatever you really give your attention to, you become. Whatever you really concentrate upon will come into your life. We grow into the thing that fills our thoughts as inevitably as the stream merges into the ocean at last.
THERE IS NO DIFFICULTY that enough LOVE will not conquer, no disease that enough love will not heal, no door that enough love will not open, no gulf that enough love will not bridge, no wall that enough love will not throw down, no sin that enough love will not redeem.
LOOK WHERE YOU ARE GGOING BECAUSE YOU WILL INEVITABLY GO WHERE YOU ARE LOOKING.
YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS. AND THEN THE OUTER THINGS WILL COME TO CORRESPOND, AND INDEED THERE IS NO OTHER WAY OF WORKING.
THE GREAT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO FEELINGS IS THAT LOVE IS ALWAYS CREATIVE AND FEAR IS ALWAYS DESTRUCTIVE.
THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE IS REALLY THE STORY OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN YOURSELF AND GOD.
IF YOU HAVE NO TIME FOR PRAYER AND MEDITATION, YOU WILL HAVE LOTS OF TIME FOR SICKNESS AND TROUBLE.
THE ROOT OF ALL DIFFICULTIES IS A LACK OF THE SENSE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
IF anyone has ever injured me or done me any harm, I fully and freely forgive that person now, and the thing is done forever. I go free.
WHEN YOU ARE IN DIFFICULTIES, look upon the overcoming of them as a great adventure.
NEVER FORGET that the circumstances of your life for tomorrow are molded by your mental conduct today.
WILLIAM H. GASS 1924—“The Tunnel” “A Temple of Texts”
SPORTS, POLITICS, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.
WHAT ELSE IS SOUL BUT A LISTENER?
BLUE IS THEREFORE MOST SUITABLE AS THE COLOR OF INTERIOR LIFE.
WORDS ARE THE SUPREME OBJECTS. THEY ARE MINDED THINGS.
FOR ME, THE SHORT STORY is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. it is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.
I WRITE BECAUSE I HATE. A LOT. HARD.
FICTION BECOMES VISUAL BY BECOMING VERBAL.
AS RILKE OBSERVED, LOVE requires a progressive shortening of the senses: I can see you for miles; I can hear you for blocks, I can smell you, maybe, for a few feet, but I can only touch or contact, taste as I devour.
CASEY STENGEL 1890-1975 MANAGER NEW YORK YANKEES AND METS.
THE SECRET OF SUCCESSFUL MANAGING IS TO KEEP THE FIVE GUYS WHO HATE YOU away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds yet.
THE METS HAVE SHOWN ME more ways to lose than I even knew existed.
THE TRICK IS GROWING UP WITHOUT GROWING OLD.
YOU HAVE TO GO BROKE THREE TIMES TO LEARN HOW TO MAKE A LIVING.
IF ANYBODY NEEDS ME, I’m in my room being embalmed.
IF YOU WALK BACKWARDS, you’l find out you can go forwards and people won’t know if you’re coming or going.
KEEP GOING CHEERFULLY!