It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I’m readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I’ll, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials – after the fact.

- Robert E. Lee, 1863

Seth Godin rocks it out as usual:

Five minutes a day you might do exceptional work, remarkable work, work that matters. Five minutes a day you might defeat the lizard brain long enough to stand up and make a difference.

And five minutes of rocking would be enough, because it would be five minutes more than just about anyone else.

The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.

- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

- W.H. Murray, via svn.

“If someone says: ‘That’s Impossible’.

You should understand it as: ‘According to my very limited experience and narrow understanding of reality, that’s very unlikely’”

- Fred Wilson, avc.com.

If you want to build  a boat, do not instruct the men to saw wood, stitch the sails, prepare the tools, and organize the work, but rather make them long for setting sail and travel to distant lands.

- Antoine De Saint-Exupery

In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude.

One must overcome the fear of being alone.

- Rollo May

An inventor is simply a person who doesn’t take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates from college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. It he succeeds once then he’s in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

— Charles Kettering

Don’t talk about it.

Be it.

- chartreuse via twitter.

We’re not doubling down here.

We’re all in.

- General David Patraeus
Commanding General, Multi-National Force – Iraq

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

The hour is fast approaching, on which the honor and success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding country depend. Remember officers and soldiers that you are free men, fighting for the blessings of liberty – that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men

[...]

Remember how your courage and spirit have been despised and traduced by your cruel invaders, thought they have found by dear experience at Boston, Charlestown, and other places, what a few brave men contending in their own land, and in the best of causes can do, against base hirelings and mercenaries.

- General George Washington, August 23rd, 1776

Yesterday’s Washington Post had an article delving into the Chief Justice’s decision to keep his medical condition a private matter. Some great quotes:

During his 1986 Senate confirmation hearings for chief justice, Rehnquist, who had been hospitalized in 1982 for withdrawal symptoms related to a reduction in the dosage of his prescription pain medications, said that “so long as I am able to perform my duties, I do not think I have any obligation to give the press a health briefing.”

Later in 1986, when a reporter asked him if the court could give out more health data, Rehnquist replied, “You people behave like a bunch of vultures.”

You know who you are.

Now I know who you are.

The spear in the Other’s heart is the spear in your Own.

You are He.

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow:

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand –

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

- Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream

It’s hard to believe that this was twelve years ago – but here’s a great poem to kick of 2005:

A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,

Mark the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens

Of their sojourn here

On our planet floor,

Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom

Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,

Come, you may stand upon my

Back and face your distant destiny,

But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than

The angels, have crouched too long in

The bruising darkness,

Have lain too long

Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spelling words

Armed for slaughter.

The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,

But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,

A river sings a beautiful song,

Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,

Delicate and strangely made proud,

Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit

Have left collars of waste upon

My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,

If you will study war no more.

Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs

The Creator gave to me when I

And the tree and stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow

And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.

The river sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to

The singing river and the wise rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,

The African and Native American, the Sioux,

The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,

The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,

The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,

The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.

They hear. They all hear

The speaking of the tree.

Today, the first and last of every tree

Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.

Each of you, descendant of some passed on

Traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name,

You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,

You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,

Then forced on bloody feet,

Left me to the employment of other seekers–

Desperate for gain, starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot…

You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,

Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare

Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the tree planted by the river,

Which will not be moved.

I, the rock, I the river, I the tree

I am yours–your passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need

For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,

Need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon

The day breaking for you.

Give birth again

To the dream.

Women, children, men,

Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most

Private need. Sculpt it into

The image of your most public self.

Lift up your hearts.

Each new hour holds new chances

For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever

To fear, yoked eternally

To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,

Offering you space to place new steps of change.

Here, on the pulse of this fine day

You may have the courage

To look up and out upon me,

The rock, the river, the tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sister’s eyes,

Into your brother’s face, your country

And say simply

Very simply

With hope

Good morning.

- Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of the Morning, 1993

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

- John Galt

- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

One of my favorite books is Richard Bach’s Illusions. A book first given to me by a high school classmate and then-girlfriend, it has become a book that I often read and then pass along a copy to a friend in need.. only to find myself buying another copy of the book weeks later..

And then the cycle repeats itself yet again.

In Illusions, Bach writes:

Your only obligation in any lifetime is
to be true to yourself.
Being true to anyone else or anything else
is not only impossible, but the mark of a
false messiah.

The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Think about these once in awhile,
and watch your answers change.

Your friends will know you better in
the first minute you meet
than your acquaintances will know you
in a thousand years.

There is no such thing as a problem
without a gift for you in its hands.
You seek problems because you need
their gifts.

You are led through your lifetime by
the inner learning creature, the playful
spiritual being that is your real self.

Don’t turn away from possible futures
before you’re certain you don’t have
anything to learn from them.
You’re always free to change your mind
and choose a different future,
or a different past.

A cloud does not know why it moves in just
such a direction and at such a speed,
it feels an impulsion….this is the place
to go now.

But the sky knows the reason and the patterns
behind all clouds, and you will know, too,
when you lift yourself high enough to see
beyond horizons.

You are never given a wish without being given
the power to make it true.
You may have to work for it, however.

The world is your exercise-book, the pages
on which you do your sums.
It is not reality, although you can express
reality there if you wish.
You are also free to write nonsense, or lies,
or to tear the pages.

Every person, all the events of your life,
are there because you have drawn them there.
What you choose to do with them is up to you.

The truth you speak has no past and no future.
It is, and that’s all it needs to be.

Here is a test to find whether your mission
on earth is finished:
If you’re alive, it isn’t.

Don’t be dismayed at good-byes.
A farewell is necessary before you
can meet again.
And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes,
is certain for those who are friends.

Some wisdom from Gandalf:

All that we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

I would say to the House, as I have said to those that have joined the government. I have nothing to offer, but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

[...]

You ask. What is our policy?

I will say it is to wage war by sea, land, and air with all of our armed forces and our might and all the strength that god can give us.

[...]

You ask. What is our aim?

I can answer in one word. VICTORY. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory however long and hard the road may be.

For without victory there is no survival. Let that be realized. No survival for the British Empire. No survival for the urge and impulse for the ages – that all of mankind would move towards its goal.

[...]

Come then, let us go forward together, with our united strength…