April 2013

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph, it is an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. ~ Richard Avedon (1985) In the American West

March 2013

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or the woman's right to her soul. ~ Emma Goldman (1908) "What I Believe" in New York World

February 2013

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail - its roof may shake - the wind may blow through it - the storm may enter - the rain may enter - but the King of England cannot enter! - all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement! ~ William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1763) as Prime Minister, Speech in House of Commons

January 2013

When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you could n't hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that 's just the place and time that the tide 'll turn. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe (1869) Old Town Folks

December 2012

We all have many identities -- of tribe and ethnicity; of religion and nationality. But defining oneself in opposition to someone who belongs to a different tribe, or who worships a different prophet, has no place in the 21st century. ~ Barack Obama (July 11, 2009) Ghana

November 2012

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953)

October 2012

In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents? ~ Mark Twain (1895)

September 2012

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1897)

August 2012

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known. ~ A.A. Milne (1926) Winnie-the-Pooh

July 2012

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted. ~ Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

June 2012

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. ~ Rosa Parks (1992)

May 2012

Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once to get over the fear of doing it. Twice to learn how to do it. And third time to figure out if you like it or not. ~ Virgil Thomson (1982)

April 2012

So successful has been the camera’s role in beautifying the world that photographs rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful. ~ Susan Sontag (1977)

March 2012

Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what is still possible for you to do. ~ Pope John XXIII

February 2012

A missionary society wrote to David Livingston deep in the heart of Africa and asked: "Have you found a good road to where you are? If so, we want to know how to send other men to help you." Livingston wrote back: "If you have men who will come only if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all."

January 2012

So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler!

He can’t even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom!, there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky. ~ Russell Baker (July 1969)