My absence of original thought

"It's a mistake to think that people change. But it's a bigger mistake to think people can't." - Umair Haque

"I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine."
-Bruce Lee

"Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it is just the reverse." - Henry Shapiro

"Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light." - Plato

"The glass I drink from is not large, but at least it is my own." -Alfred de Musset

"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!" - Friedrich Nietzche

"He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious." - Sun Tzu

"I'm so excited, I can't wait to meet you there, And I don't care." - Nirvana

"A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought." - Dorothy L. Sayers

"I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell." - Harry S Truman

"This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle." - James L. Buckley

"Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear." - Alan Corenk

"Find my nest of salt... Everything is my fault..." - Nirvana

"Anyone can win unless there happens to be a second entry." - George Ade

"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is." - Francis Bacon

"A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over." - Benjamin Franklin

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." - Mahatma Gandhi

"I am not bound to please thee with my answers." - William Shakespeare

"The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others." - Friedrich Nietzche

"We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves." -Eric Hoffer

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." - Edgar Allan Poe

"Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth." – Siddhartha

"I never think about the future, it comes soon enough." - Albert Einstein

"The future will be better tomorrow." - Dan Quayle

"The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal." - Erich Fromm

"I want freedom for the full expression of my personality." - Mahatma Gandhi

"Never to suffer would never to have been blessed." - Edgar Allan Poe

"It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed." - Kin Hubbard

"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." - Albert Einstein

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." - Will Durant

"One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

"There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness." - Josh Billings

"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom." -Theodore Rubin

I Wish I Was A Hunter

Lochinvar

 O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;

And save his good broadsword, he weapons had none,

He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone.

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

He staid not for brake, and he stopp'd not for stone,

He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;

But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,

The bride had consented, the gallant came late:

For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,

Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

So boldly he enter'd the Netherby Hall

Among bride's-men, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all:

Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword,

(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,)

'O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,

Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?'--

'I long woo'd your daughter, my suit you denied;--

Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide--

And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,

To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.

There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,

That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.'

The bride kiss'd the goblet:  the knight took it up,

He quaff'd off the wine, and he threw down the cup.

She look'd down to blush, and she look'd up to sigh,

With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.

He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar,--

'Now tread we a measure!' said young Lochinvar.

So stately his form, and so lovely her face,

That never a hall such a galliard did grace;

While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,

And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume;

And the bride-maidens whisper'd, ''Twere better by far,

To have match'd our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.'

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,

When they reach'd the hall-door, and the charger stood near;

So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,

So light to the saddle before her he sprung!

'She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;

They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar.

There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;

Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:

There was racing and chasing, on Cannobie Lee,

But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.

So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,

Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

- by Walter Scott

The Enlightenment Guide To Winning The Lottery

Article from Damn Interesting

François-Marie Arouet knew how to get into trouble. After a very public scuffle with a nobleman  nearly ended in a duel, the young playwright was exiled from Paris, the city where his plays were only just coming into fashion. He lived in dreary England for two whole years before slinking back to France, where he lived in the house of a pharmacist. There he experimented with various potions and poultices, but nothing would cure the vague sense of impotence and dread that dogged him.

Finally in 1729 the gates of Paris were opened to Arouet again, but he was still ill-at-ease. At a dinner party held by the chemist Charles du Fay, Arouet, better known by his pen-name Voltaire, found the cure he had been looking for. He met a brilliant mathematician called Charles Marie De La Condamine, who promised a panacea better than any Voltaire had found at his pharmacist.

It wasn’t medicine–it was money. Condamine had a plan that would make both him and Voltaire more money than he could ever scratch together by writing plays or poems, enough money to allow Voltaire to never have to worry about money again. He would be free to live how he wanted and write what he wanted. The plan was simple. Condamine planned to outsmart luck herself. He was going to arrange to win the lottery.

At the time the French crown secured much of its revenue by issuing government bonds. In 1727, in order to save money, the state cut the bonds’ interest rate. The market value of these bonds plummeted, and the market became wary of French credit. The French state was left without an easy way of raising money.

A Deputy Finance Minister named Le Pelletier-Desforts had a great idea that would let the state drive up the prices of the bad bonds and so restore faith in the government’s finances. In his scheme owners of bad bonds could buy a lottery ticket. If your ticket won, you would win back the face value of your original bond–plus an extra jackpot of 500,000 livres. This was a lot of money. While no comparison to modern-day currency is possible, an annual income of only 30,000 livres would make a person very, very rich. 500,000 livres was enough to make a person rich for the rest of their lives.

French citizens were allowed to buy a ticket for every bond they owned at 1/1000th of the bond’s value. A ticket for a 1,000 livre bond cost one livre, while a ticket for a 10,000 livre bond cost ten livres. But both tickets had equal chances of winning the 500,000 livre jackpot. Condamine realized that a group of people could buy up a lot of cut-price bonds, split them into tiny parcels of 1,000 livres, buy up cheap lottery tickets, and thus easily win the huge jackpot.

Voltaire and Condamine started a syndicate to do just that. But once they got the people, the money and the bonds together, they faced a final problem. Lottery tickets were issued only from a very small number of notaries, and the notary issuing stacks of lottery tickets to shifty young Voltaire would almost certainly guess what was going on, and give the syndicate away before any money could be won. Voltaire had to develop an ‘understanding’ with a notary before the plan could proceed. Once this was done, the young men were ready to get rich.

Every month Voltaire would go to the Châtelet to visit his notary, and walk away with reams of tickets. By tradition people inscribed the backs of their tickets with good-luck phrases. Voltaire’s were mocking. “Here’s to the good idea of M.L.C. [Marie De La Condamine]!” “Long live M. Pelletier-Desforts!” He signed them with a series of assumed names, getting increasingly more absurd as the scheme went on. Every month on the 8th when the tickets were drawn, the syndicate would be about a million livres richer, according to Voltaire’s later estimate.

The authorities noticed that the names on the backs of the winning tickets were suspiciously similar and this led Le Pelletier-Desforts to discover the syndicate. The Deputy Finance Minister brought the syndicate to court, but in the meantime every 8th of the month the lottery was drawn again, making the syndicate just a little bit richer. Eventually, the royal council ruled in the syndicate’s favor, letting them keep their absurd riches, though the lottery was shut down. France surrendered, and Le Pelletier-Desforts lost his job.

Voltaire himself probably won around half a million livres–a large fortune, which he then made even larger in a series of canny investments. Soon Voltaire was a very rich man, rich enough to become a moneylender to the powerful and famous, rich enough that he no longer had to stake his financial well-being on that most unreliable and detestable profession–writing.

Charles Marie De La Condamine used his winnings to good effect as well. Three years after the bonanza he travelled to Ecuador as part of an expedition to discover the true shape of the earth, proving that the earth is not a perfect sphere but is instead squished a little bit around the poles. He became the first scientist ever to travel down the Amazon river, advocated smallpox inoculation back in France, brought rubber to Europe, and helped define how long a meter is–as well as finding time to publish numerous popular books and to promote the use of quinine as a cure for malaria, thus easing the suffering of millions of malaria-infected people for hundreds of years and providing the tonic water for our gin and tonics.

Voltaire spent the rest of his life causing trouble. He befriended King Frederick the Great, wrote one of the first science-fiction story in history called Micromegas, had an argument with King Frederick the Great, was arrested, fled to Paris, was banned from Paris, and so settled in Geneva where he spent time entertaining the most interesting minds of the time, including Casanova, Adam Smith and Edward Gibbon. He wrote articles highly critical of Christian dogma when impiety could get a man killed, and championed human rights before there was even a word for human rights, and the whole time he did this he kept Europe entertained. On his deathbed, one story goes, a priest asked him if he would renounce Satan and all his works. “Now is not the time for making any new enemies,” Voltaire quipped.

But life would have been very different for Voltaire if he had not been rich. Without a fortune, Voltaire would have been forced to court the good favor of princes and kings, instead of infuriating them. Without a fortune, Voltaire would have had to write for the public, relying on book royalties and theater receipts, instead of writing what he really thought. If he wasn’t rich, Voltaire may not have been so brave, and if he hadn’t been brave, he would not have been Voltaire.

Today Voltaire stands in the popular imagination as something like a one-man Enlightenment. His book Candide is one of the most-studied books in all French literature. But he only reached the heights of literature because he dared to challenge luck itself.

-By  Brendan Mackie

A Dream Within A Dream

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