how old are you?

"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?"

- Satchel Paige on breaking records when peers had long since retired

if you don't know someone ...

“If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.”

- Carl Jung

cousins

"This man used to the limit the powers granted to him by God."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

never make the first move

A strategy embraced by FDR and Steve Jobs.

as common as a unicorn

"I never try to blow out someone else's candle to make mine brighter."
- Chelsea Handler

oddity

"They say life is too short, but I think it's eennnddleeesss."
- Amy Sedaris

on the impossible

"Stand under Niagara Falls and spit the water back."
-  Boss Platt

positive psychology

"By acting not afraid, I cease to be afraid."
- Theodore Roosevelt

eruption

A common belief was that chimps would be produced by inter-racial relationships.

Photograph by Garry Winogrand.

on the strenuous life

"Get action (to be) sane."
- Theodore Roosevelt

actions have consequences

"I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve."

- Attributed perhaps incorrectly to Naval Marshal Yamamoto on the implications of attacking Pearl Harbor

on forgiving and forgetting

"Let bye-byes be bye-byes."
- Rickey Henderson

prescient

Howard Zinn here.

bambino

Reporter: How do you hit the long ball?

Babe Ruth: I don't know. I just swing at it.

entertainment truism

"If our characters were perfect, there would be no show."

sounds like something he would say

"I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, and my cousin and I against the stranger."

what historians do

George W Bush left a bust of Churchill near his desk in the White House, in an attempt to associate himself with the war leader's heroic stand against fascism. Barack Obama had it returned to Britain. It's not hard to guess why: his Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was imprisoned without trial for two years and was tortured on Churchill's watch, for resisting Churchill's empire.

Full article here.

The article says that Churchill's point of view wasn't common, but that was the foundation of George Orwell's work - it was pervasive.

denied

"You're not thinking. You're reacting."
- Carey Price goalie for the Montreal Canadiens

on going second

"Don't ever be the first person to try anything."
- David Bowie as recalled by Gwyneth Paltrow

The Art of War

"Bring down your opponent by any means. Bring him down by deception, by craft, through uncertainty, through insecurity - better to bring him down than to bring yourself down. Be mysterious rather than obvious. Pretend to be here when you are there. Be close when he thinks you're far, and far when he thinks you are close."

• Be unpredictable
• Be frightening
• Be daring

Excerpted for Sun Tzu's 5th Century BC, The Art of War

courageous

"Courage is the ability to let go of something that makes you comfortable for something completely new. That's what's exciting about life."
- Luis Ortiz 

proceed with caution

"If you're gonna cross a one way street in New Orleans, look both ways."

how to make a dirty martini

If you are in the USA, watch video here.

Otherwise, combine these ingredients:

• 1 ounce dry vermouth
• 3 ounces vodka
• 1-2 ounces olive juice
• 3 blue cheese-stuffed green olives (optional)
• ice (to serve)

Flaws

"An entirely virtuous person is not interesting."
- David McCullough

mouse house

"If you want to accelerate your chances of success, you've got to double your failure rate."
- Michael Eisner

as a jockey examines a horse

"In the American south, only 4% of slaves lived to be 60."
- Ken Burns

all you need to know about religion

the emperor has no clothes

Watch this video on The Scene.

debatable

"The history of ideas is pretty much the history of people being wrong."
- Chuck Klosterman