Something To Think About Archive

According to author Mary Shelley, “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”

As the Trump Cabinet takes shape, some picks good, some not so much in our opinion but, we do like the idea of cutting costs and waste including eliminating some Departments altogether, like Education, whose prevue belongs with the states. We’re reminded by Thomas Jefferson who said: “The government is best which governs least.”

Author Roald Dahl believed that “Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.”

According to English philosopher and literary critic George Henry Lewes, “No one ever made a great discovery without the exercise of the imagination.”

It’s those who play the game that have an impact. No one remembers the win/loss record of the referee.

Capitalist and financier Ken Langone once noted that “The biggest risk you run in life is having fifteen people sitting around a table all agreeing with everything you say.”

Columnist Sydney Harris wrote: “An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes that the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.”

Post-election, we’d encourage Congress to channel their inner Henry Ford who said: “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

“Character is like a tree, and reputation is like its shadow.” noted Abraham Lincoln; “The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

It’s been said that “Adversity is an opportunity for heroism.”

British author and government reformer Samuel Smiles believed that “To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.”

“Nothing much happens without a dream;” claimed author Robert Greenleaf. “For something really great to happen, it takes a really great dream.”

A belated “Congratulations” to California voters for overwhelmingly passing Proposition 36 to toughen penalties for shoplifting and fentanyl crimes, and for ousting Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón who refused to aggressively prosecute crimes, was a champion of “No Cash” bail, and oversaw a murder rate that shot to double the state average.

Robert Schuller once observed that “Again and again the impossible problem is solved when we see that the impossible problem is only a tough decision waiting to be made.”

Chief Seattle said: “Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

As Herbert Hoover once observed: “About the time we make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.”

“What I learned early was that there was always somebody who knew more about a thing than you did;” journalist Jim Hoagland once noted, “and the trick was to ask them the right question.”

According to the late Quincy Jones, “… it’s easier to get where you’re going if you know where you came from.”

It’s too bad that Donald Trump is listening to Don, Jr for his Cabinet picks and thus has preemptively, albeit politely, rejected both Mike Pompeo, who was a credible CIA Director and Secretary of State; and Nikki Haley a strong U.N. Ambassador who represented America’s interests in that body better than her most recent predecessors. Both believe in robust U.S. leadership in the world, including support for Ukraine, NATO, and alliances in the Pacific that could help thwart Trump’s main target – China.