Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the “Who would you like to have a beer with?” poll question in 2004, and won reelection.

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages — and loses — both necessary and unnecessary wars.

McCain has so little respect for the presidency of the United States that he is willing to put the girl next door (soon, too, to be a grandma) into office beside him. He has so little respect for the average American voter that he thinks this reckless and cynical ploy will work.

- Sam Harris, from Palin: Average Isn't Good Enough

--Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

'Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.'

'The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.'

Oh, really?

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
~Author : John Muir Sayings

One man may hit the mark, another blunder but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.
~Author : Antoine De SaintExupery Quotes

Don't open a shop unless you know how to smile.
~Author : Jewish Proverb Sayings

Its the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter.
~Author : Marlene Dietrich Quotes

Thought is the fountain of speech.
~Author : Chrysippus Sayings

My masculinity isn't hinged on whether or not I knit.
~Author : Robin Green Quotes

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
~Author : Mahatma Gandhi Sayings

By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd be grown up.
~Author : Eve Babitz Quotes

A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave just one.
~Author : Anonymous Sayings

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.
~Author : Elizabeth KublerRoss Quotes

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
~Author : Adam Smith Sayings

If you're able to be yourself, then you have no competition. All you have to do is get closer and closer to that essence.
~Author : Barbara Cook Quotes

A man is measured by the size of things that anger him.
~Author : Geof Greenleaf Quotes

Time gives good advice.
~Author : Maltese Proverb Sayings

I dream of wayward gulls and all landless lovers, rare moments of winter sun, peace, privacy, for everyone.
~Author : William Claire Quotes

The real test of friendship is can you literally do nothing with the other person Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple
~Author : Eugene Kennedy Sayings

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!
~Author : Jean Sibelius quoted in Bengt de Torne Sibelius A CloseUp 1937 Quotes

Knowledge is power and enthusiasm pulls the switch.
~Author : Steve Droke Sayings

There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.
~Author : Mary Wortley Montagu Quotes

Whom did it benefit.
(Cui Bono Fuerit)
~Author : Longinus Cassius Quotes

I believe that every right implies a responsibility every opportunity an obligation every possession a duty.
~Author : John Davidson Rockefeller Sr Sayings

You must accept that you might fail then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you've tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, and you don't branch out, you don't try-you don't take the risk.
~Author : Rosalynn Carter Quotes

What I must do is all that concerns me. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.
~Author : Ralph Waldo Emerson Sayings

Haste is good only in catching fleas.
~Author : Alla Yaroshinskaya Quotes

Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called, the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.
~Author : Isaiah 5812 Bible Quotes

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
~Author : Willem de Kooning Sayings

Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes.
~Author : Erving Goffman Quotes

Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.
~Author : Helen Keller Sayings

Ability is nothing without opportunity.
~Author : Napoleon I Quotes

Let every fox take care of his own tail.
~Author : Italian Proverb Sayings

Poverty of goods is easily cured poverty of the mind is irreparable.
~Author : D A Battista Quotes

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
~Author : Bertrand Russell Sayings

Real knowledge, like everything else of value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more that all, must be prayed for.
~Author : Thomas Arnold Quotes

This is getting on my nerves, now that I have them.
~Author : Q Star Trek the Next Generation Deja Q Sayings

Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people.
~Author : Heinrich Heine Quotes

He who does not care for Heaven but is contented where he is, is already in Heaven.
~Author : H Hahn Blavatsky Sayings

The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions.
~Author : Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Quotes

Miracles happen to those who believe in them.
~Author : Bernard Berenson Sayings

No man resolved to make the most of himself has time to waste on personal contention.
~Author : Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Lost time is never found again.
~Author : Benjamin Franklin Sayings

An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.
~Author : Publilius Syrus Quotes

For the memory of love is sweet, though the love itself were in vain. And what I have lost of pleasure, assuage what I find of pain.
~Author : Lyster Sayings

Christmas is the season when people run out of money before they run out of friends.
~Author : Larry Wilde Quotes

Half the time men think they are talking business, they are wasting time.
~Author : Edgar Watson Howe Quotes

The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in this business. You've got to keep on working that talent. Someday I'll reach for it and it won't be there.
~Author : Irving Sayings

Use disappointments as material for patience.
~Author : Unknown Quotes

You won't be happy with more until you're happy with what you've got.
~Author : Angel Blessing Sayings

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
~Author : Steven Wright Quotes

No one ever gets far unless he accomplishes the impossible at least once a day.
~Author : Elbert Hubbard Sayings

Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.
~Author : Gene Wolfe Quotes

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.
~Author : Georgia O'Keeffe Sayings

No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country.
~Author : General George Patton Quotes

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
~Author : Francis Bacon Sayings

I?m good enough, I?m smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me.
~Author : Al Franken Stuart Smalley in Saturday Night Live catchphrase Quotes

The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
~Author : C S Lewis Sayings

Let us not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around us in awareness.
~Author : James Thurber Quotes