“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into …
Tag: Quote
Aug 18
July 2021 – Quote of the Month
“If we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition – even when it seems to be doing a little good – we abet a general climate in which scepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate. Figuring out a prudent balance takes wisdom.” ~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted …
Jul 11
June 2021 – Quote of the Month
“Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.” ~ Thomas Szasz
Jun 28
Monuments for Slavery and Holidays for Freedom
Facebook, like most social media, has been a disappointment to me and I’ve taken to staying clear of it. But recently, after more than a half year’s absence, I did have an occasion to login and wish a friend well on a project. Naturally, I got sucked in… It wasn’t long before I came across …
Jun 23
May 2021 – Quote of the Month
“If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. … Choose science.” ~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
May 24
20 Years of GlenGreen.com
I’m a couple of days late in posting, but on May 22, 2021: This website turned 20 years old. I’m sorry that I did not get to the post on that day, but life has been busy. – Good busy. – So: I’ll forgive myself. When I started the site, I had some hopes that …
May 18
April 2021 – Quote of the Month
“We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.” ~ Walter Savage Landor
Apr 27
It’s Just the Flu
In the last year, Covid has almost become the new, go to small-talk default subject, like weather. And so it was, that in talking with a work colleague, the person I was speaking with balked at the notion of getting a Covid vaccination. The person said, Covid is, ‘Just the flu’. And went on to …
Apr 13
March 2021 – Quote of the Month
“Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mar 26
February 2021 – Quote of the Month
“Groundhog found fog. New snows and blue toes. Fine and dandy for Valentine candy. Snow spittin’; if you’re not mitten-smitten, you’ll be frostbitten! By jing-y feels spring-y.” ~ The Old Farmer’s Almanac
Feb 11
January 2021 – Quote of the Month
“But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed, while others reap and sow in his stead.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
Jan 31
Trump is Flushed but the Stink Lingers
The year that was 2020 was so challenging, it apparently decided to leak into January 2021 with an encore act called, ‘violent sedition in America in the interest of overthrowing a free and fair election’. I could vent and storm on Traitorous Trump and his minions until my fingers bled onto my keyboard. But after …
Jan 09
December 2020 – Quote of the Month
“The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” ~ Garry Kasparov
Dec 12
November 2020 – Quote of the Month
“Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals, in carrying out a coup d’état, still use tanks. If a country has reached a high degree of industrialization the …
Nov 29
October 2020 – Quote of the Month
“There’s no art in this White House. There’s no literature, no poetry, no music. There are no pets in this White House, no loyal man’s best friend, no Socks the family cat, no kids’ science fairs. No time when the president takes off his blue suit red tie uniform and becomes human, except when he …
Oct 29
How Democracies Die
We’re counting down to the election. Less than a week away now. I think there is a palpable dread in the air. My take is: even if Trump is flushed from the White House, the damage that he and his toadies have done to this country may be a fatal wound. – It will certainly …
Oct 27
September 2020 – Quote of the Month
“The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg,‘My Own Words’
Sep 18
August 2020 – Quote of the Month
“The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.” ~ Francis Bacon
Aug 04
July 2020 – Quote of the Month
“We should always be asking ourselves: ‘Is this something that is, or is not, in my control?’” ~ Epictetus, Enchiridion
Jul 22
June 2020 – Quote of the Month
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
Jun 28
May 2020 – Quote of the Month
“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” ~Pablo Neruda
May 31
April 2020 – Quote of the Month
“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.” ~Yoko Ono
Apr 26
March 2020 – Quote of the Month
“Yet do not cast all hope away. Tomorrow is unkown. Rede oft is found at the rising of the Sun.” ~LegolasThe Two TowersThe Lord of the RingsJRR Tolkien
Mar 30
Wondering Where the Lions Are
COVID 19 is the mainspring of the day. It’s hard not to make note of it this month. Here, at the end of March, we’ve watched as the virus has risen from footnote to a driving force of the world in about a month’s time. Remarkable. Even now, there is a struggle with the concept …
Mar 28
February 2020 – Quote of the Month
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always …
Jan 26
December 2019 – Quote of the Month
“Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.” ~Charles Dickens
Dec 30
November 2019 – Quote of the Month
“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?” ~Epictetus
Nov 30
October 2019 – Quote of the Month
“There is a child in every one of us who is still a trick-or-treater looking for a brightly-lit front porch.” ~Robert Brault
Oct 30
Above a Dark Tor
Taken on a recent vacation while staying at the lovely Arenal Kioro Suites & Spa. “There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and …
Oct 17
September 2019 – Quote of the Month
“Change. How do you change yourself?… It’s easy to lose yourself or never find yourself. The older you get, the heavier that baggage becomes that you haven’t sorted through, so you run. I’ve done a lot of that kind of running. I’ve spent 35 years trying learn how to let go of the destructive parts …
Sep 27
August 2019 – Quote of the Month
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” ~Isaac Asimov
Aug 20
July 2019 – Quote of the Month
“Here is one way to conceptualize NASA’s heroic era: in 1961, Kennedy gave his “moon speech” to Congress, charging them to put an American on the moon “before the decade is out.” In the eight years that unspooled between Kennedy’s speech and Neil Armstrong’s first historic bootprint, NASA, a newborn government agency, established sites and …
Jul 21
June 2019 – Quote of the Month
“Had enough of heartbreak and painI had a little sweet spot for the rainFor the rain and skies of greyHello sunshine, won’t you stay?” ~ Bruce Springsteen
Jun 21
May 2019 – Quote of the Month
“I’ve got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts – you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn’t do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.” ~ D.D. Barant, Dying Bites
May 17
April 2019 – Quote of the Month
“I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.” ~ John Keats
Apr 10
March 2019 – Quote of the Month
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Mar 31
February 2019 – Quote of the Month
“The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.” ~Elbert Hubbard
Feb 26
Did Peter Make a Peter Joke?
Continuing my observations of watching late night reruns, today I bring you a shocking Brady Bunch double entendre. In this scene, Peter storms in, thinking his brother Greg has taken the girl he wants to date. At first, he only calls Greg a, ‘rat’. After confronting Greg, Peter basically calls his brother a big putz …
Feb 25
January 2019 – Quote of the Month
“How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I’ll say that. Wonder and terror.” ~Keanu Reeves
Jan 29
December 2018 – Quote of the Month
“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.” ~Harry Potter and the Goblet of FireJ.K. Rowling
Nov 01
October 2018 – Quote of the Month
“Listen to them — the children of the night. What music they make.” ~ Bram Stoker Dracula
Oct 01
September 2018 – Quote of the Month
“Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.” ~ Ralphie (Narrator) A Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd
Sep 18
August 2018 – Quote of the Month
“I don’t want to hear the specials. If they’re so special, put ’em on the menu.” ~ Jerry Seinfeld
Aug 09
July 2018 – Quote of the Month
“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people …
Jul 13
June 2018 – Quote of the Month
“Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity.” ~John Adams
May 22
17 Years of Whistling into the Wind
Happy 17th Anniversary my dear old website. Another year and this website will be the age of consent. They grow up so fast. “I still blog, but I do think blogging will become obsolete, as there are more ways of interacting on the Web with low barriers to entry for people to engage and participate.” …
May 17
April 2018 – Quote of the Month
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” ~Alice Walker
Apr 17
March 2018 – Quote of the Month
“‘Time does not tarry ever,’ he said; ‘but change and growth is not in all things and places alike. For the Elves the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, and all else fleets by: it is a grief to them. Slow, because they do …
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