Pithy Thoughts


From reading the internet personals, I've learned that there are worse things than being alone.

If you seem to be smarter than everyone else, you may just be in Arizona.

A question I rarely ask myself is: "Am I doing something stupid right now?"

Don't lose your illusions; get useful illusions.

There's a word for guys who are friends with women they don't hose. The word is 'gay'.

Try to have fun at funerals because yours won't be.

Just because someone hates you doesn't mean they don't suck.

Just because the government says it doesn't mean it isn't true.

One thing I've learned from television is 'never apologize for being dull.'

The human race has a lot to answer for, one thing being the fact that it's made Kiss  #2 all-time in gold album sales.

A good slogan for Generation X might be "Look at me, I'm boring!"

It's never about you.

The one unforgivable American sin is being bad at business.

People don't suck because they have low self-esteem, they have low self-esteem because they suck.

If meeting strangers makes you nervous, pretend you've just had sex with them and you were on top.

An Irishman will never commit suicide as long as there's one person who doesn't like him.

Optimists kill themselves, but pessimists have to be killed.

It's never too late to wish you could change.

In America, you have to be very, very crazy before anyone notices.

Big Media controls who leads the government by trashing anyone they perceive as a threat (almost everybody). This must end before any tough problems get solved, like how to defeat only the Muslims who threaten us.

Ideologies deny crucial facts. Capitalism denies the urge to cooperate, communism the urge to compete. Why not use both?

Don't let others define success for you. Unless they have guns.

The people complaining about all those jobs being shipped overseas would NEVER take ANY of those jobs, nor would the people complaining about illegal aliens ever take one of THEIR jobs. In another 10 years we'll be paying them to move here to help compete with China and India.

People are miserable partly because civilization is not as fun as hunting.

Is it better to be single and wonder if anyone will ever care about you, or marry and remove all doubt?

Dysfunctionals don't change because their way of being hasn't killed them yet, and their ambitions don't extend beyond survival.

Some of us in the Southwest are getting the opportunity to move to a foreign country without leaving our neighborhoods.

I think people under 40 are dull because Mother Nature deleted the gene in them that starts nuclear wars. Unfortunately this gene is also responsible for making humans interesting. Next time an under-40 puts you to sleep, be grateful they haven't turned you into a little ash pile instead.

Half of all technology is bad, but not at the same time.

Drugs do  improve your memory, but only your memories of being on drugs.

Most Polynesians have 2 knees, like the Tunisians,  while the knees of Micronesians are very tiny.



Special Guest Pith:

"The will to win is nothing compared to the will to prepare."

                                                                                            -Chuck Noll

"Don't expect unhappy people to be nicer to you than they are to themselves."

                                                                                             -Matt Groening

"To be happy means to become the person you want to be, to share your world with someone who loves you and to find your best work pleasing. Only people who do not have these simple things want more than this. They are unhappy with themselves and try to solve the problem of their emptiness by demanding more from others outside themselves. It is because of neither vanity nor greed that people seek happiness in this way, but out of an attempt to escape from the parts of themselves they fear to face."

                                                                                                      -David Viscott, M.D., "How to Live With Another Person"

"When we look at historical processes on a time-scale of fifty or a hundred years, science is the
most powerful driving force of change. Because of science, machines have displaced unskilled manual workers, and computers have displaced unskilled clerical workers in all branches of industry and commerce. Because of science, the traditionally conservative middle class of well-paid blue-collar industrial workers has almost ceased to exist. Because of science, jobs paying enough to support a family in comfort are no longer available to young people without higher education unless they happen to be gifted with special talent as baseball players or rock stars. Because of science, families with access to computers and to higher education are rapidly becoming a hereditary caste, the children inheriting these advantages from their parents. Because of science, children deprived of legitimate opportunities to earn a living have strong economic incentives to join gangs and become criminals."

                                                                                                        -Freeman Dyson, "Imagined Worlds"

"Our society is a constitutional republic, not a democracy in which the majority rules. The constitution doesn't dictate how we must act, but limits how government can act. Its purpose is to secure our individual rights, which are inalienable. They can't be compromised, cut down or voted away by the majority mob. 

Yet over the years, that paradigm has reversed. In modern-day America, we now routinely allow individual rights to be defined under the law. From the smoking ban we first discussed a few months back, to the recently passed abortion bill, the scope of government power is now virtually unlimited. We've quietly become a society of mob rule in which everyone's interests are up for grabs. Provided there are enough votes, anything goes." 

    -Jonathan Hoenig, capitalistpig.com

    Check out his other articles, he's a genius!

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

"Happiness is good health and a short memory."

   -Ingrid Bergman

"The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible."

-Bertrand Russell

"A lot of people have gotten killed because they thought life was supposed to be like a book."

-Kurt Vonnegut

" All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. but their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create..a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of  the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption othat somebody-or at least some force-is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel."

-Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loating in Las Vegas"

"Crude Oil: It's going to $100 per barrel in the next 12 to 18 months. The real surprise will be when it doesn't stop there, and starts heading for $200 dollars. Unfortunately, it's not a bubble, so put away your history books.

Inflation: Read or watch Jimmy Rogers. He notes that commodity bull markets, once they start, can last for decades. The screaming rally in all types of basic materials began just two years ago and might continue until 2020, and beyond. In the meantime, don't expect cheap interest rates again, ever.

China: They're going to rule the world of capitalism some day, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. Perhaps if we didn't waste all our resources chasing shadows overseas we would have enough money left to make our system more competitive with the rest of the world. It's game over U.S.A.

Home Sales: The housing bubble is burst, unless you live where I do, in Phoenix. In that case, it's just begun.              

The Consumer: Yes, we care about oil prices, inflation, the war and everything else we're told has already been priced into the market. We're also dumb as dirt when it comes to borrowing money and do extremely stupid things, like buying interest-only mortgages."

Alan Farley,  Hard Right Edge

"Industrial civilization figures out how to manufacture popular culture and sell it back to the people. You have to marvel at the ingenuity of it! the problem is that the longer this buying and selling goes on, the more hollow and bankrupt the culture becomes, It loses its fertility, like worn out, ravaged farmland".

R. Crumb, 'The R. Crumb Handbook'

"FRIENDLESS, adj.  Having no favors to bestow.  Destitute of fortune.
Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense."

-    Ambrose Bierce, 'The Devil's Dictionary'

"it is said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some 4 million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods."

 - Jacob Bronowski, "The Ascent of Man"

"Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.
What do men want? They want a lot of pasl, and they wish that people wouldn't get so mad at them.
One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?"

-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007)

Copyright 2007 Terry Morgan, except as noted

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