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  It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. - J. Krishnamurti

It takes wisdom to know what we don't know. - Jack Bogle

  "There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive." - Philip K Dick

Aside from leaving behind my partner, abandoning my regular work and travelling half-way around the world, I had done nothing yet to suggest I was becoming obsessed with the precious metal. - Steve Boggan, Gold Rush: One Man's Adventure on the Trail of the Gold Rush

“Fear cannot be banished, but it can be calm and without panic, it can be mitigated by reason and evaluation.” Vannevar Bush

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.  - Edward Abbey

Some chemists, having synthesized a few compounds, believe themselves to be better chemists than nature which, in addition to synthesizing compounds too numerous to mention, synthesized those chemists as well.  - Dr. Robert de Ropp

To go fishing is the chance to wash one’s soul with pure air, with the rush of the brook, or with the shimmer of sun on blue water. It brings meekness and inspiration from the decency of nature, charity toward tackle-makers, patience toward fish, a mockery of profits and egos, a quieting of hate, a rejoicing that you do not have to decide a darned thing until next week. And it is discipline in the equality of men — for all men are equal before fish.  - Herbert Hoover

The American man has been taught that while it is better to avoid a fight; that honor cannot always be de fended with reason. He should never admit fear. He should always strive to put the blade in his adversary’s chest, not his back. An American man should know how to load and fire a gun. He should know how to ride a horse, bet on a horse, bet on the stock market, and bet on the cards. A good man should know a woman’s body and know how to please her. His woman, in turn, should never speak anything but well of him in public. An American man should have been raised in the church, rejected the church and eventually found virtue in the church.The American man should be educated. He should work. He should honor his debts and live within his means. He should be able to recite poetry and have bits of true philosophy at his fingertips. He should be able to play an instrument and know how to help a rose grow. An American man should know how to dress and speak his language well. He should be...

Nothing in this world is certain except death, taxes, and America betraying the Kurds. The U.S. has now betrayed the Kurds a minimum of eight times over the past 100 years. The reasons for this are straightforward. The Kurds are an ethnic group of about 40 million people centered at the intersection of Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Many naturally want their own state. The four countries in which they live naturally do not want that to happen.   —  The Intercept

Fly fishing was a sport invented by mosquitoes  with humans as the bait. - P.J. O’Rourke

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him. - Leo Tolstoy

Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun. - Eugene Debs, borrowed from the infinitely informative  The Chequer-Board Of Nights And Days  blog. Happy Labor Day, ye laborers. 

Folks, it’s time to evolve. That’s why we’re troubled. You know why our institutions are failing us, the church, the state, everything’s failing? It’s because, um – they’re no longer relevant. We’re supposed to keep evolving. -  Bill Hicks

If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people -- including me -- would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.  - Hunter S. Thompson

The penalty for knowing how to cook is that the others will make you do all the cooking.  - Ernest Hemingway

The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. - John Muir

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.  - Carlos Castaneda

It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I do not seek. I find. - Pablo Picasso