"There are very complicated issues here [about NATO], and I don't want to give them short shrift."

“The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.”

“I considered the case and realized that if something can exist in opinion without existing in reality, or exist in reality without existing in opinion, the conclusion is that of the two parallel lives, only opinion is necessary – not reality, which is only a secondary consideration.”

Source : Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (2010). “The Devil's Church and Other Stories”, p.6, University of Texas Press

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”

“We are sliding back into a dark era, and there seems little we can do about it. I am profoundly depressed at just how difficult it has become merely to get a realistic conversation started on issues such as climate change or genetically modified organisms.”

Source : "Attacks paid for by big business are 'driving science into a dark era" by Robin McKie, www.theguardian.com. February 18, 2012.

“The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask ourselves, 'Are these words true?' If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go. At the second gate, we ask, 'Are the necessary?' At the last gate, we ask, 'Are they kind?'”

“I note that the Python folks still think they like JPython. I wonder how long that will last?”

“I now have a home recording studio, which I can operate entirely on my own, as well as a portable version of the same which allows me to record anywhere I like and simply swap out the hard drives for use in the home studio.”

“Virtue is to herself the best reward.”

Source : "The Compleat Angler". Book by Izaak Walton, 1653.