Guardian Unlimited Special Report - The Butler Report - Ongoing news, analysis and comment about the inquiry into weapons of mass destruction, the intelligence services, the government, and how these intersected in the decision to go to war with Iraq.
When marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have inlaws. People need loving the most when they deserve it the least.
-- John Harrigan Reading computer manuals without the hardware is a frustrating as reading sex manuals without
the software.
-- Arthur C. Clarke Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by
definition, is unassailable.
-- James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name, 1961 Butler Inquiry There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's
being off the network.
-- Guy Almes Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.
-- Roger Babson Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can
never tell.
-- Joan Crawford Butler Inquiry
The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only
way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste
time Most people are more comfortable with old problems than with new solutions.
-- Anonymous The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
-- Thomas Jefferson "When you have nothing to say, say nothing." (Charles Caleb Colton) Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to
criticize others.
-- H. Jackson Brown Butler Inquiry Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.
-- Samuel Paterson We got to roll with the punches, play all of our hunches, make the best of whatever comes your
way. Forget that blind ambition, learn to trust your intuition -- plowing straight ahead, come what
may Beginning in February 1976 your assistance benefits will be discontinued ... Reason: it has been
reported to our office that you expired on January 1, 1976.
-- excerpt from a letter, Illinois Depart Butler Inquiry
You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.
-- Ziggy, character in comic strip by Tom Wilson Someday is not a day of the week.
-- Anon. Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy-- the
mother.
-- Claudette Colbert "Education must have an end in view, for it is not an end in itself." (Sybil Marshall) Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
-- Groucho Marx Butler Inquiry "Freedom of press is limited to those who own one." (Henry Louis Mencken) Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
-- Vladimir Nabokov Drink to me.
-- Pablo Picasso, dying words Butler Inquiry
"God is Man's stupidest idea." (Marcel Duchamp, French Dadaist) Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
- Ross MacDonald The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman. -- S. T. Coleridge Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health,
knowledge and good judgement will always be in demand under all conditions.
-- Roger Babson "Mothers spend a lifetime excising from their sons the influence of their fathers." (Arthur Lotti) Butler Inquiry Great eaters and great sleepers are incapable of anything else that is great.
-- William Shakespeare, Henry IV A person is not given integrity. It results from the relentless pursuit of honesty at all times.
-- Anon. Men have become the tools of their tools.
-- Henry David Thoreau Butler Inquiry
There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-- William Butler Yeats, from "He wishes for the cloths of heaven" "Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it." (John Quincy Adams) Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not
there, I go to work.
- Robert Orben Facts are the enemy of truth.
- Don Quixote - Man of La Mancha Butler Inquiry "Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul." (The Prophet Mohammad) Hell is a half-filled auditorium.
- Robert Frost "Every act of violence increases the recruitment of terrorists. Iraq has been turned into a base of terror." (Noam Chomsky, from The Toronto Star, March 23, 2004) Butler Inquiry
The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.
-- Cicero A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
-- John Ciardi "See - one side of my face is gentle and kind, incapable of anything but love of my fellow man. The other side, the other profile, is cruel and predatory and evil, incapable of anything but lusts and "The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is n "There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it." (Christopher Darlington Morley) Butler Inquiry The more I know about people, the better I like my dog.
-- Mark Twain "Wise men learn more from fools, than fools from the wise." (Anonymous) Assassins!
-- Arturo Toscanini, to his orchestra Butler Inquiry
A person should never be ashamed to own that he is wrong, which is but saying in other words
that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
-- Alexander Pope Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies.
- Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan. We must become the change we want to see.
-- Gandhi I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
-- Albert Einstein Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.
- Karl Wallenda Butler Inquiry "It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question." (Eugene Ionesco) In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience.
- W.B. Prescott "A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized." (Fred Allen) Butler Inquiry
We can say 'Peace on Earth,' we can sing about it, preach about it or pray about it, but if we have
not internalized the mythology to make it happen inside us, then it will not be.
-- Betty Shabazz The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do
its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.
-- Honor the ocean of love.
-- George de Benneville "Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being." (George Eliot) cannot imagine any condition which would cause this ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has
gone beyond that.
-- E. I. Smith, Captain of the Titanic Butler Inquiry Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without
feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex,
the ugl Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of
the other person.
-- Mark Twain Health food makes me sick.
-- Calvin Trillin Butler Inquiry
We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
-- Decca Recording Company, rejecting the Beatles, 1962 It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should
live honourably.
-- Kant, Immanuel Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
- H. M. Warner, founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927 "Goodwill is the only asset that competition cannot undersell or destroy." (Mrshall Field, businessman and philanthropist) Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it
- Henry David Thoreau Butler Inquiry If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." (John Cage) A man in the house is worth two in the street.
-- Mae West As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.
-- Oscar Wilde Butler Inquiry
His ignorance is encyclopedic
- Abba Eban Youth is wasted on the young.
-- George Bernard Shaw Just buy a box of popcorn and a Coca-Cola and sit back and watch.
-- James Carville, Clinton advisor, offering advice for Democrats on the term-limits vote in the
House If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?
-- Harry Shearer Husbands are awkward things to deal with; even keeping them in hot water will not make them
tender.
-- Mary Buckley Butler Inquiry It is not good enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
-- Rene Descartes He who receives an idea from me receives instruction for himself without lessening mine; as he
who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me.
-- Thomas Jefferson Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
-- Vladimir Nabokov Butler Inquiry
"There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself." (Herman Melville) We must become the change we want to see.
-- Gandhi If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?
-- Calvin Trillin Like a prune, you are not getting any better looking, but you are getting sweeter.
-- N. D. Stice "To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend." (Jacques Derrida, French 'deconstructionist') Butler Inquiry My Alma mater was books, a good library . . . . I could spend the rest of my life reading, just
satisfying my curiosity.
--Malcolm X I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a
woman.
-- Virginia Woolf A scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good livery of honour; so belike is that.
-- Shakespeare, William Butler Inquiry
