Quotations Weblog

Whenever I think of Bertrand Russell or any of the other greats in literature, I always believe that they have the same morals. I imagine them all to be “give me liberty or give me death” type of people. Instead, Bertrand was a very practical man.

It makes me wonder what other innate beliefs I have about the literary greats that are wrong.

Voltaire was a cool guy, but I think he got it a little wrong on this one. Don’t get me wrong. Work is a great thing. I love work. I do my work because I love it. None of that has anything to do with Voltaire’s quote.

The bone I have to pick with this quotation is the idea that work saves us from boredom, vice and need.

I’ve known many people who held down full time jobs. I worked with them. I partied with them. I commiserated with them. I haven’t found work to be the savior of those who are bored, vicious or needy.

Boredom

Firstly, the “bored at work” people are a highly sought after demographic. There are legions of people who are bored at work. I was bored at work. The Internet was my savior in that case, but when I was working at K-Mart, I was out of luck. Goofing off saved my mind from the numbing boredom that is being a checker at K-Mart. I have never found work to be my savior from boredom.

Vice

Work doesn’t stop people who are tempted by vice. I’ve heard the phrase, “I’ve got to go to work tomorrow, so I shouldn’t [fill in the vice here],” so many times that it was a cliche. When I partied, I knew people who were drunk every night despite their responsibilites at their employment the next morning. I’ve even know those who would commit vice at their place of employment, whether it be sloth, drunkeness, thievery or gluttony. No, work doesn’t save anyone from vice. The vicious keep right on sinning despite proper employment.

Need

“Working Poor” is a phrase that was relatively new to the scene when I was a teenager, but I’ve seen working poor who make more money than you know what to do with. They spend all of it on their expensive homes or cars, but they start out with enough money for me to live two lives with. Some people say that earning more means spending more. I don’t believe that has to be the case, but the act of having a job doesn’t prevent them from being needy.

Somehow, I think Voltaire had an idealized view of work. He surely never worked at K-Mart or as a second secretary at a firm that only needed one. He never met some of the characters that I have in my journies and he must have mastered the art of living within his means so well that he couldn’t conceive of “working poor”.

For whatever the reason, this is one quotation that doesn’t live up to the reputation of the person who spoke it.

The smarmy guy from the Apple commercials is in a movie called Accepted. I really just clicked on the trailer because I wanted to see if this guy would be the same jerk as the “Apple” in the commercials. Instead I was pleasantly surprised by a witty and intelligent movie about the state of our colleges in the United States.

It’s rare when I can get a good quote from a movie. Most movies are written so it’s nearly impossible to get a quote that stands alone. I was able to get an amazing quote from just the trailer.

The truth of the matter is I learned more on my own than I ever learned from college. Every time I get mailers from my alma mater, I want to burn them. They want me to donate to the scholarship fund. The same scholarship I received to attend. I really feel like I SHOULD donate, but I feel so ripped off by my college experience that I fantasize about setting each of those flyers on fire in a blaze.

Instead, I put them in the recycling bin and attend to my own learning. It looks like this movie could be the best sequel to Animal House that has been conceived.

I spent some time learning Morse Code when I was younger. While nothing much came of that, and the Internet sprung up to serve my global communication needs, it is still a fond memory.

Morse code is still popular among hobbyists, and Morse Resource is a handy site with useful links as well as a utility that produces Morse code MP3 files from any text file.

What does this have to do with quotations? Funny you should ask. Morse Resource has podcasts that include our Quotes of the Day in Morse code at four different speeds, one of which is even slow enough for me to transcribe.

I’d like to thank the folks at Morse Resource for offering our quotations in a truly unique format. If you want to learn Morse code, enjoy codes in general, or just want to freak people out by listening to it at high volume, I recommend it.

What have I long taken for granted?

America is land of the free and home of the brave.

Yeah, that’s a concept that I’ve believed for a long time and I don’t know if it’s true anymore. I know our soldiers out there fighting are brave, but I haven’t see much bravery from the leaders of our great country lately.

I also haven’t seen much freedom lately. It’s nearly impossible to buy pseudoephedrine (a mostly harmless decongestant – Sudafed) because of the war against drugs. Our leadership is more worried about a few meth labs than the comfort of their law-abiding citizens.

There are entire groups of people in our nation that are not allowed to marry. By some counts our nation is discriminating against ten percent of its population, witholding benefits and protection that is usually given to people automatically.

Health insurance is another method of discrimination that is running rampant in our nation. People who are self-employed pay four to five times what corporations pay for health insurance. This company was built of self-starters, but they are being edged out by lack of health coverage.

You want to see brave? You want to see freedom? How about a politician willing to support gay marriage, universal health coverage and end the “war on drugs”? I haven’t seen much of that in my hometown. In fact, I’ve seen the opposite. I’ve seen a lot of cowardice in this land of the free and home of the brave.

If America isn’t living up to its image as land of the free and home of the brave? Where will the world turn to?