Castles in the air.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. - Henry David Thoreau

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. - Henry David Thoreau

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses - Georg C. Lichtenberg

To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air. - Richard Whately

Why should we strive, with cynic frown, to knock their fairy castles down? - Eliza Cook

Vote Labor and you build castles in the air. Vote Conservative and you can live in them. - David Frost

Castles in the air - they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too. - Henrik Ibsen

Leave glory to great folks. Ah, castles in the air cost a vast deal to keep up! - - Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton

Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier, and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free.- Thomas Carlyle

No tribute is laid on castles in the air. - Charles Churchill

Thus we build on the ice, thus we write on the waves of the sea; the waves roaring pass away, the ice melts, and away goes our palace, like our thoughts.-Johann Gottfried von Herder

Ever building, building to the clouds, still building higher, and never reflecting that the poor narrow basis cannot sustain the giddy tottering column. -Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent.- Jerome Lawrence

A Thousand Years Of Human Experience

Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
--Alan J. Perlis, Epigrams, 1970s

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid: humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.
--Albert Einstein

I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.
--Bjarne Stroustrup (originator of C++ programming language)

Testing can show the presence of errors, but not their absence.
-- E. Dijkstra

Science

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
--Aldous Huxley

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
--G.K. Chesterton

Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. As a result, genius is often a talented person who has simply done all of his homework.
--Thomas Edison

One who makes no mistakes, never makes anything.
--English proverb

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
--Linus Pauling

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
--Albert Einstein

Communication

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
--Mark Twain

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
--William Strunk Jr.

I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short.
--Blaise Pascal

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.
--Wilson Mizner

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.
--Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Management

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
--Chinese Proverb

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
--Walt Disney

Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.
--Stephen R. Covey

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.
--Maurice Maeterlink

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
--Grace Murray Hopper

A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
--Fred Allen

Most of the bright people don't work for you -- no matter who you are.

--Bill Joy

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
--W. Somerset Maugham

Those who failed to oppose me, who readily agreed with me, accepted all my views, and yielded easily to my opinions, were those who did me the most injury, and were my worst enemies,

--Napoleon Bonaparte

If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
--Yogi Berra

Behold the turtle. He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.
--James Bryant Conant, Past President of Harvard University

Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.
 --Grace Hopper

A ship in port is safe but that's not what ships are for.
--Grace Hopper

You can't escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
--Abraham Lincoln

Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
--Peter Drucker

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.
--Mike Schmoker

Reforms often fail because politics favors symbols over substance.
--Mike Schmoker

You see, when there is danger, a good leader takes the front line. But when there is celebration, a good leader stays in the back room. If you want the cooperation of human beings around you, make them feel that they are important.
--Nelson Mandela

Keep in mind that everything someone does for you has an opportunity cost. That means if someone takes time out of his or her day to attend to you, there's something they haven't done for themselves or for someone else. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking your request is small. They have to stop what they're doing, focus on your request, and take the time to respond.

--Tina Seelig

Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
--Aristotle

A leader leads by example not by force.
--Sun Tzu

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
--Andrew Carnegie

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
--Harry S. Truman

Teaching

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
--Carl Buchner

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
--Confucius

What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.
--Aristotle

The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn.
--Alvin Toffler

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

The best kind of education prepares students not merely for the first job they will hold, but for the last one.
--Jim Appleton, President, University of Redlands

Inspiration

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed ... The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.
--Abigail Adams, letter to her son John Quincy Adams

There are only two rules for success:

1.      Never tell everything you know.
2.       
--Anonymous

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
--G.K. Chesterton

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.
--Bill Cosby

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.
--Jean Sibelius

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
--James Thurber

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live now.
--Joan Baez

The Church is the only fellowship in the world where the one requirement for membership is the unworthiness of the candidate.
--Robert B. Munger

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
--Benjamin Franklin

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.
--Warren Buffett

Alexander, Charlemagne and myself all tried to found an empire on force and we failed. Jesus Christ is building an empire on love, and today there are millions of people who would gladly die for His sake.
--Napoleon

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?
--Stephen Levine

If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.
--Alan Simpson

You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence is not an event -- it is a habit.
--Aristotle

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

No one will pay you to solve a non-problem.
--Vinod Kosla, co-founder, Sun Microsystems

Find the intersection between you interests, your skills, and the market. That's what a career is.
--Tina Seelig

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
--Scott Adams

Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin's womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked "No Entrance" and left through a door marked "No Exit."
--Peter Larson

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
--Vincent Van Gogh

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
--Edmund Burke

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
--Socrates

My company mascot is the bumblebee. Because of its tiny wings and heavy body, aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly. But the bumblebee doesn't know that, so it flies anyways.
--Mary Kay Ash

If you have love, you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.
--Sir James M. Barrie

You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.
--Charles F. Kettering

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as making a 'life'.
--Maya Angelou

The way things are is not the way things have to be.
--Emmanual Katongole and Chris Rice

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.
--Lyndon B. Johnson

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations... can never effect a reform.
--Susan B. Anthony

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
--Mark Twain

Smooth seas do not make a skillful sailor.
--African proverb

We are like tea bags -- we don't know our own strength until we're in hot water.
--Sister Busche

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
--Nelson Mandela

Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.
--James Allen

Don't let someone else's opinion of you become your reality.
--Les Brown

Failure

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
--Thomas Edison

An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.

99 percent of success is built on failure.

Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are fingerposts on the road to achievement.

--Charles Kettering

Would you like me to give you a formula for... success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You're thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all... you can be discouraged by failure -- or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success.
--Thomas J. Watson, American Businessman, Founder of IBM

I've missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot... and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
--Michael Jordan

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
--Abraham Lincoln

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.
--Bill Cosby

The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.
--William Shakespeare

Yes, risk taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.
--Tim McMahon

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first.
--Frederick B. Wilcox

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.
--Woody Allen

Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.
--Zig Ziglar

Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive.
--Scott Adams

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
--Henry Ford

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
--Edward Phelps

Other

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
--A. Maslow

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
--Albert Einstein

Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.
--Mark Twain

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
--Erica Jong

CNN Report (inner thoughts, edition) - Jonathan pledges ''new dawn"?

President Goodluck Jonathan pledged a "new dawn (of corruption)" for Nigeria.


"This time around, one of the differences is that both local and international observers said, 'Yes, there is significant departure from the past (attempts at ballot stuffing, this time around we were very discreet) , '" Jonathan told CNN.

"This historic event marks a dramatic shift from decades of failed elections and a substantial improvement over the 2007 presidential election (at least that is what is written on this paper someone at the state department prepared for me to read) ," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague described the vote as a "significant step forward (assuming you ignore all those other significant steps backwards)" for the nation.

Jonathan said the vote ushers a new era (of chop and clean mouth) for Africa's most populous nation and its biggest oil producer.

"That should tell you that what we are saying, we are going to do it (the wrong way) and this is a new dawn (of inefficiency)," the president said. "We are going to work with all Nigerians to make sure that changes are made (to all my bank accounts, very large changes. He smiles) ."

"My brothers and sisters, we are all winners, (Of course, some of us won more than the others, but we must learn to congratulate not hate)" Jonathan said earlier in the week.

"In this context there is no victor and no vanquished (only the conqueror and the conquered). We have demonstrated, even in our diversity, the progress of Nigeria remains paramount for all (of us with our fingers in the national coffers)."

"We've been having a crisis in the north, we've been having a crisis in the south, all the symptoms are the same, (they be hating in North, they be hating in the south. They be to the East, they be hating to the west, Shit they be hating everywhere) " he told CNN.

"We have a number of young people that have no source of income that we must provide (For. Those thugs used to work for me and now that the election is over, I don’t what to do with them)."

"The government will find out formally (Whenever. It is not important)," he said. "If I make some statements, I will be biased in the minds of people (not that i am not biased or that they need any excuse but why fuel the fire, you know?) and I don't want to accuse anybody (but i can point fingers).”

"We really don't give a damn N***a"

Despite the fact that we face the same institutionalized corruption, nepotism, unchecked cronyism and inbreed ineptitude that is causing North Africans to rise up in anger, I know the same can never happen in Nigeria. We are too busy waiting for crumbs to fall from the plates of our masters to realize that we too could get a seat at the table. The chains that hold us down and keep us in perpetual servitude; they are all mental. We seem unable or unwilling to unshackle ourselves from an acceptance of mediocre and inept leadership.

The average Nigerian is indifferent to government corrupt and abuse of power. Elected or appointed officials act as if the national coffers are their personal piggy banks and somehow this is accepted as way of life. I guess the assumption is if you are fortunate enough to have attained this (most times) underserved position in life, it is expected that you will act with reckless disregard of the laws of the land. The rich and the well connected continue to confuse the poor and the simple minded with innuendoes centered around religious, cultural, tribal and regional differences while they plunder the country, systematically striping her of every single asset. Every true Nigerian knows that we almost never gather to express anger or disappointment about the affairs of the country but we will organize a quick riot and kill dozens of innocents to settle perceive tribal or religious slights. WHAT IS WRONG WITH US, CAN’T WE SEE? Is it too much to expect that the people we have entrusted to run the country will do so without enriching themselves first, second and last?

The fear I have is that anarchic is never the answer to anything but then neither is doing nothing. We have never had a capacity to see beyond our own immediate and individual needs. The collective good is constantly being redefined as “collecting everything that is good for me and myself” we never worry about tomorrow, we have always been too busy trying to survive today. Every generation grows up accepting that we will always have erratic power supply, that highway robbers are a fact of life, That all roads come naturally with potholes, that clean water comes in a sachet, that the governor’s son will be a spendthrift, that most of the richest people we know at one time or the other, either worked for the government or are connected to people that did.

We continue to recycle the same old tired cadre of leaders whose bad ideas, unpatriotic service, and embezzlement started us down this road in the first place. I know politicians are not exactly known for being shining examples of ethnical or moral standards but ours have taken the words “corrupt politician” and made them principles to live and die by. The governing class continues to live below our expectations, regardless of how much we lower it. There is a reason Africa has 19 presidents who have been in power for 11 years or more, it is because we have convince them by our own inactions that it is what is best for our countries.

Season's Greetings.

Christmas is almost here, by now the goats are crying almost daily. Most of them know they will not see the New Year. Children run around with that air of anticipation, they are still too young to understand that that anticlimactic feeling from the actual dawning of Christmas morning, will be a lifelong odyssey into the unrequited love that is expectation. Most of us will receive gifts, much of which we could have done without. We will get gifts from loved ones, even from hated ones. Nothing makes an Ibo man happier than to throw away a perfectly good bottle of wine, just because “Mr Kanu is my enemy and you know that wine is poisoned”, em…, whatever.

Clearly, the Christmas season is a time for much cheer and merriment, the kidnappers are on holiday, some will even release a body part or two, so that the families can have something to hold on to. The armed robbers normally take a break around this time too to share their recent successes with their families. There is joy in our hearts, laughter in the air (mostly from all the alcohol we consumed) and everything is tinted with a rose colored hue, because we are too hung over to take off the sunglasses in the morning. It is a time when we can all monetize and quantify our affection in absolute terms. If you get an IPhone while your brother gets an IPad, you know you must be a stepchild (a lavishly compensated stepchild but still..,).

Family reunions are staple of this season, all those people you were hoping would not be there, will be there. Your renegade uncle with his bratty kids, your lesbian sister, of course you will be there, with your insufferable western habits and fake American accent. What a glorious time, as a child many of you remember all the numerous orgasms you had under the bed trying to force down your seventeenth piece of stolen hard fried chicken. Your jaw was numb but your belly was in a festive mood, good times indeed.


So let us celebrate Christmas with all it brings, the good (that wedding proposal that had been slow in coming), the bad (your cousin that just started driving having an accident with the 605 you borrowed money from the bank to buy) and the ugly (look on the face of your relatives after you inform them the airline said they will be delivering your luggage with all the presents.., on January 7th.) Remember the best thing about the Christmas season is that it will soon be over and you can go back to slaving over your computer again. BestBuy was very happy to have made your acquaintance.

Happy Holidays Everybody.., And stay away from hot Burukutu if you happen to be creeping around Television Village, it is especially potent in the afternoon.