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Thanksgiving 2009

"Give thanks in all circumstances..."
... First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, 5.18

November 2009

"Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody; the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I, who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and turn away."
... Marcus Aurelius (121-180), Meditations

October 2009

"Character is much easier kept than recovered."
... Thomas Paine

"Character is not cut in marble; it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do."
... George Eliot
 

September 2009

"College should be about stretching the limits of who you are and expanding the opportunities for what you can be."
... Lisa Luu, W&L '09, Monterey Park CA

"In typical liberal-arts fashion, I wanted to create a course that covers all the bases."
... Anne van Devender, W&L '09, Jackson MS

August 2009

"We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created."
... Audre Lorde, American poet

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
... Anais Nin, Cuban-French writer and diarist
 

July 4, 2009: Happy 4th

"He shall mark our goings, question whence we came, / Set his guards about us, as in Freedom's name.

He shall peep and mutter, and night shall bring / Watchers 'neath our window, lest we mock the King."

... Rudyard Kipling, author

July 2009

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's own ignorance."
... Confucius, philosopher

"They know enough who know how to learn."
... Henry Brooks Adams, American novelist, journalist, and historian

June 2009: At graduation

"Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone."
... Gladys Browyn Stern, writer

"To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven."
... Johannes A. Gaertner, philosopher, art historian, poet, theologian

May 24, 2009: In memory of our colleague and friend, Joan O'Mara: She had tea in her.

"Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others." ... Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea

"To teach is to learn." ... Japanese proverb

May 2009: graduation aphorisms
"If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere."
… Frank A. Clark

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was 'thank you,' that would suffice."
… Johannes (Meister) Eckhart

April 2009

"There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.
... Zora Neale Hurston

"Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?"
... Lillian Hellman

April 1, 2009

"I have great faith in fools - self-confidence, my friends call it."
... Edgar Allan Poe, author

March 25, 2009:a giant has passed

"We also learn that this country and the Western world have no monopoly of goodness and truth and scholarship, we begin to appreciate the ingredients that are indispensable to making a better world. In a life of learning that is, perhaps, the greatest lesson of all."

"We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey."
... John Hope Franklin
 

March 2009

"Education is implication. It is not the things you say which children respect; when you say things, they very commonly laugh and do the opposite. It is the things you assume that really sink into them. It is the things you forget even to teach that they learn."
... G. K. Chesterton

"The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one."
... Malcolm Forbes

February 2009

"Such an anniversary is both a reminder of how far we have come but also how far we must go, of the advantages of a richly diverse student body, men and women from all backgrounds with a variety of perspectives, each learning about their own individual talents, even as they learn what they have in common with each other, which is perhaps a defining quality of a liberal arts education."
... Kenneth P. Ruscio, president of Washington and Lee University, at fall convocation, 2006
 

January 20, 2009: for a historic inauguration

"From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise."
... Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave

January 2009

"What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul."
... Joseph Addison

"It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done."
... Samuel Smiles

December 2008

"Everything you've learned in school as 'obvious' becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines."
... R. Buckminster Fuller

"If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away."
... Linus Pauling

November 5, 2008: after a historic election

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"
... Martin Luther King Jr.
 

November 2008

"We Americans tend to ignore our past. Perhaps we fear having one, and burn it behind us like so much rocket fuel, always looking forward. And that's a bad thing. The consequences are not just ignorance, or stupidity or even repeating. It represents the deepest kind of inattention and becomes a tear or a gap in who we are."
... Ken Burns, in a commencement speech at University of Delaware, May 1993

"It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes."
... Joseph Stalin (unconfirmed attribution)

October 2008

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
... Aristotle

"Life's like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters."
... Seneca
 

September 2008

"Study is hard work. It is so much easier to find something else to do in its place than to stay at the grind of it. We have excuses aplenty for avoiding the dull, hard, daily attempt to learn. There is always something so much more important to do than reading. There is always some excuse for not stretching our souls with new ideas and insights now or yet or ever."
... Joan D. Chittister, OSB

"Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again."
... Zora Neale Hurston

August 2008

"Do something for somebody every day for which you do not get paid."
... Albert Schweitzer

"A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed."
... Henrik Ibsen
 

July 2008

"Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart."
... Mahatma Gandhi

"The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind."
... Frank Lloyd Wright

June 2008: During the graduation season
"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it's expressed in the choices one makes."
… Eleanor Roosevelt
 

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
… Victor Frankl

"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
… J. K. Rowling

"Choose this day whom you will serve ... But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."
... Joshua 24.15
 

May 2008

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."
... Mohandas K. Gandhi

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."
... Jimi Hendrix, musician, singer, and songwriter

Remembering April 4, 1968

"Returning violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
... Martin Luther King Jr.

April 2008

"Lee was once asked by the mother of a small infant what bit of wisdom she could pass on to him. Lee replied, after some thought, 'Tell him to deny himself.' ...I should like to think he meant: 'Tell him to deny self-pity, to control self-concern, to subdue self-love and self-centeredness. Tell him to direct those instincts for pity and concern and love outward, where they nourish others...'"
... Robert E.R. Huntley, former president of Washington and Lee University, speaking of Robert E. Lee at the Fall 2006 Convocation

April 1, 2008

"April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four."
... Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894

March 2008

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
... Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer

"Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught."
... George Savile, statesman and author
 

February 2008

"Busy is often superficial. You must listen. You must pause, you must have intentionality, and busy for too long has been a substitute for substance... develop a culture of intentionality, and parallel that with a culture of discipline. The intentionality is to make sure that the activities you engage in are what you want to do, and [discipline] is to make sure that when you're working in those areas that you engage them more thoroughly."

... William G. Durden, president, Dickinson College, Fall 2006 convocation

January 2008

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
... George Washington

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
... Martin Luther King

"He who would be a leader must be a bridge."
... Welsh proverb

December 2007

"The real measure of our wealth is how much we'd be worth if we lost all our money."
... John Henry Jowett

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
... Jim Elliot, The Journals of Jim Elliot

November 2007

"It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others."
... Michel de Montaigne

"The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth."
... Marilyn vos Savant
 

October 2007

"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."
... Abraham Lincoln

"Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are."
... Benjamin Franklin
 

September 2007

"Be civil to all, sociable to many, familiar with few, friend to one, enemy to none."
... Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor

"All I believe and all I try to do comes from the values that I grew up with: duty, honesty, hard work, family, and respect for others."
... Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Britain

August 2007

"Academe is full of wrongheaded ideas, and has always been - not because academe itself is wrongheaded, but because to discuss such ideas is its very function. Even bad ideas can contain kernels of truth, and it is academe's role to find them. That can be done only in the sunlight and fresh air of normal academic discourse. Expelling an idea [from the discourse] is the surest way to allow falsehood to survive."
... J. Scott Turner, associate professor of biology, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry

July 2007

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
... Will Durant

"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones."
... Emily Bronte

June 2007

"The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you."
... Robert Louis Stevenson

"Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage."
... Ralph Waldo Emerson
 

May 2007

"I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me."

... Henri Matisse

"It's surprising how much you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit."

... Abraham Lincoln

April 2007

"I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest
man."
... George Washington

"Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness."
... Faith Baldwin, author
 

April 1, 2007

'ome is where you 'ang your @.
A journey of a thousand sites begins with a single click.
The geek shall inherit the earth.
What boots up must come down.
A user and his leisure time are soon parted.
Oh, what a tangled website we weave when first we practice.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to use the 'Net and he won't bother you for weeks.
... Steve and Cindy
 

March 2007

"Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back."
... unknown

"We learn better by doing, and we do better by learning."
... Mardy Grothe
 

February 2007

"My experience through my life, has convinced me that, while moderation and temperance in all things are commendable and beneficial, abstinence from spirituous liquors is the best safeguard of morals and health."

"I always respect persons and care little for precedent."

... Robert E. Lee, President, Washington College

January 2007

"[B]ut man, proud man / Drest in a little brief authority / Most ignorant of what he's most assured / His glassy essence, like an angry ape / Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep."
...William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

"Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all."
... Thomas Szasz, author, professor of psychiatry

December 25, 2006

"And she will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins."

... Matthew 1.21

"Christ was born in the first century, yet he belongs to all centuries. He was born a Jew, yet He belongs to all races. He was born in Bethlehem, yet He belongs to all countries."

... George W. Truett

December 2006

"This is a true glory and a true honor - the glory of duty done, the honor of integrity of principle."

... Robert E. Lee, quoted by Douglas Southall Freeman in Lee of Virginia

"I pray I may be spared to accomplish something for the benefit of mankind and the honour of God."
... Robert E. Lee, in a letter to his wife, Mary, October 9, 1865

November 2006

"The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within."
... Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Democracy is necessitated by the fact that all men are sinners; it is made possible by the fact that we know it."
... Elton Trueblood

"Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors."
... Lewis H. Lapham, editor

October 2006

in the 200th year after Lee's birth

" …[T]he more you learn the more you are conscious of your ignorance…You will find all the days of your life that there is much to learn & much to do."
... Robert E. Lee to daughter Mildred, quoted in The Lee Girls by Mary B. Coulling

"As a general principle you should not force young men to do their duty, but let them do it voluntarily and thereby develop their characters."
... Robert E. Lee speaking to Professor M.W. Humphreys, quoted in Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman

September 2006

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
... Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate

"We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all activity, the intolerable labor of thought."
... Learned Hand, jurist

August 2006

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
... Mark Twain

July 2006

"Our commitment to the values of liberal education is the thread woven through [the] curriculum ... : to develop every student’s capacity to think freely, critically, and humanely ... to cultivate judgment, love of learning, commitment to justice, and honorable character vital for individual achievement and constructive participation in society. ... We strive to strengthen our campus and global community by promoting research, scholarship and the creative arts, by embracing diversity, and by engaging in service to others."

... Washington and Lee University Strategic Planning Vision Statement

June 2006

"There is a true glory and a true honor: the glory of duty done -- the honor of the integrity of principle."

"The education of a man is never completed until he dies."

...  Robert E. Lee

May 2006

"Today our communities need us, desperately need our loyalty, our understanding, our support. I count it as one of the marks of maturity that men and women nurture the institutions that nurtured them, not uncritically, but lovingly, not to preserve them unchanged but to renew them as the times require."
...  John Gardner, Centennial Commencement Address at Stanford University

"Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment."
...  Mohandas K. Gandhi
 

April  2006

"Life is short. Family comes first"
...  Patricia Lopes Harris, W&L '91, journalist and mother, at Phi Beta Kappa Convocation, March 8, 2006

"Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members."
...  Pearl S. Buck

April 1, 2006

"April 1st: This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three-hundred and sixty-four."
...  Mark Twain

"You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life even if you had an electrified fooling machine."
...  Homer Simpson
 

March 2006

"As president, I will understand your individual needs and interests, if you in turn will always keep in mind the University and its students. ... What unites us far exceeds what divides us. I will try always to remind us of our common purpose with a personal commitment to forge our future, deal with our differences, and achieve our common purpose in an environment of civility, trust, and respect. And we're going to have some fun doing it. "
...  Kenneth P. Ruscio, W&L President-elect, March 24, 2006

March 2006

In the year of Celebration of Women at W&L

"The day will come when man will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race."
...  Susan B. Anthony

"The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn."
...  Gloria Steinem

February 2006

"An old Latin proverb says:
'What soberness conceals, drunkenness reveals.'
In many ways, the reverse is also true:
'What drunkenness conceals, soberness reveals.'"
...  Mardy Grothe

"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."
...  George Eliot

January 2006

"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
...  Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist

"The liberal arts are the only antidote to public lying that seems so rampant today."
...  Warren Goldstein, Associate Professor of History, University of Hartford
(Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/14/04)

December 2005

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has."
...  Margaret Mead, anthropologist

November 2005

"Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
...  Flannery O'Connor, writer

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
...  George Orwell, writer

October 2005

"Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
- Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate

"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
- Naguib Mahfouz, writer

September 2005

"Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own."
...  Adam Lindsay Gordon, poet

August 2005

"One thing that every single alumnus, teacher, employee, student and trustee at Washington and Lee University shares is that we were all chosen by someone who thought we would honor its past, enhance its present, and offer character and commitment to an undiscovered future. As we enter this period, we look forward to the counsel and contributions that the entire Washington and Lee community will make toward our common and highly promising future."
...  Philip Norwood, Rector, Washington and Lee University

July 2005

"A teacher who is attempting to teach, without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn, is hammering on a cold iron." 
...  Horace Mann, educational reformer

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."
...  Henry Adams, historian and teacher

June 2005

"Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart."
...  Seneca

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it."
...  William Arthur Ward, college administrator, writer

May 2005

"Some persons are likeable in spite of their unswerving integrity."
...  Don Marquis, journalist, writer, editor, and cartoonist

"Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another."
...  Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman

April 2005

"Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."
...  Joshua J. Marine

"My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast."
...  Miguel de Unamuno, writer and philosopher

March 2005

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?"
...  Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat and writer

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."
...  George Washington, US president

February 2005

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." 
...  John F. Kennedy, US president

"Ye can lead a man up to the university, but ye can't make him think."
...  Finley Peter Dunne, columnist, as "Mr. Dooley"

January 2005

"There are two kinds of fool. One says, 'This is old, and therefore good.' And one says, 'This is new, and therefore better.'
...  John Brunner, science fiction writer

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away."
...  unknown

December 2004
"I love my country too much to be a nationalist." 
...  Albert Camus, author

"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children." 
...  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian

November 3, 2004

In honor of our colleague and friend Bob Akins

"All offices were done

By him, so ample, full, and round

In weight, measure, number, sound ... 

His life was of humanity the sphere"

...  Ben Jonson, "To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morrison"

November 2004

"Our elections are free, it's in the results where eventually we pay."
...  Bill Stern, sports announcer

"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
...  Alexander Pope, poet

October 2004

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury ... These nations have progressed in this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage."
...  Alexander Tyler, Cycle of Democracy (1770)

September 2004

"The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct."
...  Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator and writer

"General education enable[s] every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom."
...  Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Thaddeus Kosciusko (1810)

August 2004

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." 

...  John Adams

July 2004

"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." 

...  Eric Arthur Blair (a.k.a. George Orwell), as quoted in History, Guilt, and Habit (Owen Barfield, 1981)

"I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." 

...  Isaac Newton

June 2004

"A college education never hurt anybody who was willing to learn after he got it." 
...  unknown

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us." 
...  Albert Schweitzer

May 2004

"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." 
"The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has its limits." 
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." 
...  variously attributed to Elbert Hubbard, American author; Samuel (Mark Twain ) Clemens, American author and humorist; and Albert Einstein

April 2004
"If you expect the best, a funny thing happens -- you very often get it."

...  Somerset Maugham

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ... neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." 

...  John W. Gardner

March 2004
"He that voluntarily continues ignorance is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces; as to him that should extinguish the tapers of a light-house might justly be imputed the calamities of shipwrecks." 

...  Samuel Johnson, in a letter to William Drummond of Edinburgh, 1766

"There are those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowing; that is curiosity.
There are those who seek knowledge to be known by others; that is vanity.
There are those who seek knowledge in order to serve; that is love."
...  St. Bernard of Clairvaux

February 2004
"If one learns from others but does not think, one will be bewildered. If, on the other hand, one thinks but does not learn from others, one will be in peril." 
...  Confucius, The Analects

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." 
...  Martin Luther King Jr.

January 29-30, 2004
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber." 

...  Plato

"Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important." 

...  Senator Eugene McCarthy

January 2004
"Moral principles can never be compromised; they can only be abandoned."
...  variously attributed to Henry David Thoreau and Jacob G. Hornberger

"The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been."
...  Alan Ashley-Pitt

December 25, 2003
Given, not lent, / And not withdrawn, once sent,

This Infant of mankind, this One, / Is still the little welcome Son.

New every year, / New-born and newly dear,

He comes with tidings and a song, / The ages long, the ages long.

Even as the cold / Keen winter grows not old,

As childhood is so fresh, foreseen, / And spring in the familiar green.

Sudden as sweet / Come the expected feet.

All joy is young, and new all art, / And He, too, whom we have by heart.

...  Alice Meynell

December 2003
"Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution. It represents the wise choice of many alternatives."

...  Willa A. Foster

November 2003
"People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel."
...  Penny Pennington, Today's Thought, June 29, 2001

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
...  Ralph Waldo Emerson

October 2003
"All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why"

...  James Thurber

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. " 
...  unknown

September 2003
"Of all human pursuits, the pursuit of wisdom is the more perfect, the more sublime, the more useful, and the more agreeable."
...  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles

"We need not sow thistles and brambles; they come up naturally enough…and so we need not teach men to complain; they complain fast enough without education. Do not indulge the notion that you can be contented with learning, or learn without discipline. It is not a power that may be exercised naturally, but a science to be acquired gradually."
...  Charles H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

August 2003

"Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic."  
...  Unknown

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."  
...  Isaac Newton

July 2003

"In your service to others keep to the humble works because they are works nobody else will do. It is never too small for God. For there are many people who can do the big things. But there are few people who will do the small things."
...  Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa)

June 20, 2003
In honor of our colleague and friend William "Buck" Buchanan

"Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price."

...  -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer

June 2003

"...You have pulled endless all-nighters, done hundreds of problem sets, consumed thousands of pizzas, and it's still not enough. ... You are undoubtedly well-equipped for your careers, but life is more than that, and our careers will not save us. Redemption will depend less on how many hours you put into your thesis, and more on how you treat those around you when you're under pressure. Your happiness will come not from the recommendations the faculty writes for you but from how your friends and family love you, criticize you, and forgive you. Your success will be measured not by your publications but by how you treat the typist. These are matters that are generally not part of the curriculum."
...  Rabbi Daniel Shevitz, MIT commencement address, June 1993

May 2003

"College students are plagued by an especially virulent strain of boredom. These extraordinary students, who can dream of absolutely anything and attain almost everything, are truly passionate about almost nothing. [This ennui emanates from] a decline of politics and religion in students' lives [while they] have become devoted to the belief in progress -- a devotion that causes both the past and the present to shrink before the daunting prospect of an awesome and unimagined future. The direction they should find on campus proves to be as elusive and evanescent as so much else in their lives. Colleges have by and large forgotten the Socratic exhortation to 'Know Thyself' that must guide an education [leaving students] ill-equipped to know very much at all. What these young people long for unawares is an education deserving of the name."
...  Robert C. Bartlett, Emory University in The Public Interest, Winter 2003 issue

April 2003

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
... Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor

April 1, 2003

"Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings...they did it by killing everyone who opposed them.

Doing a job right the first time gets the job done. Doing the job wrong fourteen times gives you job security.

Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity.

Plagiarism saves time.

Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.

Teamwork means never having to take all the blame yourself.

Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups.

Go the extra mile. It makes your boss look like an incompetent slacker.

Indecision is the key to flexibility."
...  unknown

March 2003
"I believe that pure thinking will do more to educate a man than any other activity he can engage in. To afford sympathetic entertainment to abstract ideas, to let one idea beget another, and that another, till the mind teems with them; to compare one idea with others, to weigh, to consider, evaluate, approve, respect, correct, refine; to join thought with thought like an architect till a whole edifice has been created within the mind; to travel back in imagination to the beginning of the creation and then to leap swiftly forward to the end of time; to bound upward through illimitable space and downward into the nucleus of an atom; and all this without so much as moving from our chair or opening the eyes -- this is to soar above all the lower creation and come near to the angels of God."
...  A. W. Tozer, Man: The Dwelling Place of God

February 2003

"Character cannot be developed in ease & quiet. Only through experience of trial & suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired & success achieved."
...  Helen Keller

"The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves."
...  Leon Trotsky, Diary in Exile, diary entry for April 5, 1935

January 2003

"I've learned...that the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person,

that just one person saying to me, "You've made my day!" makes my day,

that being kind is more important than being right,

that I can always pray for someone when I don't have the strength to help him in some other way,

that we should be glad God doesn't give us everything we ask for,

that money doesn't buy class,

that to ignore the facts does not change the facts,

that love, not time, heals all wounds,

that the easiest way for me to grow as a person is to surround myself with people smarter than I am,

that everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile,

that opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss,

that a smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks,

that I can't choose how I feel, but I can choose what I do about it."

...  Andy Rooney, excerpted

December 2002

"Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may distort it; but there it is."

...  Winston Churchill

"The truth is a snare: you cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you."
...  Sören Kierkegaard

November 2002

"As to values, I was taught -- and still believe -- that a sense of honor is necessary to personal self-respect; that duty, recognizing an individual's subordination to community welfare, is as important as rights; that loyalty, which is based on the trustworthiness of honorable men, is still a virtue; and that work and self-discipline are as essential to individual happiness as they are to a viable society. Indeed, I still believe in patriotism -- not if it is limited to parades and flag-waving, but because worthy national goals and aspirations can be realized only through love of country and a desire to be a responsible citizen."

...  Lewis F. Powell, W&L '29 '31L, Supreme Court Justice

October 2002

"I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all."
...  Alexis de Tocqueville

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory."
...  W. Edwards Deming

September 2002
"... the business of the college is ... to put you in touch with what the best human minds have thought. If you have no time for Shakespeare, for a basic look at philosophy, for the community of the fine arts, for that lesson of man's development we call history -- then you have no business being in college."
...  John A. Ciardi, poet and Professor of English, Rutgers University

August 2002

"Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both." 
...  John Andrew Holmes

"Truth is not determined by the volume of the voice."
...  Chinese Proverb

July 2002

"For there are two main obstacles to the knowledge of things, Modesty that casts a mist before the understanding and Fear that, having fanci’d a danger, disswades us from the attempt. But from these Folly sufficiently frees us, and few there are that rightly understand of what great advantage it is to blush at nothing and attempt every thing."
...  Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (1509)

"Omnia autem probate."
(from the W&L crest, a reference to 1 Thessalonians 5.21-22 to 
"test everything, hold on to the good, avoid every kind of evil.")

June 2002

"As soon as this is over, hug your parents and thank them. Then let them take all the photographs they want. When we come to do a story on you for winning the Nobel prize or an election or for cleaning up your town dump, you'll be glad to have those pictures."

...  Lynn Sherr

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."
...  Albert Schweitzer

"The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence."
...  Ralph Waldo Emerson

May 2002
"Respectfulness, without the rules of propriety, becomes laborious bustle; carefulness, without the rules of propriety, becomes timidity; boldness, without the rules of propriety, becomes insubordination; straightforwardness, without the rules of propriety, becomes rudeness. ... There are three principles of conduct which the man of high rank should consider specially important: that in his deportment and manner he keep from violence and heedlessness; that in regulating his countenance he keep near to sincerity; and that in his words and tones he keep far from lowness and impropriety."

...  Confucius, The Analects

April 2002

"The priorities of a university are not the province of one office, or one group, or one person, including the president. They should result from careful, open, deliberate, continuing communication among all groups that have an interest in the university, that are committed to the university, that view the university as their home and their institution. That is why I look forward to meeting with you, to learning from you, and working with you, as together we set out priorities for the future; as together we set our strategic plan for how to achieve those priorities; as together we do all we can do to make Washington and Lee the best university possible. ... Some would call [W&L] blessed." 

... Thomas G. Burish, W&L President-elect, March 27, 2002

April 1, 2002

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."

"Aim low, reach your goals, avoid disappointment."

March 2002

"You must get involved to have an impact. No one is impressed with the won-loss record of the referee."

...  John H. Holcomb, The Militant Moderate

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life." 

... Theodore Roosevelt, Letter to S. Stanwood Menken, 1917

February 2002
"I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."
"There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers."
"It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow."
...  Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man

This page was last modified on Saturday, November 21, 2009.