Never Give In
This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
~Winston Churchill, HarrowSchool, 29 October 1941
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt ~ April 23, 1910
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
~Revelation 3:15-16
"Apparently we only get upset about killing animals if thy're cute. Like dolphins. We get all upset when dolphins get caught in tuna nets, but no one cares about the 10,000 dead tuna on the same boat. Little ugly tunas, one on top of the other, screaming for help. "Hey, someone get this crate off my eye!" No one's concerned.
Because they're not cute. Dolphins, on the other hand, have that great round, smiling face, the friendly eyes, the bald head--they look like your Uncle Marvin. We can't slaughter anything that looks like it might show up for the Holidays.
We're outraged when other cultures eat animals we don't. "They eat dogs? That's disgusting. They're savages. How could someone eat a dog?!"
But chickens? Who cares? "Cut it up, put it in a bucket, we'll eat it in the car."
They're not cute. "Boy, look at that chicken! With the triangle-on-the-head thing--it's so ugly! But you better put that puppy down, buddy!"
Puppies are adorable. But lobsters? "Boil that one alive--it'll teach him a lesson. . . . Fix yourself up, like the Labradors. . . . Make an effort!"
It's like fur. We hate the idea of killing baby seals and foxes and minks--but there'd be no problem if someone showed up in a nice full-length Rat Coat. Or a double- breasted Weasel Jacket. Nobody would care. It's the same way we treat each other: penalize the unattractive, idolize the cute."
~Couplehood by Paul Reiser
