I see that it’s Will Roger’s birthday today. He would have been 140. His timeless quotes are a tribute to the constancy of human nature. Of course if he were alive today they’d be Tweeted or Instagrammed and likely lost to posterity, buried under the morass of crap floating around out there. Here is my curated list of some his best:
- Always drink upstream from the herd.
Which is timeless advice.
Then there’s this, which at one time might have been a good thing…
- Tilt this country on end and everything loose will slide into Los Angeles.
but as you can see it hasn’t turned out that well.
- Don't let yesterday use up too much of today. (see above for example of what can happen if you don’t heed this advice)
- Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.
Of course today you have even more to worry about: your parrot might order stuff using your Alexa account. Make sure it isn’t something embarrassing.
The parrot situation reminds me of perhaps Mr. Roger’s most sage advice:
- Never miss a good chance to shut up.
Happy birthday Mr. Rogers; rest assured that Washington hasn’t actually changed all that much since you were around. It’s just more so.
- I was born on election day but never was able to get elected to anything. I am going to jump out some day and be indefinite enough about everything that they will call me a politician, then run on a platform of question marks, and be elected unanimously.
I will only note that Will Rogers was a Democrat. Of course Democrats then were not at all like Democrats today, so he can be forgiven.
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