insightful

I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare -- or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad -- who says that it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed.

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!

That's the big mistake a lot of people make when they wonder how soldiers can put their lives on the line day after day or how they can fight for something they may not believe in. Not everyone does. I've worked with soldiers on all sides of the political spectrum; I've met some who hated the army and others who wanted to make it a career. I've met geniuses and idiots, but when all is said and done,we do what we do for one another. For friendship. Not for country, not for patriotism, not because we're programmed killing machines, but because of the guy next to you. You fight for your friend, to keep him alive, and he fights for you, and everything about the army is built on this simple premise.

Strange... The more I befriend my solitude, the more people desire my company.

Everything's impossible until somebody does it.

I knew everything! Yet, I'm still not perfect.

It's only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent in common with each other. Yes, the differences between male and female are biological, but if you look at biology as a matter of percentage, there aren't a whole lot of things that are different. Race is different purely as a social construct, not as an inherent difference. And religion - whether you believe in God or Yahweh or Allah or something else, odds are that at heart you want the same things. For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent that's different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that.

Greed and corruption isn't in the world.It's in the people".

Perhaps no one has yet been truthful enough about what 'truthfulness' is.

Even on this level, it is at bottom not deception [men] hate but the dire, inimical consequences of certain kinds of deception

The greatest of all faults is to imagine you have none".

BAIT GOATThere is a distance where magnets pull, we feel, having held them back. Likewise there is a distance where words attract. Set one out like a bait goat and wait and seven others will approach. But watch out: roving packs can pull your word away. You find your stake yanked and some rough bunch to thank.

You never know who it's going to be, or what they'll bring, but whatever it is, it's always exactly what is needed.

Life__ easy.It__ living it that__ difficult.

An American Family Sampler is a book any reader will find insightful, thoroughly researched, and fun to read. Robert Frump, author, award winning journalist, business leader

It paid barely a living wage, but he stayed with it__radually and in the end gratefully arriving at the point in life when you understand there are no great changes ahead.