Kirkhams Rules

  1. You are not the yardstick by which others are measured. – TK
  2. Giving money and power to government is like giving whisky and car keys to teenage boys. – PJ O’Rourke
  3. Learn to say “I don’t know.” If used when appropriate, it will be often. – Rumsfeld’s Rules, Unattributted.
  4. Remember: A’s hire A’s and B’s hire C’s. – Rumsfeld’s Rules, Unattributed.
  5. If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
  6. Don’t prejudge an opinion because of someone’s looks, economic status, perceived intelligence or other prejudice; even children and clowns can inspire good ideas. TK
  7. Don’t think you’re smarter than everyone else. Even if you are, someone else will always have greater wisdom, expertise, imagination, integrity, or other equally important character assets you probably lack.
  8. Don’t rely on others to tell you to do your job; if you don’t know, you’re in big trouble.
  9. If you can’t summarize an issue on one page, you don’t understand the issue well enough. – President Ronald Reagan.
  10. A man’s relationship with God is between himself and his God.
  11. “Do you want to know my opinion?” is a good question to ask before simply offering one.
  12. Rank does not define a person – capabilities, attitudes, and discipline do. The rank is just a byproduct.
  13. Stand firm for what you believe in until or unless logic and experience prove you wrong.
  14. Remember, when the emperor looks naked the emperor is naked.
  15. The truth and a lie are not sort of the same thing.
  16. Those that think they are smarter than everyone else are real annoying to those that ARE smarter than everyone else.
  17. A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. – Carl Sagan
  18. Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.   (not Caesar – , but good nonetheless)
  19. They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin.
  20. Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn. – Benjamin Franklin.
  21. My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. – Albert Einstein
  22. If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it. – S.I. Hayakawa
  23. Some champagne for my real friends, and some real pain for my sham friends.
  24. I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details. – Albert Einstein
  25. Sometimes when you look in his eyes you get the feeling that someone else is driving. – David Letterman
  26. Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. – Thomas Jefferson
  27. To not be a Liberal at Twenty is to have no heart. To not be a Conservative at Forty is to have no brain. – Sir Winston Churchill.
  28. The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper. – Thomas Jefferson
  29. He may be mad, but there’s method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It’s what drives men mad, being methodical. – GK Chesterton
  30. Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people’s characters. – Margaret Halsey
  31. Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. – Sir Winston Churchill
  32. Nothing surprises me.  I’m a scientist. – Indiana Jones
  33. He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which. – Douglas Adams
  34. If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you. – Paul Newman
  35. 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. – William A. Foster
  36. Stop thinking in terms of limitations and start thinking in terms of possibilities. – Terry Josephson
  37. At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved – if it can be achieved at all – within the next few hundred years. – Arthur C. Clarke
  38. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. – Edmund Burke
  39. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. – Aristotle
  40. To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click “I agree”. – Unknown.
  41. The time will come when diligent research over periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden… Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memories of us will have been effaced. Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has something for every age to investigate. Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all. – Seneca
  42. Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence. – Henrik Tikkanen
  43. Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.  — Michel De Montaigne
  44. The house is built on logic, but pays the bills on superstition. – Unknown
  45. The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. – Winston Churchill
  46. In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. – Mark Twain
  47. Time is the fire in which we burn. – Delmore Schwartz
  48. People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road does not mean they are lost. – Dalai Lama
  49. In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken”, and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. – Carl Sagan
  50. Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking.  - Bill Mahrer
  51. The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority. – Ralph Sockman
  52. We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people. – Arthur Schopenhauer

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