Part I: It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. ¶ Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! ¶ While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.

Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us to pay income taxes, too? -Bill Veeck-

So long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend. -Robert Louis Stevenson-

This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is, inherently, of no value. -Western Union internal memo, 1876-

You’re the kind of person who would throw a drowning man an anchor.

When the wise man points at the Moon, the idiot looks at the finger. -Confucious-

You may fire when you are ready, Gridley. -Commodore George Dewey, USN, 1 May 1898-

May 2, 1982

How long will it be before … the man sitting in London will see all things passing in Asia, or whenever it pleases him or an agent to turn a mirror on a view? It will be. Or how long before the discovery of cheap and perfect aerial navigation will change society and annihilate national distinctions? That, too, will be. These and a thousand stranger discoveries will during the ensuing century burst upon the world, changing it utterly. -Charles Godfrey Leland, Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling (1891)-

One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention. -Clifton Fadiman-