PICK ONE....

"I still have all my vinyl. You can¹t roll a joint on an iPod.²
- Shelby Lynne

"I'm as country as a dozen eggs." - Elvin Bishop

"The problem with history is, the folks who were there ain't talking. And the ones who weren't there, you can't shut 'em up." - Tom Waits

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." - Hunter S. Thompson

"I want my more money & I want my more fame" - Chubby Checker

"When you don't know where you're going, you have to stick together just in case someone gets there." - Ken Kesey

"I smash guitars because I like them." - Pete Townshend

"It's a good thing I had a bag of marijuana instead of a bag of spinach. I'd be dead by now." - Willie Nelson

"I liked the first sixties better...." - Al Kooper, 62

"You can learn something, both good or bad, watching any guitar player. You learn what to do or what not to do. Over the years I've learned things from Carlos, Mike Bloomfield, Clapton, George, Garcia, Knopfler
and let's not forget Robbie Robertson." - Bob Dylan, 2002

"There 'is' a difference between rock and rock and roll; beware of inferior imitations (avoid contact with any musician who doesn't know how to play Chuck Berry music)." - Cub Koda

"This heah is Rufus Thomas....I'm young and loose and full of juice. I got the goose, so what's the use." - Rufus Thomas

"Mike Love, not war." - Scott Mathews

"... And then Lleu took aim at him with the spear, and it pierced through the stone and through him too, so that his back was broken, and then was Gronw Bebyr slain. And there the stone is, on the bank of Cynfael river in Ardudwy, and the hole through it. And for that reason it is still called Llech Ronw."

"Then Llew Llaw Gyffes subdued the land a second time and ruled over it prosperously. And as the tale tells, he was lord thereafter over Gwynedd."

And thus ends this branch of the Mabinogi."

"O Ahab, Ahab, behold thy work!"

"Thou shall not be an Asshole unless you know that you are one"-William Burroughs

"Marry, sir, they have committed false report;
moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily,
they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have
belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust
things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves."

-- Shakespeare

Concerning Misanthropeatarianism.
"I've been accused of being one. Well, I'm the ruins of Athens, you know. I'm always working to rebuild, I'm on the mend. When I am with people something gets subtracted from me. Most people are hardly joyous and seldom interesting. I listen to their complaints, take note of their braggadocio, their unoriginal insights. they yawn my life away. you ask me to embrace them? I don't hate them, I don't want to defeat them or kill them. I just want to get away from them.

it is when I am alone that I feel at my best. it is my normal way, it is when I smooth out, float, it is when whatever light there is enters me. the ruins of Athens. the old bum. the cockroach in the cathedral. the good wine. the mental conversations with Mrs. Death. the dream of golden windmills the inhaling of life. the soaring confinement. the gentle walls. if preferring this to Humanity makes me a misanthrope then I am to the hilt, gladly now here tonight tomorrow next year alone with aloneness finally."-Charles Bukowski

" In the science of the mind there is no point more thrilling than to notice, which I never noticed in schools, that in our endeavors
to recall to memory something long-forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance without being, in the end able to remember"

- E.A Poe

"We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown. "

- T.S. Eliot


"Being an artist doesn't take much, just everything you got. Which means, of course, that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it's no big deal. They are one in the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it, I transcend all this meaningless gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission."

- Hubert Selby, Jr.

“The war against hunger is truly mankind's war of liberation.” -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"A con man's job is not to convince skeptics but to enable people to continue to believe what they already want to believe."
-- Unknown

"Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time."
-- Marian Wright Edelman


"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon."
-Hunter S. Thompson

Albert Einstein
Old Grove Road
Peconic, Long Island
August 2nd, 1939

F.D. Roosevelt
President of the United States
White House
Washington, D.C.

Sir:

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations.

In the course of the last four months it has been made probable through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America--that it may be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable--though much less certain--that extremely powerful bombs of this type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove too heavy for transportion by air.

The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is in the Belgian Congo.

In view of this situation you may think it desirable to have some permanent contact maintained between the Administration and the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America. One possible way of achieving this might be for you to entrust the task with a person who has your confidence and who could perhaps serve in an unofficial capacity. His task might comprise the following:

a) to approach Government Departments, keep them informed of the further development, and put forward recommendations for Government action, giving particular attention to the problem of securing a supply of uranium ore for the United States.

b) to speed up the experimental work, which is at present being carried on within the limits of the budgets of University laboratories, by providing funds, if such funds be required, through his contacts with private persons who are willing to make contributions for this cause, and perhaps also by obtaining co-operation of industrial laboratories which have necessary equipment.

I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsacker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.

Yours very truly,
Signature

Albert Einstein

A letter Einstein later regretted having written.

Leo Szilard wrote it.

I've heard that too (my main source for both stories is Robert Jungk's book, "Brighter Than a Thousand Suns"). Can I amend that to "having signed"?