Selected Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes

PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.

It isn’t sufficient just to want – you’ve got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.

To reach a port, we must sail – sail, not tie at anchor – sail, not drift.

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“If in doubt, don’t go out”

I love instructions and regulations!

Some of them are short and bold, others teach you how to live (or to die) right.

Their styles are different. Some of them use art  to touch your heart and to stimulate your thinking, your feelings of right and wrong, your kindness, choice of your paths in life.

For example, fishes love this one. I wonder who wrote it and who paid for it.

It’s Anton Chekhov’s style!

Only three words! They express so much!

They are about life and death, about meaning of life.

For some people they are about adventures and actions.

We are all different!

Some of us are for unlimited freedom. Often they don’t even know that freedom is always limited.

Others are for enjoyment and pleasure. They’ll kill for pleasure of fish cleaning!

I am a simple man. I am for enjoyment and pleasure too but I find it in watching beautiful fishes and in eating well prepared fish dishes.

And here is completely different style.

I hope that you fully appreciate the difference.

Surely, you noticed the wonderful combination of colors and science.

This picture is full of love to people. It gives all available information how to “Break the Grip of the Rip!”

It’s a six words poetical story!

Everything is precise, easy to do. I especially like “wave for assistance”.

However, my wife told me that the most important instructions are:

“Know how to swim” and “If in doubt, don’t go out”.

She added: “The last one is universal! It is applicable not only to rip currents. It is for all women and men who think of going to blind dates!”

“IF IN DOUBT, DON’T GO OUT”. 

 

Moment on the beach

Pillars of the Dream: Work

I found this terrific post on the very good blog Farming The Dream and immediately decided to share it with you.
Atheists believe that work made people from apes.
What can happen if there is not enough work?

Farming The Dream

I have found that Super Bowel commercials are really the only ones worth watching. At the price they pay per minute, I’d hope so.

Though this commercial is probably not very popular in other countries, it does have a good message that comes clear in one sentence: “It’s pretty simple, you work hard, create your own luck, and you got to believe that anything is possible.” That sentence sums up the idea of work in The American Dream.

Andrew Carnegie – Source – http://greatimmigrants.carnegie.org

Work uses Opportunities within Freedom to build our lives. By its strength, we can forge different destinies for us and our families. The immigrant can become a steel magnate, like Andrew Carnegie; a boy splitting rails for the railway can become president, like Abraham Lincoln.

Source – flickr.com

I have often turned to Gaining Favor With God and Man by William M. Thayer when looking at…

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Imagine, don’t do and find!

ODD BALL PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 10

*

CAN NOT SEE?   IMAGINE!

DO NOT DO WHAT YOU LIKE!

FIND HAPPINESS!

Several Thomas Jefferson’s quotes.

Great thoughts don’t die!

PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

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Sunday stills: LOVE

SUNDAY STILLS: LETTER L-

For me CHILDREN = LOVE.

Life is full of surprises or robbers, where are you?! (Part 3)

Here is the last third part of the story about surprises in life. It shows clearly where robbers were at that time.
Today they are in many countries. They can be in your country too.

PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

My wife and children were waiting for me.

They looked at the parcel in my hands and instruments and it was clear that they wanted to open parcels immediately and to find out what was in it.

However, I suggested that we needed to warm ourselves first. So we had a morning run and a good workout, then we ate hot breakfast. After it we were ready.

It took considerable efforts to open six parcels. Then we saw that there was a mixture of brown and white in all of them.

My wife cautiously took several white crystals and licked them. She said: “It’s sugar”. Next she took out several brown kernels and said: “Buckwheat!” Then she took out many pieces of brown paper and started to cry.

Children and I looked at her with alarm. What was going on? Why was she crying?

A couple of minutes passed. Then my…

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Several quotes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This post is relevant today especially for many black leaders in our country who incite hatred and divisiveness instead of following wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’ 

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

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Cappuccino or a day when we were very rich

First time I tried cappuccino in February of 1975. I was 40 years old. We lived in Lido di Ostia and waited for American visas.

Another immigrant who somehow had a lot of money and liked to play chess with me bought cappuccino for both of us.

I was afraid to try it as in the Soviet Union I had terrible allergy each time I drank a cup of coffee. However, my partner insisted that cappuccino is very good and I must try it.

What could I do? I raised a cup, opened my mouth, took a mouthful and …fell in love. Not only this. Somehow cappuccino became for me a symbol of freedom, a symbol of Italy, of this wonderful beautiful country with very warm people.

Years passed and we visited Italy again. We took a two weeks trip from the north to the south. Every day I drank a cup of cappuccino and enjoyed it very much. Some members of our tourist group told me that it did not make sense to pay two euros for a cup of cappuccino. With my very bad hearing it was very easy to ignore it.

One day our group went to Capri. You do know that the island is beautiful and you can have as many splendid views as you want. But usually tourists after taking in a good part of nature’s beauty go shopping.

I warned my wife that we should not do it. We did not need anything. Everything on Capri was very expensive. But this time something happened with her hearing. She took my hand and we found ourselves in the nearest boutique.

It was very nice in the air-conditioned store. Tourists recovered from the heat outside and were very busy leaving their money inside the store.

My wife looked around, then she came to me and said: “I found a wonderful tee-shirt for you! It’s unique and it costs only 35 euros!”

Only 35 euros! Tee-shirt! I could not hear it!

Still I went to see that unique tee-shirt. When love speaks wise man listens.

It really was beautiful. Only the fabric was rather sick and the tee-shirt had sleeves.

“Darling, when will I wear it? It’s not suitable for parties and it’s not good in summer”.

“Don’t worry, we’ll think about it later”.

We bought the tee-shirt and went out of the store.

There was another hour before departure from Capri.

It was impossible to stay in the sun.

At that moment I noticed a café around the corner. People were sitting in the shadow enjoying life.

“My love”, said I. “Would you like to have a cup of cappuccino?”

‘Oh, yes! Yes!”

A beautiful young smiling girl showed us the best table in the café and in two minutes we had colorful richly smelling cappuccino. We drank it very, very slowly and looked at unfortunate people from our group who was standing in the sun.

Life was wonderful, we were immensely rich!

Soon it was time to leave and I asked for a check. The beautiful young smiling girl gave it to my wife. My love looked at it, sighed and said: “Darling, please pay 19 euros. It was worth it! We are very rich today!”

:

How bad are America and capitalism?

I came to America in 1975 and became an American in 1980.

Half of my life I lived in the Soviet Union, another half – in America.

I worked in the Soviet Union as a manager and a scientist and I worked in the USA as a cutter, a clerk, an accountant, a broker, a programmer, a system analyst. I graduated from colleges in both countries (the Moscow Textile Academy and Queens College in NYC).

For forty years I hear and read that capitalism is bad and that America is a bad country. I saw all kinds of protesters. I heard a lot of journalists, professors and elected officials who believe that socialism and communism are better. .

Certainly, everybody has right to her/his opinion.

However, as I lived many years In the USSR and the USA it is easy for me to compare what is better.

Let’s look today at facts and make conclusions. Then we can continue to discuss the question in the title of this post.

Several years I am renting during winter an apartment in a condominium in Hollywood, Florida. My landlord is from Cuba. He is a large trucks driver.

He bought this apartment 7 years ago as an investment. He lives with his wife in their own very nice house near Miami.

The photo below shows a deck of the condominium and a beach below. I meet daily people on the deck who own apartments here and have apartments or houses in Chicago, New York and other places. All of these people are working or worked before retirement. They are (or were) teachers, programmers, doctors, nurses, engineers, professors, government employees, etc. Some of them have or had their own businesses.

#1

You can see in the photo a building that is under construction.

Picture #2 gives you a better view of it. The building will be finished soon.

All apartments in it have the same design and the average cost of an apartment is

$1,000,000. The interesting fact is that all apartments are already sold out.

#2

Now, there are hundreds of condominiums in Hollywood and thousands of houses that cost more than 1 million dollars. All of them have owners.

There are many cities all over America like Hollywood or even richer (like Naples in Florida).

How bad is America and how bad is capitalism if people who are working hard and have education can have wonderful apartments or houses, can travel, are free to choose their way and enjoy life?

I am proud that I am American!

Life is full of surprises or robbers, where are you?! (Part 3)

My wife and children were waiting for me.

They looked at the parcel in my hands and instruments and it was clear that they wanted to open parcels immediately and to find out what was in it.

However, I suggested that we needed to warm ourselves first. So we had a morning run and a good workout, then we ate hot breakfast. After it we were ready.

It took considerable efforts to open six parcels. Then we saw that there was a mixture of brown and white in all of them.

My wife cautiously took several white crystals and licked them. She said: “It’s sugar”. Next she took out several brown kernels and said: “Buckwheat!” Then she took out many pieces of brown paper and started to cry.

Children and I looked at her with alarm. What was going on? Why was she crying?

A couple of minutes passed. Then my wife stopped crying and explained: “In last letter I wrote that I could not find buckwheat here. Apparently, mothers decided that we had nothing to eat. They bought buckwheat and sugar and put paper packs with them in parcels. People in the USSR pierced each pack many times. Now we’ll have to find a way to separate sugar and buckwheat.”

We stayed in Lido di Ostia two more months. Each day we spent some time separating sugar and buckwheat.

I remembered at that time that my wife did not know her father. He was arrested and shot without trial when she was three months old. 30 years later her mother received a letter from a government that he was innocent.

I remembered that my grandfather was arrested, tortured and then released because he did not do anything wrong. However, he died in three months after his release.

I remembered that after we applied for a permission to leave the USSR we were treated as enemies of the state. We were lucky to get the permission but authorities forced us to pay substantial sum for every member of the family and then allowed to take with us only $400. We left behind our savings for many years of hard work.

I thought how lucky we were to escape from the Soviet Union whose government managed to murder 30 millions of its own people.

We were lucky to leave robbers of dignity, freedom and happiness behind.

I never expected that we would find people in America who would think that socialism could be good.

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery..”
― Winston S. Churchill

Selected Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.

It isn’t sufficient just to want – you’ve got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.

To reach a port, we must sail – sail, not tie at anchor – sail, not drift.

WE LIVE MANY LIVES.

It is trying time for people who lived both in Ukraine and Russia. I am one of these people. That’s why I decided to reblog this post today.

Life is fair and beautiful!

Long ago I came to two conclusions: 1. Life is wonderful! 2. You have to pay for happiness. The very best is not given for nothing!

PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Some years ago I thought that it was not fair that I worked very hard for many years but I have no property.

I never had a bird like below or a horse like below. I never had a castle like below either.

Then I reminded myself that I have a wonderful family, that God gave me an opportunity to live a new life in the USA, freedom to think and choose, ability to learn, appreciate and travel.

I have no property but we visited more than 50 countries and enjoyed beauty of many places including the magical Hawaiian island Maui (see the last photo below).

It is clear that we can easily do without a macaw or a gorgeous horse or a beautiful castle.

There are many pleasures in life each day. A smile, a kiss, a good word, a flower, a cup of coffee, a good book. We just need to…

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