Pamela Boyd

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!”
― Dr. Suess

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
― Elizabeth Warren

“Actually, this is a poem my father once showed me, a long time ago. It has been bastardized many times, in many ways, but this is the original:

The Cold Within

Six men trapped by happenstance,
in bleak and bitter cold

Each possessed a stick of wood,
or so the story's told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
the first man held his back

For of the faces round the fire,
he noticed one was black.

One man looking cross the way,
saw one not of his church

And could not bring himself to give
the fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes,
he gave his coat a hitch

Why should his log be put to use
to warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
of the wealth he had in store

And how to keep what he had earned
from the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man's face bespoke revenge
as the fire passed from his sight,

For all he saw in his stick of wood
was a chance to spite the white.

And the last man of this forlorn group
did naught except for gain,

Giving only to those who gave,
was how he played the game

The logs held tight, in death's still
hands,
was proof of human sin

They didn't die from the cold without,
they died from the cold within.”
― James Patrick Kinney