Perhaps I’m feeling lazy or guilty about where we are and how we’re living or perhaps the cold meds are kicking in. Some observations, in no particular order, starting with a couple of reflections on my sailing adventure:

1. Experience is wisdom you don’t have until just after you need it. Unknown
2. Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment. Margaret Atwood
3. You can never have enough of what you don’t need to make you happy. Eric Hoffer.
4. We know for certain only when we know little. With knowledge, comes doubt. Goethe.
5. Whereas it has been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor. Unknown.
6. The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. Plato
7. It is not worth an intelligent [person]’s time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that. G. H. Hardy.
8. The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. Thomas Friedman.
9. Perhaps the biggest black mark against mankind has been its subjugation of women.
10. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. Omar Bradley.
    
11. The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
12. Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. Andre Gide.
13. My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. Adlai Stevenson.
14. The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. Ralph W. Sockman.
15. Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. Abraham Lincoln.
16. Our current form of Populism is driven by the popularity among white males to claim victimhood and discrimination to explain their own shortcomings.
17. If people knew the story of their lives, how many would elect to live them? Cormac McCarthy.
18. Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. Mignon McLaughlin.
19. The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny.’ Isaac Asimov.
20. Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin. Grace Hansen.
21. When we tug on a single thing in nature, we find it attached to everything else. John Muir.
22. Now is the time for all good men to come to. Walt Kelly.
23. We are here on earth to do good to others. What others are here for, I don’t know. W. H. Auden.
24. Bad science does not make good theology.

And a few of many other possibilities from a short list of authors to round it off:

Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. George Washington.

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? Abraham Lincoln.

If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us; if we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us. George W. Bush.

There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America. Barack Obama.

When you’re a star, women let you. Donald Trump.

In the ’60s and ’70s, there was an environmental mantra like, “The solution to pollution is dilution.” We now know that the oceans aren’t big enough. The past year has also taught me that, regardless of the surroundings, you can’t get far enough away.