Monday, August 22, 2011

The Lighter Side of US Presidential Quotes


                                     

All great change in America begins at the dinner table.
Ronald Reagan

And these days at Starbucks, McDonalds, Panera, and other WiFi hot spots too  – where you can bet young 20 somethings and 30 somethings are hatching the next Facebook, Pinger, Foursquare, Groupon, Pinterest, Teach America, and what have you!


Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
Abraham Lincoln

Indeed...it's why we spend oodles of money on Botox, Rogaine, Olay Regenerist, Restylane, LipoSuction, Tummy Tucks, Eyebrow Lifts, Lasik, Photo Rejuvenation, Teeth Whitening, and other age-defying solutions.


Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
Thomas Jefferson

Wonder what President Jefferson (who is reported to have owned one of the largest collection of books of all time - about 7000 volumes - now held by the Library of Congress), would have had to say about the Amazon Kindle and its capacity to hold 3,500 books!


Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
Thomas Jefferson

Hail to more text messaging and blogging???


The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer... form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws.
Andrew Jackson

Then along came computer makers, bio-technologists and software programmers!


The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.
Herbert Hoover

And now to the full Home Theater!


Four-fifths of all our troubles would disappear, if we would only sit down and keep still.
Calvin Coolidge

If 24 hour TV and unlimited internet access doesn't turn us into complete couch potatoes, that is!

P.S. Hope you enjoyed this post. As always, thanks for reading.

P.S. 2: 'Couch potato' has an interesting history.  It dates back to 1976, when a guy named Tom Iacino began to call himself and his friends Boob Tubers, Boob Tubers being those who favored watching TV (the Boob Tube) and eating junk food over exercising and eating healthy. Iacino substituted ‘tuber’ with ‘potato’ a little later, and then added the prefix ‘couch’ based on the fact most people watch TV from their couches. Soon after, Robert Armstrong, a fellow ‘couch potato’ created a graphic for ‘couch potato’, registered it as a trademark, and licensed it for use on t-shirts and other merchandise. And that's how 'couch potato' came to be.

P.S. 3: Today, of course, it is a huge challenge to keep from becoming a couch potato, whether you are a toddler, a teen, or an adult. Popular programs like MTV's Jersey Shore and ABC's The Secret Life of the American Teenager, keep teens glued to the telly – if it's not TV, it's Facebook, texting, or Twitter. Making me think if TV programming became dry and boring, and Facebook and Twitter went down for a day or two every week, it may not be such a bad thing!

P.S. 4: Since I wish you good health above all, I hope that when you turn on the TV or your computer during your leisure time today, you find everything so boring, you turn it off and head to the gym for some fun! Yes, that would be great!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Most Interesting, Minoo!
ajay