From a mail list I subscribe to:

* The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.
–Henry Louis Mencken
* There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability.
It is the ability to recognize ability.
–Robert Half

But we live through the fine days without noticing them; only when we fall on evil ones do we wish to have back the former. With sour faces we let a thousand bright and pleasant hours slip by unenjoyed and afterwards vainly sigh for their return when times are trying and depressing. Instead of this, we should cherish every present moment that is bearable, even the most ordinary, which with such indifference we now let slip by, and even with impatience push on.
–Arthur Schopenhauer

Change
* If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.
–Kurt Lewin
* The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
–Alfred North Whitehead, 1861 - 1947
* Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
–Arnold Bennett
* It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is most adaptable to change.
–Charles Robert Darwin, 1809 - 1882

In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will now and then peek out and show itself.
–Benjamin Franklin

* When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
–Albert Einstein
* All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.
–Thomas J. Watson

Society is composed of two great classes: those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
–Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas de Chamfort, writer (1741 - 1794)

I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.
–Oscar Wilde

The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.
–Ogden Nash, author (1902 - 1971)

An admonition of Pope John XXIII: "Notice everything. Overlook much. Improve a little."

* All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
–Aristotle
* All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words:
freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
–Sir Winston Churchill

***

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
–H. L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880 - 1956)

* The place where optimism flourishes most is the lunatic asylum.
–Henry Havelock Ellis
* In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
–Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

War is, at first, the hope that we will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn’t any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone’s being worse off.
–Karl Kraus

The chains of matrimony are so heavy that two are required to carry them – sometimes three.
–Alexander Dumas

I have been following some comments on an autism email list which are worth noting. Troubling at one level and interesting at another. A mother of a child with autism wrote that a friend/relative had a young child who shows no sign of autism and that she was jealous of her friend and mourning her lost dreams for her child. Not quite what she said, but I believe accurate as to the gist of it. Now this list includes some individuals with high functioning autism (perhaps Asperger's not sure) who can participate in the stream of consciousness that is an email list. (Notably, this is way beyond the capability of my son.) The couple of individuals who replied who are "on the spectrum" took great offense that this woman would find anything to mourn in having a child with autism. The discussion went on from there.

I have seen this type of discussion in a number of different forums. My take on it is that autism is such a broad category, that there are high functioning individuals on the spectrum who do not recognize individuals who are further away from the NT side of the continuum so that they identify autism as what they are and not what these other individuals are. As a parent, I can only relate to the type/degree of autism that my son has and find that the comments against this mother lack empathy, which can be one of those things which accompany autism. The fact that a parent might mourn their lost dreams of what a child could be or do, does not mean they love what their child is any less. This point is often lost on many individuals.

For my part I fear my child's future in a world without his parents. It will happen one day unless he goes home before we do.