The Fridge Idea

A silly idea to introduce a little culture into our apartment by posting literary quotes or odd bits of poetry on our apartment refrigerator has turned into an outreach effort to enlighten and stimulated the minds of our friends and the casual passersby. Each roommate will submit a weekly quote or image from literature, history, art, cinema, etc. You are invited to explore our weekly entries and to vote on the entry that will adorn our fridge for the next week. Perhaps you may begin by considering the cultural, historical, or artistic significance of each entry; what do you think we should “digest” this week. The selection criteria should remain quite elastic and be driven by you. Really, we just hope that on occasion we might inspire you to revisit a book you’ve set aside, memorize a bit of verse, rent a movie you haven’t seen, or stroll through a museum gallery. Enjoy!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Weekly Entries for Week of April 20-26, 2009

Entry 1

In honor of tax day...

Friends, says he, and neighbors, the taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly, and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement. However let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us; God helps them that help themselves, as Poor Richard says, in his almanac of 1733.

Benjamin Franklin -- from "The Way to Wealth"

Entry 2

Love your enemy. It will scare the hell out of them.

Mark Twain

Entry 3

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

Thomas Jefferson

A friend told me that luck was completely random. This quote was my rebuttal.

Entry 4

"I think it would seem a little easier if the memories were shared. You and I wouldn't have to bear so much by ourselves, if everyone took a part." The Giver sighed, "You're right," he said, "But then everyone would be burdened and pained. They don't want that...They selected me-and you-to lift that burden from themselves.

...The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.

The Giver, by Lois Lowry (FFT's first quote by a woman!)

5 comments:

  1. This is the hardest vote yet. Do I go for most timely? Stand loyal to my gender? Choose the funny one? The one that's most meaningful to me? The one that brings me back to my childhood? The one that I would do well to listen to and learn from at this moment in my life? The one with a typo out of sympathy for the contributor?

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  2. Rebuttal to the rebuttal: Jefferson was speaking tongue in cheek there--he was making my point exactly. Luck is random--if you want to do better than chance, put in some effort. :)

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  3. I am sure he was talking tongue-in-cheek, but that does not mean that the quote doesn't mean exactly what TJ said, that hard work and luck seem to have a positive relationship. And even if you could say, in the name of ambiguity, that he did not say what he meant, it would still be a stretch to conclude from this quote alone that what he really meant was that luck = perfectly random chance. Rather, I think that the underlying message of this quote was that some see good fortune as "luck", but that more often good fortune is a blessing or reward for some unwitnessed act or deed. Just fridge for thought.

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  5. I deleted my own comment, but I won't leave you in suspense.

    I didn't have a chance to vote, but I think I would have voted for Mark Twain. It was short and to the point. Tax day was too long and preachy, and the luck one I wouldn't have voted on simply out of the fact that John gave away that he submitted it. You have inspired me to re-read "The Giver" though. I vaguely remember that I liked that book.

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