MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE QUOTATIONS FROM WRITERS, POLITICAL LEADERS, AND OTHERS

---"An occasional compliment is necessary to keep up one's self-respect. ..When you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one." --- American author and humorist Mark Twain, in a notebook observation he reportedly wrote in 1894.

---"I can last two months on a good compliment." --- American author and humorist Mark Twain.

---"Self-criticism is the secret weapon of a democracy." --- Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Party Presidential Candidate in 1952 and 1956 (this quotation recalled from my memory of having once read this great 1950s observation by Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, and I will continue to search for the exact occasion and date on which then-Governor Stevenson offered this memorable observation in the 1950s).

---"Never despair!" (English translation of the Latin phrase "Nil Desperandum!") -- Horace, or Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (65 BC to 8 BC), a very influential poet and prominent citizen of the Roman Empire during the reign of Emperor Augustus.

MY 2014 ADVICE TO U.S. PRESIDENT OBAMA, IF HE EVER CONTACTS ME TO ASK FOR MY ADVICE ON HOW HE COULD IMPROVE HIS PERFORMANCE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

My advice to President Obama:
---You should do more to focus our nation's attention on the great strength that the United States could derive from developing a mutually-friendly and mutually-helpful and mutually-respectful relationship with our next door neighbor to the north, Canada.

---You could urge Congress to approve the annual proposed binational celebration of an "American-Canadian Friendship Day" each year that highlights and promotes the many ways in which American society and Canadian society benefit from and help to strengthen each other.

---You could repeatedly and publicly declare your goal of presiding over the nationwide establishment of a truly first-rate network of treatment programs for which any American citizen of any age could qualify for assistance on ridding themselves of their own addiction to marijuana or cocaine or heroin or methamphetamine or any other illicit drug; or their own addiction to drinking alcohol or tobacco products.

----You could urge Congress to approve financial incentives for private-sector employers throughout the United States to themselves each sponsor random drug testing on any and all of their employees, including their Chief Executive Officer, on a semiannual basis for each and every person employed by that company.

Results from those random drug tests could then serve as a basis for that company requiring that any employee who failed a random drug test must agree to participate in a company-sponsored drug-treatment program aimed at helping that employee to rid himself of his or her addiction to marijuana or any other illicit drug as soon as possible.

Any employee failing a random-drug screening test who then refuses to enroll in a drug-treatment program, could be fired from his job with that company on that basis. Also, any employee who participates in a drug-treatment program and later fails a random drug-test administered through his employer on at least two separate occasions, could himself be automatically fired from his job on that basis.

---You could ask the federal government to sponsor or co-sponsor a series of 30-second public-service announcements featuring a variety of famous and popular American professional athletes or varsity collegiate athletes or Hollywood actors or professional musicians, for that matter, who each declare to the America people why they themselves are very proud to be a TATTOO-LESS AMERICAN, and WHY THEY ARE VERY PLEASED WITH THE NATURAL LOOK OF THEIR OWN BODY THAT THEY WERE BORN WITH!

---You could call the world's attention to the Freedom of Speech-minded American society's great support for anyone's and everyone's legal right and human right to verbalize criticism of any and all religious denominations or religious congregations or religion-sponsored events or religion-sponsored institutions, including any and all religion-sponsored "educational" programs or "educational" institutions.

You could emphasize to the entire world that the American Constitution and the American legal system strongly disagree with the premise of many Moslems, for instance, that any criticism of their own Moslem religion, no matter how civilly worded the criticism, should be regarded by those Moslems as an invitation for violent retaliation by themselves.

You could emphasize your own view that the United States Constitution does NOT protect the so-called "legal right" of any religious group to attempt to censor or suppress the civilly-worded views on religion or politics that are held by individuals who are NOT themselves members of the former religious group.

---You could ask the Justice Department to help American society and the American legal system determine whether a religious group or religious-sponsored institution that responds to criticism of itself in a violent and illegal manner, or that engages in or advocates or serves as a spawning ground for violent activity in violation of the law, has thereby forfeited its own "Freedom of Speech" and "Freedom of Religion" rights that would otherwise have been extended to that religious group or religion-sponsored institution by the U.S. Constitution and the American legal system.