Based On A True Story: July 2026

Saturday, July 4, 2026

Happy 4th!

Photo: © Stan B.

I can pass (in a crowd), and am no doubt considered some kinda Arab when in Europe (hell, most Americans ain't sure what a Puerto Rican is)- but this is indeed interesting! Meanwhile, this is as borderline Genius, as this is hilariously obvious. And as to further round out our nation's great history... Enjoy the day!

Grandmaster Flash- A child is born with no state of mind, blind to the ways of mankind.

Goethe- The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

African Proverb- The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.

Ann Landers- Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.

Edward Snowden- I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act.

Mohandas Gandhi- Poverty is the worst form of violence.

Zapata- La tierra es de quien la trabaja con sus manos.

Mark Twain- When the rich rob the poor, it's called business. When the poor fight back, it's called violence.

Milan Kundera- The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Voltaire- Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Chris Hedges- Civilizations in the final stages of decay are dominated by elites out of touch with reality.

Karl Stojka, Holocaust Survivor- It was not Hitler or Himmler who deported me, beat me, killed my relatives. It was the milkman, the neighbor, the shoemaker, the doctor who was given a uniform and believed they were a master race.

Christopher Hitchens- I have always found it quaint, and rather touching, that there is a movement in the US (Libertarians) that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.

Claude Chabrol- Intelligence has its limits while stupidity has none.

Carl T. Rowan- It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.

African Proverb- The foreigner sees only what he knows.

George Orwell- The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

Elliott Erwitt- I don't believe that photography can change the world, but it can show the world changing.

Gilles Peress- I don't care so much anymore about 'good photography.' I am gathering evidence for history.

Yogi Berra- You can observe a lot just by watching.

Dorothea Lange- A camera is an instrument that teaches us how to see without a camera.

George Bernard Shaw- A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.
Henry David Thoreau- It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
Robert Dosineau- If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time.

Pentti Sammallahti- Everything I've photographed exists regardless of me, my role is only to be receptive. The most important thing is the luck... behind every good image there is the good luck too. Sometimes when you are in a right place in the right moment, you'll feel that the image is a gift and even that it doesn't matter who's behind the camera.

Robert Adams- Almost all photographers have incurred large expenses in the pursuit of tiny audiences, finding that the wonder they’d hoped to share is something few want to receive.

Duane Michals- Never trust any photograph so large it can only fit inside a museum.

Lisette Model- Photography is the easiest art, which perhaps makes it the hardest.

Andrew Savulich- The best way to make money with a camera is to sell it.

Paul Watson- A person without regrets is a person who has not lived a life of diversity of interests and cause.

MLK- Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Prof. Ivan King- Can we really claim to know anything about the nature of the universe if we don't know the properties, or even the nature, of 90% of its material?

Dr. Wernher von Braun- It is as impossible to confirm them (UFOs) in the present as it will be to deny them in the future.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell- I happen to be privileged enough to be in on the fact that we have been visited on this planet, and the UFO phenomenon is real.