Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood. — Donnie Darko

There are people I know who always seem to be going through some trouble or tribulation.  Sometimes it’s pure bad luck.  Occasionally it’s others who are truly out to get someone.  But mostly, in my experience, it’s bad choices coming home to roost.  Bad things happen to good people all the time, but when it’s a way of life, you can usually find the root of the problem in decisions that were made years ago.  You make your own luck, but if you’re setting yourself up for failure, that’s what you will usually get.

I’d say the odds against a successful escape are about 100 to one. But may I add another word, Colonel? The odds against survival in this camp are even worse. — The Bridge on the River Kwai

Sometimes there is no good solution.  In fact, in my experience, it’s more often the case that you have to pick the least worst solution to any given problem.  The trick is to be able to tell which choice leads to the frying pan, and which leads to the fire.

You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we’ll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die. – Casablanca

Someday, we may forgive, but we must never forget.   We cannot deny our anger, but neither can we allow it to drive us into becoming monsters.  We have spent over a decade trying to avenge those we lost, and trying to prevent such atrocities from happening again.  It is time to remember those we lost, and renew our promise to protect against the jackals who snarl at us from the dark.

Walter! I look awful in black.– Father Goose

It’s amazing how your attitude toward risk changes when others depend on you.  Once someone else looks to you as a huge part of your life, you suddenly feel the responsibility to be there for them.  Taking chances for the sole reason that it’s fun and makes you feel good loses its allure pretty quickly after you look down at a child that depends on you or a spouse that wants to keep you.

A man who kills without reason cannot be reasoned with. — How to Train Your Dragon 2

The world is populated with good people.  For the most part, they want to make their way in the world, take care of their kids, and leave the rest of us alone.  They live in such a way that they don’t cause intentional harm to others.

But not everyone is like that.  There are those whose minds are so broken that they cause harm to others as part of their madness.  There are those who are so desperate that they choose to cause harm in order to get the things they need to survive.  And there are a few who cause harm just because they want to watch the rest of us suffer.

The insane can be either treated or sequestered so that they hurt no-one.  The desperate can be punished and then shown a way to get through life without needing to harm others.  As for those who hurt others for the fun of it, well, there really isn’t anything you can do to fix evil.  All you can do is protect against it and hunt it down when it rears its head.

That’s an attitude, sir, that calls for the most delicate judgment on both sides. Because, as you know, sir, in the heat of action men are likely to forget where their best interests lie and let their emotions carry them away. — The Maltese Falcon

The funny thing about shooting a stage at the pistol club is that I have a chance to see how things are laid out, I usually get to watch at least one other person go through it, and I still let the adrenaline get away from me.  Things I told myself not to do happen as if I’d practiced them.  Things I practiced, well, let’s just say that my muscle memory isn’t what it ought to be at times.

And that’s in a situation where I not only knew what to expect, but had mapped out in my mind how I was going to get through it.  Imagine what would happen when I was surprised, frightened, or just a little bit angry.

When you let your emotions, excitement, or whatever take control, things are going to go by really fast, and you are going to spend a lot of time, if you’re lucky, picking over what you did.  As much as you can, slow down, take a breath, and use your forebrain as something more than what you display your bangs on.

Look, these people, they have no jobs, no food, no education, no future. I just figure that we have two things we can do. Help, or we can sit back and watch a country destroy itself on CNN. Right? — Blackhawk Down

That line was written about a failed state in the Horn of Africa.  It could very easily reference a lot of places in the United States.  Big cities like Detroit and Los Angeles are eating their own tails, and whole swaths of their sprawl are no-go zones for decent people.  It could also be said for a lot of rural areas, like the San Joaquin Valley in California or small towns across the mid-west.  We have allowed entire generations to become dependent on government for everything, and Uncle Sugar is running out of money.  At least, he’s running out of money for the things these communities have become addicted to.  We have plenty of money to pay for vacations and travel for our elected elite.  We have plenty of money for studies on why life is unfair and why that makes some of us feel bad.  We have plenty of money to pay for the mistakes of corporations and to pay off political donors with lucrative contracts for self-licking ice cream cones.

If we are going to provide aid to the poor in this country, we need to provide aid that is going to get them to the point they don’t need it.  We need to educate them to give them the skills they need to find jobs.  We need to tailor entitlement programs so that only the basics of life are covered so that there is a stimulus to do better.  We need to make sure that they do not fall into the padded trap that having no consequences for bad decisions becomes.

If we’re going to continue to burn money to keep the lower classes from torching the joint, we might as well use it to make it less likely they’ll play with matches.

T.E. Lawrence: It’s my manner, sir.
General Murray: Your manner?
T.E. Lawrence: Yes. It looks insubordinate, but it isn’t really.

— Lawrence of Arabia

I’m told that I’m a bit of a smartass.  I have no idea what they’re talking about.  I just tend to see the world in a slightly twisted manner, and I find things that follow that twist as humorous.  Of course, I had a lot of my speech filters surgically removed years ago, so a lot of things that most people would just say in their heads and then enjoy a small chuckle go directly from brain to mouth with me.

Some see this as a career limiting trait.  I see it as a test to see who I can work with and who will be difficult.

It seems it always happens. Whenever we get too high-hat and too sophisticated for flag-waving, some thug nation decides we’re a push-over all ready to be blackjacked. And it isn’t long before we’re looking up, mighty anxiously, to be sure the flag’s still waving over us. — Yankee Doodle Dandy

I take a lot of things for granted in my day-to-day life.  I drive to work on pretty good roads.  My kids go to good schools.  My wife is relatively safe to walk in our parks, alone and unmolested.  It’s not like that for a vast number of people in our world.  Is all of this because we live in America?  Not entirely, because there are parts of our country where these things aren’t true.  But in all of the places I’ve visited and lived in, it’s never been as likely to be that way as it is here.  Yeah, we have our warts, and we fight amongst ourselves, but there’s nowhere else I’d rather live.

You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word. — The Untouchables

You can learn every martial art known to man.  You can work out until you resemble a side of beef.  You can carry every doo-dad and blade you want.  But at more than bad-breath distances, nothing beats a gun for self defense.  If a 97 year old grandmother, who weighs, maybe, a buck-oh-five soaking wet and holding a brick, can drive off an attacker with a couple of pounds of metal and a few grams of gunpowder, then the utility of a firearm wielded by the weaker against the stronger cannot be doubted.