Mona Lisa's History and Philosophies

So our enemy should be ignorance, and we should all be fighting it instead of each other. I do not wish to scare anyone into hiding their heads under the sheets and becoming paralyzed with fear. We just need to keep pointed towards achieving our goals to safeguard life as we know it, or to make it even better.

Investing in stocks that have managers who value the bottom line in the short term and not taking into consideration their actions regarding the survival of life on our planet is a good example where diffusion of responsibility comes into play and can reek un-pleasant side effects - no one person would feel responsible for, yet we must look for these pitfalls before we foolishly squander our resources.

We should take care to invest in worthy goals and people. As Buddha taught, we should "Serve those who are worthy of serving, and be kind to all others".

One important goal should include being able to travel in space so if and when we need to find a new home on another safer planet, we will have already done all the preliminary colonizing work.

We need to keep educating ourselves, and extending our life expectancy, so we have time to accrue knowledge and put concepts into action. We should encourage brilliant minds to procreate and make life easier for such people to put their intellect towards our goals. Intelligence should be revered, not feared.

Is there a God? I don't know. I sure hope so, but the evidence is unclear. Perhaps there is. Perhaps there was a God or Gods, and he/she/it disappeared either temporarily or forever for whatever reason... Perhaps early in the history of humans on earth people knew these answers but through time, and for whatever reasons, the knowledge and truth about these matters has been lost. If you hear anyone say they actually "converse with God" these days, you would probably suspect they would be somewhat delusional, joking, or just plain lying. But because the belief some higher being is watching over us, and keeping a list of our deeds to judge us later and the fear/pleasure principle can be very motivating to keep humanity harmonic, lets count on there being a God, and lets agree to act accordingly - treating all humans with respect and love as we believe is the kind of behavior to allow us to enter into the beautiful realm promised by our various religions. But on the other hand, lets prepare for the other possibility. Let all of humanity ban together to work to find a cure for illnesses and aging ... to prolong our lives in health so we'll have time and ability to gain knowledge... to save ourselves and in the meantime, make our lives in the hear and now, more heavenly at the same time.

Norman Vincent Peale
Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.

"Garner up pleasant thoughts in your mind, for pleasant thoughts make pleasant lives." - John Wilkins (1614-1672)

Arnold H. Glasgow
Make your life a mission - not an intermission.

Mary Kay Ash
Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, Make Me Feel Important. Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.

Michel De Saint-Pierre
An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?

Karl A. Menninger
Attitudes are more important than facts.

Earl Nightingale
Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us.

John D. Rockefeller
I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money-making has never been my goal, I had an ambition to build.

Napoleon Bonaparte
Men take only their needs into consideration, never their abilities.

Charles Kettering
Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.

William Arthur Ward
A cloudy day is no match for a sunny disposition.

Sam Walton
High expectations are the key to everything.

Norman Vincent Peale
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes.

Lance Armstrong
I take nothing for granted. I now have only good days, or great days.

Empty pockets never held anyone back.
Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.

Attitudes are more important than facts.

A cloudy day is no match
for a sunny disposition.

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?

Dr. Robert Anthony
Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will.

<>Christian Furchtegott Gellert
Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.

W.W. Ziege
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help with man with the wrong mental attitude.

Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

William Shakespeare
Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Carl Menninger
Attitudes are more important than facts.

German proverb
To change and to change for the better are two different things.

Zig Ziglar

Success doesn't make you and failure doesn't break you.

Seneca
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The time is always right to do what is right.

William Faulkner
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

Harry Truman
A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

Chris Evert
A champion hates to lose even more than she loves to win.

An artist is not paid for her labor but for her vision.

Ann Landers
If I were asked to give what I consider the most useful bit of advice for all humanity it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, "I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me."

Albert Einstein
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.

James Dean
Dream as if you'll live forever ... live as if you'll die today.

W. Clement Stone
There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. That little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.

Earl Nightingale
Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us.


Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.....

Jim Valvano
My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.

Unknown Author
Do not regret growing old. It is a privilege denied to many.

Neil Simon
I love living. I have some problems with my life, but living is the best thing they've come up with so far.

Norman Vincent Peale
Live your life and forget your age.

Unknown Author
Act as though it is impossible to fail.

Albert Einstein
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

<>Napoleon Hill
No man is ever whipped, until he quits - in his own mind.

Maya Angelou
If you dont like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.

Sarah Brown
The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.

"MONA LISA"??

GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!!

ABOUT MY NAME... PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK eventually...

You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.

Yes, my parents, really named me Mona Lisa, but I have learned to live with that. Its a boring story, at least my husband sure thinks so - like most of my history. But that's because he heard it all before, a few times too many. But people always ask, so perhaps you are curious too. Here is story as I know it...

Actually I was born the year the song "Mona Lisa" by Nat King Cole was popular in the small town where I was born ... Folkston, Georgia. It was on the flip side of the big hit "Unforgettable"... That was in the days, when you could get a little record called a 45 RPM single, but it had one song on each side...

Apparently I sounded very much like a cat meowing when I cried... that could be a sign of mental retardation ...lol! anyhoo my big sister - her name is Audrey Levene, who was 5 years older than me, kept thinking there must be a cat in my crib or something like that I've been told, so she would call for the kitty when she heard me. Maybe they just liked that, or maybe they had second thoughts about my name, but they started calling me Kitty and the nickname stuck with me for a long time. Many people assumed I was really a Katherine, so that was ok with me, and my actual name was really kind of a secret for many years. Both names embarrassed me for many years, but one gets use to it, and life isn't always perfect. It is what you make of your life that matters. Someone once conveyed the idea to me that I could change the connotation of my name by my own life's actions, and I believe there is great truth to that...

I gave up the nickname when I went into 8th grade at a new school in Jacksonville, Florida. It was Bartram School for Girls... a very ritzy, but intensive school, where we used college textbooks even that young, and I had special tutoring after school and during the summer to catch up with the other students who had been there longer. I enjoyed the most phenomenal teachers.

Perhaps unfortunately, I only spent one year there, though it was the best educational institution I ever attended. The next year, my ninth grade, I went off to boarding school, (incidentally reverted back to my nickname Kitty when Mom spilled the beans and kept calling me that in front of my new roommates and housemother). I loved that year in the boarding school... it was a famous legendary school named Howey Academy, in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida.... But that lasted only one year as well.

I was just as happy if not more so when I moved on to the tenth grade in a public school in Riverview, Florida named East Bay High School. At East Bay, I insisted on using my middle name "Lisa". I'll never forget the first day of school, I was standing in line in the cafeteria, and one of the food servers thought I was a teacher. She said something like "Teachers eat in a the faculty dining area." LOL...! I looked mature for my age that day I guess. Mom always bought me the prettiest and incredibly expensive clothes, I guess perhaps it had had something to do with that.

I graduated from there and then moved to Tallahassee to get my B.A. degree in Psychology at Florida State University.

At FSU I went by "Mona" because it was on all my records as "Mona L. Price, and lets face it, simplicity is beautiful... "Mona". Simple and somewhat unique... it works. So call me Mona or call me Lisa... Or "hey gal!" works too. I'm really easy to please.

A. A. Milne:

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

Albert Einstein:

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Albert Einstein:

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

Arthur Koestler:

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Buckminster Fuller:

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

Edward de Bono:

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

Edwin Land:

Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.

Erich Fromm:

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Franklin D. Roosevelt:

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

Henry David Thoreau:

The world is but a canvas to the imagination.

Linus Pauling

The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.

Margaret J. Wheatley:

The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity.

Marie Antoinette:

There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.

Monica Baldwin:

The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there.

Nietzsche:

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.

Ray Bradbury:

Life is "trying things to see if they work."

Saul Steinberg:

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.

Unknown:

Creative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy.

Victor Hugo:

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

SOME GREAT SITES:

Margaret Thatcher:

If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.

Marian Wright Edelman:

If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it You just do it one step at a time.

Marian Wright Edelman:

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

Marian Wright Edelman:

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back -- but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.

Marian Wright Edelman:

You really can change the world if you care enough.

Mark Twain:

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

Moliere:

It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.

Noam Chomsky:

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like.

Pearl S. Buck:

When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.

Pearl S. Buck:

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible -- and achieve it, generation after generation.

Pearl S. Buck:

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

Pete Seeger:

"Do-so" is more important than "say-so."

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Skill to do comes of doing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders, so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (probably erroneously):

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

Reinhold Niebuhr:

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

Rita Mae Brown:

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.

Robert Collyer:

A man's best friends are his ten fingers.

Robert F. Kennedy:

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

Robert Frost:

The world is filled with willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover....

Thomas Alva Edison:

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

Thomas Jefferson:

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

William James:

He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had tried and failed.

Mona Lisa Abbott's Philosophies:

Make your life a mission - not an intermission...

"MONA LISA"??

GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!!

ABOUT MY NAME... PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK eventually...