January 2020

The MLO Minute: By, Dennis McAndrews, Esq.

A great many of the families we represent are truly inspirational to us. They may be caring for an elderly loved one, working to secure an appropriate education for their children, or providing day-to-day comfort for family members and individuals in the community. Their efforts are a source of inspiration to all of us at our legal family. In addition to the inspiration our clients provide to us, we frequently share within our firm uplifting messages which we find through outside reading from philosophy, history, theology, and other sources by the great thinkers. During the course of the year, we offer dozens of these messages among our colleagues, all of which remind us of issues and considerations that are bigger than our own selves, and frequently reflect the attributes we see in our clients. We offer to you some of our “Thoughts for the Day” which we shared among us in 2019.

 

“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”

-Abraham Joshua Heschel

 

 

“There is a proverb that says, ‘How you see is what you see.’ If we look at a person or an object or an event with a negative attitude, we will judge them…as not worth our time or attention. On the other hand, if we look at them with a positive or at least an open-minded attitude, we will more likely judge them positively and act accordingly.”

-Martin Pable

 

 

“The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.”

-Ronald Reagan

 

 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

 

 

“We do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”

– Thomas Jefferson

 

 

 “Time is passing. Yet for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died with honor. We will remember every family that lives with grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children…”  

– President George W. Bush

 

 

“The works of man, whether they are good or bad, are not always isolated, transitory acts; more often, especially in the case of the leaders of nations and those who are invested with public authority, continue to subsist after they are concluded, either in the memory of other men or in public acclaim, as a result of the consequences they have had and the scandal they have caused….God will examine them in their effects upon other men, in the good or evil deriving from them for families and peoples—in a word, in the consequences they produced and which those who perpetrated them ought to have foreseen.”

-Rev. Charles Arminjon

 

 

“Your smile is your logo, your personality is your business card, how you leave others feeling after having an experience with you becomes your trademark.”

– Jay Danzie

 

 

“Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. “

-Lou Holtz

 

 

“Characterize people by their actions and you’ll never be fooled by their words.”

-Anonymous

 

 

“What more powerful manifestation of America’s commitment to human freedom than the sight of wave after wave after wave of young men boarding those boats to liberate people they had never met?”

-President Barack Obama on Anniversary of D-Day

 

 

“Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”

-John Wooden

 

 

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

-John Wooden

 

 

“Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring.” 

-Caterina di Giacomo di Benincasa (Catherine of Siena)

 

 

 

“Communication takes place in the mind of the listener not the speaker.”

-Peter Drucker

 

 

“There’s still time for joy and gladness to touch a sad and lonely soul, still time to feed a hungry child, to wrap a present for a kind old man feeling forlorn and afraid, and to reach out to an abandoned mother raising children on her own. There’s still time to remember our Armed Forces, to express our profound gratitude to those keeping watch on faraway frontiers of freedom, and to redouble our energies to account for our MIA’s. They are not and never will be forgotten. And there’s still time to remember the deepest truth of all: that there can be no prisons, no walls, no boundaries separating the members of God’s family.

Let us reach out tonight to every person who is persecuted; let us embrace and comfort, support and love them. Let us come together as one family under the fatherhood of God, binding ourselves in a communion of hearts, for tonight and tomorrow and for all time. May we give thanks for an America abundantly blessed, for a nation united, free, and at peace. May we carry forward the happiness of the Christmas spirit as the guiding star of our endeavors 365 days a year. And as we light this magnificent tree, may all the youthful hope and joy of America light up the heavens and make the angels sing.”

-Ronald Reagan, 1985 Lighting of the National Christmas Tree