There’s no better place to get sage and entertaining words of wisdom than in Pioneer Village at the great Indiana State Fair. I’ve read those plaques and whimsically framed adages since I was a child. Let’s revisit some of our favorites:

Hung over the Village’s homey kitchen: Tramp Starr, a famous Indian poet, once said, “The farm kitchen is ‘a homely place of spicy smell, of easy chairs and drowsy heat; a place where human beings dwell in coatless ease and slippered feet.’” 

Will Rogers was always good with a one-liner: “Get someone else to blow your horn and sound will carry twice as far.”

The Oak Ridge Boys pull your heart strings with, “Did you ever stop to think or wonder why the nearest thing to heaven is a child?”

In 1896, William Jennings Bryan foresaw a scary future: “Destroy our cities and they will spring up again as if by magic. Destroy our farms and grass will grow up in the streets of every city in the nation.”

John Baptiste Colbert brings us humor with, “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest amount of hissing.”

Do you have a sluggard on the farm? Edgar Watson Howe advised, “Even if a farmer intends to loaf, he gets up in time to get an early start.”

Think on this from Woodrow Wilson: “A man’s rootage is more important than his leafage.”

This observation by Sam Rayburn is relevant today: “The greatest domestic problem facing our country is saving our soil and water. Our soil belongs to unborn generations.”

Leave it to Mark Twain to say it well during a political season with: “Why pay money to have your family tree traced? Go into politics, and your opponents will do it for you.”