“I drank what?” - Socrates
It is not impossibilities which fill us with the deepest despair, but possibilities which we have failed to realize.
– Robert Mallet
Do not create a child to be a post set in an orthodox row; raise investigators and thinkers, not disciples and followers; cultivate reason, not faith; cultivate investigation, not superstition.
– Robert G. Ingersoll
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.
– Bertrand Russell
. . . behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. . .
– Job 28:28
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
– Bertrand Russell
Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.
– George Burns
I have so many, I’ll give you two of my favourites, unfornutaley they are worthless without the context. I’ve chosen two that shows the human resolution in the face of terrible odds.
I am a roman history slut and this one was actually sent by Constantine XI Dragases to Mehmet the conqueror (shortly before the latter conquered Constantinople and ended the last remanent of the Roman Empire in 1453):
“Since neither oaths nor treaties nor submission can secure peace, pursue your impius warfare. My trust is in god alone. If he pleases to mollify your heart I will rejoice in the happy event. If he delivers the city into your hands I submit to his holy will without a murmour but until the judge of earth decides between us it is my duty as a Christian an as a soldier to fight to the last for my people”.
Imagine that you are in ancient greece, you are in a field near termopilas and you are watching a handfull of greeks (a couple of hundreds) facing the endless number of Asia. Xerxes king of kings was personally leading the Persiam host. Leonidas King of Sparta was the comander of the greeks. Imagine the despair of the latter when he saw rank after rank of enemy soldiers preparing for battle. Leonidas has already said goodbye to his wife, she had asked for last instruction and he gave her them “Marry a good man and have many children”, he considered himself dead.
King Xerxes sent an ultimatum: “Surrender your weapons”, Leonidas answer and my famus quote was simply:
Come and get them.
It always brings tear to my eyes.
Incidentally I have 400 kb of quotes in my hard drive, most are in english (since I got them from the web) I would be more than happy to send it to any doper that wants them, my e-mail is in my profile.
Another superb quote from Leonidas:
“But Sire, they are so many, their arrows darken the sun!”
“So much the better - we will fight in the shade.”
Regards,
Shodan
Some favorite art quotes:
“Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.” --Adorno, Minima moralia
“I don’t use drugs; my dreams are frightening enough.” – M. C. Escher
“Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.” – Frank Zappa
“Art hath an enemy called ignorance.” – Ben Johnson
“The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.” – Albert Camus
“Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality.” – Goethe
“The truth is that it does not require a graduate degree in musicology or art history to appreciate what they call great art. What it does require is equal parts of modesty and vulnerability, and a preference for the small truth over the big lie.” – Robert Shaw
“When one buys some of my artwork I hope it is because they will wish to learn from it and not because they think it will match their drapes!” – Christian Cardell Corbet, 1997
“The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.” – Eric Hoffer
“A guidance counselor who has made a fetish of security, or who has unwittingly surrendered his thinking to economic determinism, may steer a youth away from his dream of becoming a poet, an artist, a musician or any other of thousands of things, because it offers no security, it does not pay well, there are no vacancies, it has no “future”.” – Henry M Wriston, 11th president of Brown University (1889-1978)
“No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.” – Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827)
Two from Pete Steele of Type O Negative:
“Functionless art is simply tolerated vandalism.”
“Don’t mistake lack of talent for genuis.”
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed…To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men.”—Albert Einstein.
The broad mass of a nation . . . will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.
– Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf
“Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.”
– Freewheelin’ Franklin
“The real enemy is fear. We think it is hatred - but it is fear.” - Mohandas K. Gandhi
“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” - Ed Wynn
“The one thing that cannot be taught, but must be learned, is understanding.” - Zen proverb
“Adversity introduces a man to himself.”
- Arn Anderson
“How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?”
- Verbal Kent