“The future is already hear. It’s just not evenly distributed” --William Gibson.
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” --Dorothy Parker.
Pratchett:
“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.”
OBrian (roughly quoted):
“Patriotism is typically either, 'My country is always right.” which is imbecile or ‘My country right or wrong’ which is infamous."
Woolfe:
“Words fail.”
3 from a David Carr story in the New York Times:
“When a memory is called to answer, it often answers back with deception.”
“How is it that almost every warm bar stool contains a hero, a star of his own epic, who is the sum of his amazing stories?”
“We tell ourselves that we lie to protect others, but the self usually comes out looking damn good in the process.”
Hyman Rickover (I’m not sure if it was his own quote, or if he was quoting someone else):
“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”
T.H. White (The Book of Merlyn):
“No one would have thought of extending the blessings of Christianity to Montezuma, if his sandals had not been made of gold; and no one would have thought the gold itself a sufficient temptation, if he had not been needing a shot of adrenaline.”
This Albert Einstein quote sums up my rather cynical view of humanity:
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) in Inherit the Wind:
[challenged to say if he considers anything holy]
“Yes. The individual human mind. In a child’s power to master the multiplication table, there is more sanctity than in all your shouted “amens” and “holy holies” and “hosannas.” An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man’s knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters.”
“Favorite qoutes? What’s a ‘qoute’?”
– Musicat
“Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. …voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
– Herman Goering
“Bernard Shaw attempted something of this sort in Saint Joan, explaining in the preface that he was writing tragedy, not melodrama, and defining the difference elagantly: ‘Melodrama deals with the conflict of good and evil, tragedy with the conflict of good and good.’ Not quite; it would be better to define tragedy as the conflict of ambiguity and ambiguity.”
– Robert Anton Wilson, reviewing Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon
The greatest heel ever in WWF/WWE history in my opinion.
“Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy’s first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world’s one, and only truth.” - Alphonse Elric in Full Metal Alchemist
“But there was a sense that, why tie it up with a bow? If the future is changeable, then the battle is something that has to be fought continuously. And you can’t do it with a single stroke. That it’s the dualism, the dynamic between good and evil that’s eternal.” - James Cameron
“Please allow me to wipe the slate clean. Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega. An end in itself.” - Florentino Ariza in Love in the Time of Cholera
“Each event is preceded by Prophecy.
But without the hero,
there is no Event.”
-Zurin Arctus | the Underking
“Who we are is but a stepping stone to what we can become.” - Deus Ex 3
FREEEEEEEEEDOOOOM!!
- Mel Gibson, Braveheart
I cried like a bitch. (Not making a sexist remark or any of that bs, for all you feminists.)
Damn. You beat me to it. Also:
“In dance as in life, grace glides in on blistered feet.” - Don’t know who said this.
“A great empire and little minds go ill together.” - Edmund Burke
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)” - Walt Whitman
I didn’t know he was the source of that quote. Cool.
If once a man indulges in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
(On Murder as One of the Fine Arts: Thomas de Quincey)
And a favorite saying of my father, the nuclear reactor engineer – I have no idea where he got it:
There is no problem brute force and ignorance cannot solve.
Bertrand Russell should have read a little more closely - Matthew 10:16.
Regards,
Shodan
I much prefer dangerous freedom to peaceful slavery. - Thomas Jefferson
A golf course is the willful and deliberate misuse of a perfectly good rifle range. - Bill O’Connor
A ship in harbor is safe. But that is not what ships are for. - John A. Shedd
A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares about more than he does his own personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. - John Stuart Mill
History teaches us that man learns nothing from history. - Henry David Thoreau
An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it. - Col. Jeff Cooper
Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don’t. - Anonymous
If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
—Anon
Even Wiki seems unsure who said it first or how but
I’d rather have a half bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy
“All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.”
– Adolf Hitler
“To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions.” ~William James
"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment; full effort is full victory.” ~Mohandas Gandhi
“If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.” ~Alice Roosevelt Longworth
“A child is a curly dimpled lunatic.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson