Favourite quotes

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I am one half
Bad math
Faceted
Fractured
Subtracted
Divided
Into parts
One mind
Two hearts
Broken
Into less than the sum
Of my parts
A blind artist
Of lost arts
…
I am a broken promise.
I am deceitful ink.
As false as my death certificate
With it’s official stamp.
All words are lies.
The truth is written in scars.
– From David Mack’s Kabuki.

“Pain? I am the boiling man… I know pain at the molecular level… it pulls at my atoms… sings to me in an alphabet of fear… come to break the bones of your sins, meat puppet…”
– From James O’Barr’s The Crow.

“Oi can’t come to the fuckin’ phone at the minute, 'cause oi’m pissed outta me skull at Fisted Sister’s on Divisadero. Yeh can leave a message after the beep, yeh bollucks. BEEEP.”
– From Garth Ennis’ Preacher.

42

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open. George Bernard Shaw
Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people. George Bernard Shaw

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
The Cremation of Sam McGee, Robert W. Service

43

“In the midst of winter I found that within me was an invincible summer.” Albert Camus

44

In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. -Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)

45

Recall the folksy wisdom of Lewis Grizzard, who was married many times: “Next time, instead of getting married, I’m just going to find a woman I don’t like and buy her a house.”

46

There’s no happy ending to cocaine. You either die, you go to jail, or else you run out.
-Sam Kinison

47

Good god, where to begin? :eek:

Well, some highlights from my collection, at least. Starting with, I think, my favorite…

“if somebody’s trying to shut you up, sing louder and, if possible, better."—Salman Rushdie

“…I will not be shackled by the failures of your God. The only ‘blasphemy’ is to wallow in insignificance! I have taken the refuse of your God’s failures, and I have triumphed!”
—Herbet West, Bride of Re-Animator

“The great questions of the day will not be settled by speeches and majority decisions, but by blood and iron.” - Otto Von Bismarck

“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue - and thoroughly immoral - doctrine ‘that violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.”—Robert A. Heinlein

“Freedom to starve is no freedom.”
—Harper, Sharpe’s Rifles

“[Kipling] sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilised, are there to guard and feed them.” [Sometimes paraphrased as “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf”]—George Orwell

“My land is where my dead are buried”
—Crazy Horse

“What is strong wins: that is the universal law. If only it were not so often precisely what is stupid and evil!”
-Frederich Nietzsche

48

Wow, some really, really good stuff here. Thanks everyone.

Another:

“In your mental universe, certainty exists only in the dictionary. Somewhere between ‘cerebrum’ and ‘cervix’.”

Jean-Claude Koven, in Going Deeper.

49

Shit, apologies, “some” should be “lots of”. Lots of really, really good stuff.

50

“The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum” is Finagle’s First Law, by Larry Niven (may his tribe increase!).

OTOH:
“No matter how good she looks, some guy somewhere is sick and tired of putting up with her shit” is not. :stuck_out_tongue:

51

And

and

But most of all

52

“Have you ever noticed how much better everything seems after a good breakfast?” Death, the High Cost of Living, by Neil Gaiman

“You will find the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.” John Kenneth Galbraith

53

“There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full, and it was a bigger glass!” - Terry Pratchett

There is a rather staggering amount of truth in this quote.

54

“You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word” - Al Capone

55

“I would rather have one fool againt me than a thousand on my side”
Voltaire

56

I always thought this was actually a really stupid analogy. Is he suggesting that following the path of least resistance is bad? Or is he saying that a river being crooked is bad? Because actually a river following the path of least resistance is a good thing. By being crooked, the flow slows, creating better habitat, allowing silt to be deposited, which increases the fertility of the soil, and not only that but looks a hell of a lot prettier. Or maybe he’s trying to suggest that the profit system is “crooked” as in ripping you off. If that’s the case then he’s using one meaning of the word to imply the other, but in such a way that it implies that both are bad. I’m sorry to point it out but ultimately this part of the quote is kinda sucky.

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

57

Reminds me of the one that says:
“Optimist says- Half full. The Pessimist says_ Half empty. The Engineer says- This glass is twice as big as it needs to be”

58

You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep-seated need to believe.

Carl Sagan

59

This quote is from a 1963 Outer Limits episode entitled “The Invisibles” -

“World conquerors may sometimes become fools but fools never become world conquerors.”

60

Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.
William Butler Yeats

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
Oscar Wilde

We all worry about the population explosion, but we don’t worry about it at the right time.
Arthur Hoppe

Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
George Burns