Who was first?
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
-Denis Diderot
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
-Walt Whitman
“The border between the Real and the Unreal is not fixed, but just marks the last place where rival gangs of shamans fought each other to a standstill.”
- Robert Anton Wilson
“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.”
- Frank Herbert
neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering - Carl Jung
We are built [by natural selection] to be Effective animals, not happy ones. - Robert Wright
People say never confuse sex with love, but I say never confuse love with understanding. Just because I understand you doesn’t mean I love you - M.E. Thomas
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible. The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
“I’ll never understand people.” “They’re the worst.”
- Seinfeld
Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money.
-George Carlin
*Society is like chili, if you don’t keep things stirred up, the scum rises to the top.
*
-Edward Abbey
Here are a few favorites from my collection:
"Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
–Walker Percy
Make the truth apparent, and morality will take care of itself.
– Julian Barnes (of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
"If hard work were such a wonderful thing, the rich would keep it all to themselves.
– Labor leader Lane Kirkland.
“In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit but his face.”
– Diogenes
“If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it at all.”
–Mark Twain, on being tarred and feathered.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. - - Semisonic, “Closing Time”
All this useless information [in society], yet hanging between your legs is this thing that could crumble your entire empire seven minutes or less; don’t know a fucking thing about it. Even worse, you think it’s your friend, - Bill Burr talking about having a dick
There’s only two types of people who are against drugs: the people who have never done drugs and the people who really sucked at doing drugs. - Doug Stanhope
‘‘Cartman’s side is right. For the wrong reasons. But we are wrong. For the right reasons.’’ - Kyle
“Be as you wish to seem.” Socrates, attrib.
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. --James Branch Cabell
Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true—except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge. --Knoll’s Law of Media Accuracy, Erwin Knoll, editor, “The Progressive”
“That which is, is, and therefore has a right to be.”
A prof in one of my law school classes said that he would guarantee a passing grade to anyone who could identify the quote. He said he thought it was from Nietszche (sp?) but never could find it. He said he had been making the same offer for five years.
2 quotes attributed to Tom Hafey.
“EVERY MORNING IN AFRICA A GAZELLE WAKES UP. IT KNOWS IT MUST RUN FASTER THAN THE FASTEST LION OR IT WILL BE KILLED. EVERY MORNING A LION WAKES UP. IT KNOWS IT MUST OUTRUN THE SLOWEST GAZELLE OR IT WILL STARVE TO DEATH. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHETHER YOU’RE A LION OR A GAZELLE:
WHEN THE SUN COMES UP YOU’D BETTER BE RUNNING.”
Every frigging day the old bugger would get up before dawn and go for a jog, followed by an ocean swim (this is in Melbourne) and umpteen hundred pushups and situps. Died recently in his 80’s from brain cancer as a secondary from melanoma.
The second one was more simple. “If it is to be, it is up to me”.
“Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects.” Will Rogers
The day shit’s worth money, poor people will be born without arseholes.
Very cynical. but kinda true.
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
–Marcus Aurelius