# The coolest quote you know. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 4, 2002, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857 "2002-04-04T20:54:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![RobGraham](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8e8cbc/32.png) [@RobGraham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RobGraham)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2002, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/61 "2002-04-07T20:07:12Z")
In Robert Anton Wilson’s book ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’ he has a character who keeps writing: ‘King Kong died for your sins’ on bathroom walls. I always though that was cool. My current personal favorite is: ‘Fall seven times, stand up eight.’ - Japanese Proverb ---
**Author:** ![NutWrench](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nutwrench/32/20193_2.png) [@NutWrench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NutWrench)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/62 "2002-04-08T01:50:26Z")
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good torment us without end, for they so do with the approval of their own conscience.” - C.S Lewis I’m really proud of my cousin. After decades of being illiterate, he’s now Hooked On Phonics, except substitute “Phonics” with “Crystal Meth.” “If elected mayor, my first act wil be to kill the whole lot of ye and burn your town to cinders!” – GroundsKeeper Willy I call it “No-Pants Wonderday,” but it turns out the police just call it “Thursday.” Go figure. Take my advice: If the recipe calls for “3 handfuls of lava,” it’s really not worth the effort. ---
**Author:** ![Nacho4Sara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Nacho4Sara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nacho4Sara)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/63 "2002-04-08T02:42:02Z")
**"I am not bound to be win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have."** - Abraham Lincoln, with words I live by. **"Let me go, if I have to, in brilliance."** - Mark Doty, “Brilliance” “We feel fear always. And you?” **"No. I feel angry. Every minute, about everything."** -Martha Gellhorn, “Travels With Myself and Another” **"The Big Picture always exists. And I seem to have spent my life observing how desperately the Big Picture affects the little people who did not devise it and have no control over it."** - Martha Gellhorn, “Travels With Myself and Another” On heaven: **“I’ve always been attracted to the idea that the objective perception of perfection is removed from our eyes, and we finally see the perfection that has always existed in all that is.”** - Our very own **Purd Werfect** ---
**Author:** ![drm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@drm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drm)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/64 "2002-04-08T03:29:05Z")
> [@](#): > > What makes us men is that we can think logically. What makes us human is that we sometimes choose not to. Roger Ebert said this in a review about “Searching for Bobby Fisher.” I’ve always liked that quote. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/65 "2002-04-08T03:37:06Z")
“That means I don’t take shit from NOBODY!” -Rodney Dangerfield “I’m Ozzy Osbourne! I’m the Fuckin’ Prince of Darkness!” -Ozzy Osbourne " …" The Pink Panther ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/66 "2002-04-08T05:17:49Z")
“Never complain and never explain”. [Benjamin Disraeli](http://www.annabelle.net/topics/apologies.html), [Wallis Simpson](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/q127256.html), and [Jennifer Lopez](http://www.thundersearch.com/JenniferLopez/jlrj_living.htm). ---
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/67 "2002-04-08T05:40:09Z")
And yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no one, because I am the meanest mother fucker in the valley. Gen. George S. Patton ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/68 "2002-04-08T05:55:44Z")
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone: However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards However we follow the printed directions of sex However the family is photographed under the flagstaff– Beyond all this, the wish to be alone. Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes from death– Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs. - ‘Wants,’ Philip Larkin Wine comes in at the mouth, And love comes in at the eye; That’s all we shall know of truth Until we grow old, and die. I raise the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh. - ‘A Drinking Song,’ W. B. Yeats (quoted from memory; sorry if it’s a word off here or there) Of all the sexually transmitted diseases, the deadliest is certainly Life. - Me (I hope no one else said this before; I’m pretty sure I made it up.) Most people think clowns are funny, but to me they’re kind of scary. I’ve thought about this and I think it goes back to the time when I was a kid and we went to the circus and a clown killed my dad. - Jack Handey ---
**Author:** ![DAVINCHI](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DAVINCHI](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DAVINCHI)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/69 "2002-04-08T09:59:03Z")
“Everybody smokes in hell.” Sorry, don’t know who to credit it to. :o ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/70 "2002-04-08T11:58:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Crafter\_Man \* > \*\*“Only Dead Fish Go With the Flow” > > Not sure who said it… \*\* This could have been Harrison Ford in _The Mosquito Coast_. I believe he said [to his wife]: “Dead things go downstream, dear. LIFE is upstream!” Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you’re a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, “What happended to my twenties?” Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from highschool becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You’ll call it a procedure, but it’s a surgery. Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn’t matter because you can’t hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering “how come the kids don’t call?” By your eighties, you’ve had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can’t stand but who you call mama. Any questions? -Billy Crystal in _City Slickers_ (probably a better movie than most people remember it being.) ---
**Author:** ![FriendRob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecc23a/32.png) [@FriendRob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriendRob)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/71 "2002-04-08T15:59:43Z")
Go go go said the bird. Humankind cannot bear very much reality. -T.S. Eliot ---
**Author:** ![plnnr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ea924/32.png) [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/72 "2002-04-08T16:13:02Z")
The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them. The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority, and to the minority only. The majority has no more to do with it than it has to do with ecclesiastic politics on Mars. In so far as that heritage is apprehended, it is viewed with enmity. But in the main it is not apprehended at all. -H. L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/73 "2002-04-08T19:51:34Z")
“I have paid the price of solitude…but now I am out of debt.” _Angus McKee, **Heavy Metal** , “So Beautiful and So Dangerous” (paraphrase)_ “Fear makes companions of us all.” _Doctor Who, “An Unearthly Child” (ep. 1)_ ---
**Author:** ![knarf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@knarf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/knarf)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/74 "2002-04-08T20:04:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Azure Eternity \* > \*\* > - T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” > > Probably doesn’t make much sense all by itself, but I love the whole poem and that’s my favorite part. \*\* My favorite line from it is: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” Which always gets me thinking about my life (even though I don’t drink coffee). ---
**Author:** ![Davidbw1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7993a0/32.png) [@Davidbw1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Davidbw1)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2002, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/75 "2002-04-10T00:40:50Z")
I’ve always liked : “Know then thyself; Presume not God to scan The proper study of mankind Is man” -Alexander Pope ---
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2002, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/76 "2002-04-10T01:05:13Z")
> [@](#): > > “Thinking in, out and around the box” -Philip Andre Smith ---
**Author:** ![swampbear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampbear/32/467_2.png) [@swampbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampbear)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2002, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/77 "2002-04-10T01:19:33Z")
Ok…I don’t know who said it, but this is a refrigerator magnet quote from my refrigerator: “The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.” ---
**Author:** ![Nacho4Sara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Nacho4Sara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nacho4Sara)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2002, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/78 "2002-04-10T01:36:23Z")
I love Eliot, too, and my favorite bit of Prufrock is: > [@](#): > > I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, > And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, > And in short, I was afraid. I also love this part of “Marina,” my favorite Eliot poem: > [@](#): > > Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet > Under sleep, where all the waters meet. > > Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat. > I made this, I have forgotten > And remember. > The rigging weak and the canvas rotten > Between one June and another September. It has beautiful rhythm. ---
**Author:** ![novacaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ea924/32.png) [@novacaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/novacaine)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2002, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/79 "2002-04-10T02:19:38Z")
“Far away places always seem like a good solution until you get there and realize you brought yourself along.” -me “Nothing in life is more dangerous than love.” -John Irving \*The Hotel Newhamshire\* ---
**Author:** ![Eternal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecb155/32.png) [@Eternal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eternal)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2002, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-coolest-quote-you-know/101857/80 "2002-04-10T02:58:40Z")
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