Quote of the Week suggestions and feedback

[Darth Wong]

As the thread title says. Haruko suggested I open this up for user input. I can't promise that all suggestions would be used, but I will look in on this thread for ideas whenever I change the quote.

PS. Please check any submissions for accuracy, and please cite the source. I have a copy of Bartlett's Quotations and the Cynic's Lexicon at home where I get some of my quotes, which I consider to be more reliable than "I saw it on a blog somewhere". We don't want to post any misquotes if we can help it.

PPS. Also please add feedback here on current or previous quotes. If there are any you particularly like, or dislike, let me know.

[CmdrWilkens]

...as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.

-Edward Gibbons "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"

[Oscar Wilde]

"Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious"

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
-Oscar Wilde (the real one, obviously)

[The Grim Squeaker]

...On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons.

Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.
Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.
I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers.
May you live in interesting times.
All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true'.
The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret.
Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
What is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?
The freedom to succeed goes hand in hand with the freedom to fail.

[Darth Wong]

Perhaps I should have added that the Quote of the Week at the top of the forum should be reasonably compact, and not take up half the screen.

[Kaiser Caesar]

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

- John Quincy Adams

[The Grim Squeaker]

Hey, those are separate quotes .

"Always look on the bright side of life"
Monty Python.

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

[Steve]

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L.S. Churchill

"A radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

[Thanas]

A few by some of my favorite politicians:

"A soldier's obedience finds its limits where his knowledge, his conscience and his responsibility forbid to obey orders." - Generaloberst Ludwig beck, leader of the 20th July plot

Bismarck:

"God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America."

"With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and when I have to do with a pirate, I try to be a pirate and a half."

"Politics is the art of the possible."

"He who has his thumb on the purse has the power."

Frederick the Great:

"I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people."

"Neither antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God. — This is how Christians treat the autocrat of the universe."

Vespasianus:

Vae, puto deus fio. - Alas, I think I am turning into a god.... (last words, attributed by Suetonius)

Cato the elder:

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

Tacitus:

Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges - The greater the corruption/degeneration of the republic, the more its laws

Marcus Aurelius:

ὁ κόσμος ἀλλοίωσις, ὁ βίος ὑπόληψις. - The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

Livius:

Vae Victis

Caesar:

Nihil nobis metuendum est, praeter metum ipsum. - We have nothing to fear but fear itself

[/quote]
Roosevelt stole that one.

EDIT:

Also, a fun one by Ken Don Rosa:

"Greed is the root of all evil and the republican party"

[Mayabird]

I'm fond of

Bright brains serve madness as well as they do sanity - namely, very well indeed.

Cordwainer Smith, The Dead Lady of Clown Town.

Same author, same story:

A bad idea can spread like a mutated germ. If it is at all interesting, it can leap from one mind to another halfway across the universe before it has a stop put to it.

[CmdrWilkens]

Two Heinlein quotes:

"Basic truths cannot change and once a man of insight expresses one of them it is never necessary, no matter how much the world changes, to reformulate them."

"War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose...The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him...but to make him do what you want him to do."

[Formless]

An Einstein one:

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

[The Yosemite Bear]

"Two things are infinate, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe." -Albert Einstine

[Mr Bean]

Perhaps I should have added that the Quote of the Week at the top of the forum should be reasonably compact, and not take up half the screen.

Give it a character count then, counting spaces. The current quote is 148, say 150-180 characters max?

[phongn]

"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard Feynman

"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done." - Alan Turing

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear" - Thomas Jefferson

"By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out." - Richard Dawkins

[Thanas]

Another good one:

A man's moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give up his life in defense of his convictions.

- Henning von Tresckow

[The Yosemite Bear]

in honor of how many people seem to have a vendetta against Mike, but won't play by the rules...

"The only thing worse then being talked about, is not being talked about." -Oscar Wilde

[Kuja]

"Nobody ever comes here anymore, it's too crowded."

"It's impossible to get a conversation going, everyone's talking too much."

-both by Yogi Berra

[2000AD]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Any technology that is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
-Gregory Benford
(Source: Introduction of The Science of Discworld)

Any of Clarke's Laws could do:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
(Wikipedia)

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
- Robert J Hanlon
(Wikipedia

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you
because you are a vegetarian.
—Dennis Wholey
(No idea, it's in my big list of quotes i like that I picked up from the internet)

Pain Heals.
Chicks dig scars.
Glory, lasts for ever.
-Shane Falco
(Character payed by Keanu Reeves in The Replacements)


Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes right to the fucking bone
-Billy Connoly
(Can be found on the Two Night Stand recording of his stand up).

Never take an idiot with you, you can always pick one up when you get there.
-Billy Connoly
(Can be found in same performance as above, actually said by unknown Irish limo driver according to story Connoly was telling)


If we're allowed to be a little self aggrandising I also have a few quotes made on the board (and from the FUQ) that I thought were quite funny saved.

[Mr. Coffee]

"That's just fucking awesome..." - Me

[The Yosemite Bear]

"When hunting monsters take care, least monsters ye become." Niezche predicting the American response to 9-11.

[Steve]

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
- Robert J Hanlon

Actually, I believe Napoleon is the source of that quote, save he used the term "incompetence" instead of stupidity.

[Enigma]

How about the quotes I have in my sig?

[Guardsman Bass]

"It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disasters to discuss the matters. " -Thucydides

"Choose your friends carefully. Your enemies will choose you. " -Yasser Arafat

"Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war." -Isaac Asimov

"History tells us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives." -Abba Eban

"The first human being who hurled an insult rather than a stone was the founder of civilization." -Sigmund Freud

[The Yosemite Bear]

Wait the Nazi's destroyed the ASVS fanfic archive, and the FUQ those fucking bastards!