Quote of the Week suggestions and feedback

[Atlan]

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." Martin Luther King, Jr.

[loomer]

"Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits — a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage." - Hunter S. Thompson, written in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Might be a wee bit long and the language might be a bit much, but it still seems pretty fucking accurate to me.

[Winston Blake]

Re the crazy cortisol lady.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

OR

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

[Lonestar]

I like Heinlein:

"Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. "

[Eleas]

Author Fritiof Nilsson Piraten's epitaph is a classic:

Här under askan av en man
som hade vanan att uppskjuta allt till morgondagen.
Dock bättrade han sig på sitt yttersta
och dog verkligen den 31 januari 1972

Translated:

Beneath, the dust of a man
who made a habit of postponing everything.
However, in the final days he mastered himself,
and really did die on the 31st of January, 1972.

More seriously, I think, another Heinlein quote. Heinlein said many stupid things. Also many wise things. It's the way of things when a person says a lot of things, period.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you may not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.

Then, of course, there's a quote attributed to Galileo, but I cannot verify it.

The Church says the earth is flat. But I know it is round, because I have seen its shadow on the moon. And I trust a shadow more than I trust the Church.

[Rogue 9]

Woody Allen is a directory?

[Haruko]

"You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much."
-- Robin Williams as Sean Maguire, in Gus Van Sant (director), Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's (writers) Good Will Hunting

[Darth Wong]

Woody Allen is a directory?

Thanks for noticing that. Fixed.

[Phantasee]

On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high. -Ayrton Senna, (1960 - 1994)

[Haruko]

"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
-- Suzan Ertz, as quoted in "the Skeptic" v.24 #2 p.60

[The Yosemite Bear]

The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe.... Respect - that's the word. One feels the need to bow to unquestioned sovereigns....

remember California/Oregon Redwoods=Mecca for Dogs.

[Ace Pace]

Small note, the Quote of the Week archive page has no defined title and in FF and Opera displays purely by URL. Would be nice and could be solved by a simple <title>Quote of the Week</title> addition.

[Winston Blake]

Say, who wants some Bismarck? Do you want some Bismarck? I know I could use some Bismarck.

"Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the
battlefield will think hard before starting a war."

"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an
election."

"Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied."

[Sheridan]

"...it is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past." --Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune (pg. 390 in the paperback version, Leto II to Hwi Noree concerning Moneo Atreides)

[Rogue 9]

"I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." - Thomas Jefferson

[joenye]

"Life is like Stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink"
-- Suzuki Roshi, Zen master
"May you live in interesting times, and attract the attention of important people."
-- Full version of famous chinese curse
"Anarchy means having to put up with things that really piss you off."
-- Unknown
"The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly,' meaning 'many,' and the word 'ticks,' meaning 'blood sucking parasites.'"
-- Dave Barry
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
-- Woody Allen
"God made pot. Man made beer. Whom do you trust?"
-- The Irish Times, Washington, D.C.
Life is a disease, sexually transmitted and fatal.
- Neil Gaiman

[Losonti Tokash]

I would just like to point out that Isaac Singer died in 1991, and is not in fact 106 years old.

[aerius]

Steak and Blowjob Day is coming up in 9 days. We should have another countdown timer for that.

[Phantasee]

In his book The Value of Nothing, author Raj Patel expresses concern for the psychological impact of Atlas Shrugged on young minds: "There are two novels that can transform a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel.The other is a book about orcs."

Found that on the Internets.

[Instant Sunrise]

"Anybody that is a global-warming denier at this point in time has got their head so deeply up their ass I'm not sure they could hear me." - James Cameron

[Night_stalker]

"Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that 'violence never solves 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..."
Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois, M.I. (ret.)


How about this from Starship Troopers(the book, not the god-awful movie series)?

[Darth Wong]

Heinlein's war-wanking rhetoric may seem like brilliant prose to some, but it's still just war-wanking. If one wishes to find quotes against the practicality of pacifism, one could do far better than that. The Woody Allen quote from Jan 25 is much more clever, and says something quite similar.

[The Spartan]

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. -Omar Bradley (This one might be a bit long. Without the name it's over 200 characters)

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity. -Dwight Eisenhower

[Night_stalker]

"The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult. "
Winston Churchill

[Thanas]

A few from George Bernard Shaw:

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.

I have defined the 100 per cent American as 99 per cent an idiot.

He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a nation's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again.

Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.