Quote of the Week suggestions and feedback

[Admiral Valdemar]

How about:

“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
—Gandhi

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
—Richard Feynman

“We have only two modes—complacency and panic.”
—James R. Schlesinger

“Men argue; nature acts.”
—Voltaire

“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”
—H. G. Wells

[Zor]

"And thousands of men who might have quite liked one another had they met socially would thunder towards one another and start killing and after that first rush you had all the excuses you needed to do it again and again"
-Terry Pratchett: Jingo

[Formless]

Got a good one:

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, X, 16, AD 167

[Rogue 9]

"Doctors bury their mistakes. Lawyers hang them. But journalists put theirs on the front page." - Anonymous

And speaking of anonymous, Thirdfain's signature tells me that a quote remarkably similar to the current one is attributed to John Kenneth Galbraith.

[Korgeta]

'The land was always as one, it was man who has been divided' A quote i found by chance, no idea who said it. so it's Anon.

[Zixinus]

"Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, they are even entitled to their own opinion about progress. But do you know what you are not entitled to? You are not entitled to your own facts." -Michael Specter on a TED talk about the dangers of pseudo-science

I would paraphrase it as: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no on is entitled to their own facts." Not sure how well that comes trough.

[Spoonist]

"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 to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

[Flagg]

"Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons." - General Douglas MacArthur, US military leader (1880-1964)

"Yet it took the stroke a pen to do what 2 atomic weapons could not." - Derek Glazener, Smarter than General Douglas MacArthur (1981-)

[Rogue 9]

A stroke of a pen that never would have happened without those atomic weapons, but who's counting?

[Eternal_Freedom]

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Instead thank God that suck men lived"
General George S. Patton

"The American Republic will endure, until Congress realises it can bribe the Public with the Public's money"

Anon., but I came across it in Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders/The Bear and the Dragon" (can't recall offhand which book) as a quote on a plaque that President Ryan keeps on his desk

[Night_stalker]

Suck men?

You mean Such men.

I recommend "Courage isn't just a matter of not being afraid. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway."

[Lonestar]

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. -Adam Smith

[Korgeta]

"If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs." - Carl Sagan

[Rogue 9]

History is equally full of military leaders dying in the field, however. During the American Civil War, a general officer was several times more likely to die in combat than a given private. Richard the Lionheart died of combat wounds sustained during a siege. In fact, before the advent of modern communications commanders had to lead from the front simply because there was no other way to effectively command. And even then, just because a military leader didn't die doesn't mean it was because of cowardice on his part; sometimes you just don't. George Washington had some ludicrous number of horses shot out from under him and even, as I recall, a hat shot off his head while leading troops in both the French and Indian War and the Revolution; he was simply never hit himself despite considerable personal danger. Not to say that Orwell was wrong, but the implication that this is always or even usually the case simply isn't correct.

[Stark]

You've totally missed the point, wherein those who are rich and powerful are those who negotiate peace and war, while vast numbers of the poor fight and die. Citing an example of someone who didn't is laughable next to the generations of those that did, to the point where not running away and saving yourself is considered virtuous instead of normal.

[Illuminatus Primus]

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, German philosopher

"The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime."
- "Max Stirner" (Johann Kaspar Schmidt), philosopher and anarchist

"If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.
- Noam Chomsky, linguistics professor and political activist

"From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own."
- Publilius Syrus, Roman poet

"Can't live with them, can't live without them." [paraphrased, on women]
- Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus, Roman Emperor

"As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance."
- John Dewey, American educator and philosopher

"Be who you are and say what you feel, for those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
- Dr. Seuss

"...jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you’re trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them."
- Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."
- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."
- H. L. Mencken, American writer and critic, on President Warren G. Harding's inaugural address

"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."
- Noam Chomsky

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist."
- Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
- Karl Marx, Communist ideologist, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
- Winston Smith, Nineteen Eighty-Four

"There was only one Christian, and He died on the cross."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers."
- Winston Smith, Nineteen Eighty-Four

"Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do. For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen by men."
- Jesus of Nazareth (alleged), The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 23:1-5

"He that fights with monsters should take care not to become one. And when you look into the Abyss, the Abyss looks into you."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

[LadyTevar]

"I do have to say that so far, I would much rather be a dragon and get to lay a nice portable egg. Forget the flying cars and the hyperdrive, where are our uterine replicators? Seriously, if we get to the future and we really are still giving birth naturally as per the appalling Star Wars episode III and Star Trek reboot, I am going to Have Words with the management."

She's having a baby.

[Companion Cube]

The day will come when, by study pursued through several ages, the things now concealed will appear with evidence; and posterity will be astonished that truths so clear had escaped us.
- Seneca

[Atlan]

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

- Thomas Jefferson, Notes On The State Of Virginia, 1782

[Thanas]

"Can't live with them, can't live without them." [paraphrased, on women]
- Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus, Roman Emperor

Really bad paraphrasing here.

"If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure."

[The Yosemite Bear]

for the up comming month of October:

"Take your beak from my heart and your form from my door. quothe the Raven "Nevermore"."
-Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

[Formless]

Quand les riches se font la guerre, ce sont les pauvres qui meurent. (translated: When the rich make war, it's the poor that die.) — John Paul Sartre, french existentialist philosopher

"For there has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited." — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Samuel B. Griffith translation)

"By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" — Jesus of Nazareth, american standard bible

"I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe." — Buckminster Fuller

"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible." — M.C. Escher

"Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Either thought is frightening." — Arthur C. Clarke

Edit: "The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion." — Arthur C. Clarke

And because I happen to love Sagan:

"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere." — from Cosmos, Page 4

"Biology is more like history than it is like physics. You have to know the past to know the present. And you have to know it in exquisite detail." — from Cosmos, page 41

"Orion was under serious development in the united states until the signing of the international treaty that forbids the detonation of nuclear weapons in space. This seems to me a great pity. The Orion starship is the best use of nuclear weapons I can think of." — from Cosmos, page 203

"Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. ... If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing." — from Cosmos, Page 339

"The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct." — from the novel Contact, Dr. Arroway, Page 162

"The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars." — Cosmos (TV series), Episode 7: The Backbone of Night

"Technology: exponentiating / fossil fuels / nuclear weapons / organized warfare / environmental pollution.

Probability of survival (per 100 yr): 40%." — Cosmos (TV series), Episode 12: Encyclopedia Galactica, Extract of entry in fictional 'Encyclopaedia Galactica' for Earth

"Shouldn't we consider in every nation major changes in the traditional ways of doing things, a fundamental restructuring of economic political social and religious institutions? ... Fundamental changes in society are sometimes labelled impractical or contrary to human nature, as if nuclear war were practical or as if there's only one human nature. But fundamental changes can clearly be made, we're surrounded by them." — Cosmos (TV series), Episode 13: Who Speaks for Earth? (long, but that whole damn speech is quotable, including the parts I omitted)

"History is full of people who out of fear or ignorance or the lust for power have destroyed treasures of immeasurable value which truly belong to all of us. We must not let it happen again." — Cosmos (TV series), Episode 13: Who Speaks for Earth?

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?' Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.'"

"[The nuclear arms race is like] two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five."

"If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?" — The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

"Magic requires tacit cooperation of the audience with the magician— an abandonment of skepticism, or what we sometimes call suspension of disbelief. It immediately follows that to penetrate the magic, to expose the trick, we must cease collaborating." — The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

"Credulity kills." — The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

[Rogue 9]

"Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins." - John Locke, Second Treatise on Government

"Anarchy is a game at which the police can beat you." - George Bernard Shaw

[Eternal_Freedom]

"You don't need common sense when you have laws"

Jeremy Clarkson, originally from an anonymous Miami policeman

[Korgeta]

Slang is a poor man's poetry (Which i'm sure applies to lol and wtf, omfg etc)