Quote of the Week suggestions and feedback

[Malagar]

"What you don't know has power over you; knowing it brings it under your control, and makes it subject to your choice. Ignorance makes real choice impossible." Abraham Maslow

[General Mung Beans]

"There are no desperate situations, only desperate people."-Heinz Guderian, German general (1888-1954)

[Panzersharkcat]

"American politics features a particularly boorish animal called a 'culture warrior,' who imagines that he is working to save Christendom from secularism, Islam, and sexual deviancy, but who, in his own life, doesn't know how to use a fork properly, doesn't chew with his mouth closed, and cannot be personally charming in social settings.

How does this happen? Like Keynesian economists who believe the whole has nothing to do with the parts, the culture warriors imagine that they can steer the culture while being personally piggish, pathetic, and crude -- as if the court of taste and manners will never judge them personally but they are entitled to judge, and to restore and save, the whole of society." - Jeffrey Tucker

"The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes Titus or Marcus Aurelius. The people is often Nero, and never Marcus Aurelius." - Antoine de Rivarol

[Ahriman238]

"We did these things, and they were glorious. We changed the world... and then we fucked up the endgame."- Rep. Wilson on funding the Mujhadeen resistance to the Russian invasion.

"Wisdom is not additive; it's maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group."- Heinlein

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."- Heinlein

"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do."- Asimov

"[Creationists] make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."- Asimov

"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?"- Churchill

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."- Jefferson

"Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education & free discussion are the antidotes of both."- Jefferson

[Dalton]

"Once you're forced to hypothesize whole new technologies to keep your conspiracy possible, you've stepped over into the realm of magic. It demands a deep and abiding faith in things you can never know." - S G Collins, director, "Moon Hoax Not"

[FaxModem1]

"I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building," George W. Bush, second presidential debate, 2000

[Zaune]

It's a bit long, but:

"Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay. In the modern state there are very few sites where this is possible. The only others that come readily to my mind require belief in an omnipotent creator as a condition for membership. It would seem the most obvious thing in the world to say that the reason why the market is not an efficient solution to libraries is because the market has no use for a library. But it seems we need, right now, to keep re-stating the obvious. There aren’t many institutions left that fit so precisely Keynes’ definition of things that no one else but the state is willing to take on. Nor can the experience of library life be recreated online. It’s not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal."

Zadie Smith, in the New York Review of Books.

[Haruko]

Just read this on a book about modern German history:

The people have lost the confidence of the government. The government has decided to dissolve the people, and to appoint another one.

— Bertolt Brecht, German poet, in response to a merciless crackdown by the Soviets against pro-democracy protesters in East Germany, 1953.

[Spekio]

"You can't sleep with all the women int he world, but one must make the effort." - Jorge Amado, brazilian writer.

“I considered the case and realized that if something can exist in opinion without existing in reality, or exist in reality without existing in opinion, the conclusion is that of the two parallel lives, only opinion is necessary – not reality, which is only a secondary consideration.”
― Machado de Assis

[Thanas]

"The purpose of work should be the common good" - Alfred Krupp

[Rogue 9]

*Kennedy

[Thanas]

He stole that one unless he is a time traveller who got back in time 60 years before he was born.


Another suggestion:

You ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.
-Seneca

[Omeganian]

In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. (George Orwell)

[Dominus Atheos]

Call me stupid, but I don't understand the current quote. Is it saying forgiveness is good or bad? On the one hand, hope is ussually supposed to be good; on the other hand, you can't change the past so there's no point in trying.

[The Grim Squeaker]

"Whatever you are, be a Good one".

(Abraham Lincoln I believe)

[Elaro]

“Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
― Winston Churchill

[StarSword]

"Reality is often stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be believable." -- Mark Twain

"Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, something stronger, more beautiful." -- Harry Dresden, White Night

"Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement." -- Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

"Imagine what medieval peasants would say if you could explain to them the stuff that people waste most of their time worrying about these days." -- David Morgan-Mar

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." —Robert Wilensky, University of California

[StarSword]

"I was never crazy about Hitler. If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win. That's what they do so well: they seduce people. But if you ridicule them, bring them down with laughter, they can't win. You show how crazy they are." -- Mel Brooks

[Rogue 9]

That looks familiar. Oh wait.

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

[Thanas]

"If the real world isn't kind to new comers, than it's because of the people in it have chosen to be unkind. You and your future coworkers have the ability to change that. Over half the world's population is under 30 years old. The shear number of you creates a gigantic opportunity to change the work place as we know it. Shake it up. Be the ones to throw opens the shutters and let a little fresh air in. And while you're at it, make the work place a more civil place to be. You have the power to influence change in so many ways. Make kindness a priority, not a blurred line." - Peyton Manning, 2014

[Dominus Atheos]

Did someone forget to put the year of the current authors death? According to this webpage its 1989.

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Sir_Barnett_Cocks/

[Chardok]

When in doubt, go for the dick joke.

- Robin Williams 1951-2014

[Highlord Laan]

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory."

Leonard Nimoy 1931-2015

[U.P. Cinnabar]

"Politics is not like the nursery. In politics, obedience and support are the same."

—Hannah Arendt, Judgement At Nuremberg

"But, again, truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror."

—V, V For Vendetta

"You do not wish to know anything! You wish only to speak. That which you know, you ignore, because it is inconvenient. And that which you do not know, you invent."

—DeLenn, "The Deconstruction Of Falling Stars," Babylon 5

[U.P. Cinnabar]

"War, children, is just a shot away."

—The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter"

"When you send a man out with a gun, you create a policymaker. When his ass is on the line, he will do whatever he needs to do."

David Drake, Afterword to Counting the Cost