I was posting a bulletin on myspace and decided to dig up a list of quotes after one of the questions I was responding to asked me to list a few quotes. This should be most of the good ones I had.
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"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
Didja' ever have to make up your mind,
Pick up on one and leave the other behind,
It's not often easy, and it's not often kind,
Didja' ever have to make up your mind?
-- Lovin' Spoonful
Formerly,We Suffered From Crimes.
Now,We Suffer From Laws.
--Tacitus
"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished."
-- Goethe
A woman is like your shadow; follow her,
she flies; fly from her, she follows.
-- Chamfort
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom."
The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare let go.
Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.
But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to the
rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
-- Richard Bach
"Science is an eternal struggle against our desire to have the universe be ordered in some emotionally satisfying way."
-- Josh Swink
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it...He who receives an idea from me, receives instructions himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should be spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature ... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
-- Thomas Jefferson
I managed to say, "Sorry," and no more. I knew that he disliked me to cry.
This time he said, watching me, "On some occasions it is better
to weep."
I put my head down on the table and sobbed, "If only she could come back; I would be nice."
Francis said, "You gave her great pleasure always."
"Oh, not enough."
"Nobody can give anybody enough."
"Not ever?"
"No, not ever. But one must go on trying."
"And doesn't one ever value people until they are gone?"
"Rarely," said Francis. I went on weeping; I saw how little I had valued him; how little I had valued anything that was mine.
-- Pamela Frankau, "The Duchess and the Smugs"
Neither the Jeffersonians nor their Federalist opponents admitted to being a political party. To them the term party meant the same as faction. It also meant the victory of selfishness and contention over the selfless unanimity they felt a republic needed.
--?
"You see, they [conservatives] love America the way a four-year-old loves her mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a four-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually undestanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world." - Al Franken
"See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction." —George W. Bush, Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 3, 2003
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini
"So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question. Were there not even these inducements to moderation, nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties. For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution."
- Alexander Hamilton - federalist papers no.1
If you see a blind man, kick him. Why be kinder than God?
- Old Iranian Proverb
The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.
- George Bernard Shaw
CYNIC n. A blackguard whose faulty vision causes him to see things as they are, not as they ought to be
- Ambrose Bierce
I don't mean to sound cold or cruel or vicious, but I am, so that's the way it comes out
- Bill Hicks
"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." --Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 B.C.
"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology."
— Michael Parenti
political scientist
"The United States spends more on arms annually, $275 billion presently, than the rest of the Security Council combined. U.S. arms expenditures are approximately 25 times the gross national product of Iraq. The U.S. has in its stockpiles more nuclear bombs, chemical and biological weapons, more aircraft, rockets and delivery systems in number and sophistication than the rest of the world combined. Included are twenty commissioned Trident II nuclear submarines any one of which could destroy Europe."
— Ramsey Clark
former U.S. Attorney General
Letter to the U.N., November 1998
This is not about the left wing or the right wing. It's about how to stop these wing-nuts from turning the world into a military playground for the Fortune 500. It's not about ideology. It's about human decency and common sense.
-- .John Perry Barlow
"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy . . . censorship. When any government...undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked, contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free."
--Robert Anson Heinlein, "If This Goes On-"
"WHY ARE YOU PROTESTING"
"Because ever since I was a baby crawling around the TV set I've been suckered, lied to and propagandized. The kind of psychological abuse I've been subjected to may not be as bad as sexual abuse but, believe me, it leaves lifelong scars nonetheless. I feel empty, soulless, mindfucked....and now it's payback time."
--Adbusters
I do not believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect, has intended us to forgo their use.
-Galileo Galilei
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".
-- Philip K. Dick
Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. [...] In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
- Stephen J. Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory" - Discover, May 1981
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The following quotes are all pretty politically leaning... they are actually part of a 2 sided post, this list followed up by retorts from the other side. I don't feel like posting the other side this time because they're idiots. :-) If you're really curious, look in my archive, I posted them all before.
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Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a
conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.
The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.
Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.
Standing Tall for America means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.
A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but
multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.
Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.
The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans benefits and combat pay.
Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.
If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.
A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then
demand their cooperation and money.
HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.
Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.
Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but
creationism should be taught in schools.
Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.
A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.
Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.
The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.
You support states rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have a right to adopt.
What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the 80s is irrelevant.
Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
2 comments:
I did!
hahaha
Thanks Frankie! :-D
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