Thread: Quotes

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
- Quentin Crisp

I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton

"No one has ever succeeded in keeping nations at war except by lies." : by: Salvador de Madariaga - (1886-1978 ), Spanish writer, diplomat, and historian, noted for his service at the League of Nations



“...free enterprise, [is] a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich.” : Noam Chomsky



"Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but, disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort." : Marshall McLuhan - (1911-1980)

"We have two options in life both medically and emotionally, give up or fight like hell." - Lance Armstrong

Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway. - John Wayne

The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

- Maya Angelou

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

- Maya Angelou

After every ''victory'' you have more enemies.

~Jeanette Winterson

War is fear cloaked in courage.

~General William Westmoreland

"The state welcomes only those forms of cultural activity which help it to maintain its power. It persecutes with implacable hatred any activity which oversteps the limits set by it and calls its existence into question. It is, therefore, as senseless as it is mendacious to speak of a ‘state culture‘; for it is precisely the state which lives in constant warfare with all higher forms of intellectual culture and always tries to avoid the creative will of culture." (Rocker, Culture and Nationalism, Michael E. Coughlan, 1978, p.85)

The stakes, Rocker noted, are high:

"If the state does not succeed in guiding the cultural forces within its sphere of power into courses favourable to its ends, and thus inhibit the growth of higher forms, these very higher forms will sooner or later destroy the political frame which they rightly regard as a hindrance." (Rocker, p.83)

“Education is character development, harmonious completion of human personality. But what the state accomplishes in this field is dull drill, extinction of natural feeling, narrowing of the spiritual field of vision, destruction of all the deeper elements of character in man. The state can train subjects... but it can never develop free men who take their affairs into their own hands; for independent thought is the greatest danger that it has to fear.” (Rocker, p.190)

"Only in freedom does there arise in man the consciousness of responsibility for his acts and regard for the rights of others; only in freedom can there unfold in its full strength that most precious social instinct: man's sympathy for the joys and sorrows of his fellow men and the resultant impulse toward mutual aid in which are rooted all social ethics, all ideas of social justice." (Rocker, p.148)

A few hundred years earlier, the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna said much the same thing:

“Not doing harm to others,
Not bowing down to the ignoble,
Not abandoning the path of virtue –
These are small points, but of great
Importance.” (Nagarjuna and Sakya Pandit, Elegant Sayings, Dharma Publishing, 1977, p.12)

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
--Ambrose Bierce

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them! ~Albert Einstein

Originally Posted by stroller

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
--Ambrose Bierce

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them! ~Albert Einstein

Ambrose Bierce

His dark, sardonic views and vehemence as a critic earned him the nickname, "Bitter Bierce."

Albert Einstein

"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

OK, Einstein, if you don't want to fight, just say so.

Yeah, Bierce is good, more:

"Every patriot believes his country better than any other country . . . In its active manifestation—it is fond of killing—patriotism would be well enough if it were simply defensive, but it is also aggressive . . . Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part . . . Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone."

“Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.”

“Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.”

"Liberal: A power worshiper without power." --George Orwell

Why has noddy got a big hat and a bell?
'I'll tell you why cos he's a c#nt'! --Ricky Gervais

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

"Liberal: A power worshiper without power." --George Orwell

Conservative: A Liberal who got mugged.
-P.J. O'Rouke

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes - Stanley Kubrick

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.
--Kurt Vonnegut

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
--Kurt Vonnegut

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over -- Gen William T. Sherman

"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the President"

--Hillary Clinton