Thread: Quotes

have you ever been knocked a little off your feet by a quote from someone?

I have, more than once. Mark Twain has a million and for some reason the most quoted man in existence is PJ o'Rourke (though I haven't heard muck new from him in recent times)

"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." : General Douglas MacArthur, Speech, May 15, 1951

could have been said yesterday and be equally as true

"Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them." : John Stuart Mill - (1806-1873)

i can't add to that

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.": Bertrand de Jouvenel - (1903-1987)

likewise


We allow the most atrocious lies uttered by political and moral prostitutes to go unchallenged. These lies are endlessly recycled in the commercial media until they become ingrained in the public conscience as truth. Worse than burying our heads in the sand, we bury them up our collective ass. How do you like the view?: Charles Sullivan


"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." -- John Adams


"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. : George Bernard Shaw


Please add

heres a few more

The problems of this world are so gigantic that some are paralysed by their own uncertainty. Courage and wisdom are needed to reach out above this sense of helplessness. Desire for vengeance against deeds of hatred offers no solution. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. If we wish to choose the other path, we will have to search for ways to break the spiral of animosity. To fight evil one must also recognize one's own responsibility. The values for which we stand must be expressed in the way we think of, and how we deal with, our fellow humans: - From the Christmas Message 2001 of HM Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands


Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters: African Proverb

We allow the most atrocious lies uttered by political and moral prostitutes to go unchallenged. These lies are endlessly recycled in the commercial media until they become ingrained in the public conscience as truth. Worse than burying our heads in the sand, we bury them up our collective ass. How do you like the view?: Charles Sullivan

To prevent just that from happening here I use the

I am on a roll now. The joys of a day off. I remember reading a Tom robbins book a long time ago, and one thing that stuck in my head was a line uttered when the character quoted saw a newspaper. the line went "and of course the news was terrible". I was in my twenties at the time and the book was written prior to my birth.

it was "even cowgirls get the blues"

and i dont know how to express the point i am trying to make

has the history of humanity always been in a state of shite?

is it our very nature to be like this, look around you, but now we have better techs to fcuk each other up

The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle, but to make them long for it: Louis Simpson


Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear: Albert Camus


Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice: John Adams


“They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. ... Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.” : Eugene Victor Debs

[quote=kerux;191339]

To prevent just that from happening here I use the

appreciate that mate

does it work?

"War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you are not responsible, that 'tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and die,' like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder." : Alexander Berkman


"It seems that 'we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory'; we have the word of a president [McKinley] for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people [the Cubans], and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies [primarily the Philippines] and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had 'territorial aggrandizement' been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations." : Ambrose Bierce, Warlike America


"COWARDICE, n. A charge often levelled by all-American types against those who stand up for their beliefs by refusing to fight in wars they find unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or into exile in order to avoid violating their own consciences. These 'cowards' are to be contrasted with red-blooded, 'patriotic' youths who literally bend over, grab their ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars they do not understand (or disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill simply because they are ordered to do so—all to the howling approval of the all-American mob. This type of behavior is commonly termed 'courageous.'" : Chaz Bufe


"In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes." Thomas Paine

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world: Benjamin Harrison, address to Congress, 1888


We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us. We must get away from the idea that America is to be the leader of the world in everything. She can lead in some things. The old "manifest destiny" idea ought to be modified so that each nation has the manifest destiny to do the best it can - and that without cant, without the assumption of self-righteousness and with a desire to learn to the uttermost from other nations: Francis John McConnell

"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self- preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means." --Thomas Jefferson to John Colvin, 1810


"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." -- John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

waaaaaaaaaaaay too deep on a friday night for me ( or perhaps past my 2.5 glassees of red wine limiot














1

[QUOTE=seth106;191342]

Originally Posted by kerux

To prevent just that from happening here I use the

appreciate that mate

does it work?

No, it doesn't.

But more of a problem for Kerux is that he needs to do it for his own posts. The amount of bovine faecal matter he plagiarises is quite astonishing.

"Beware of the young doctor and of the old barber."

--Benjamin Franklin

[quote=RDN;191926]

Originally Posted by seth106

Originally Posted by kerux

To prevent just that from happening here I use the

appreciate that mate

does it work?

No, it doesn't.

But more of a problem for Kerux is that he needs to do it for his own posts. The amount of bovine faecal matter he plagiarises is quite astonishing.

Nice thread.

Let's keep it for 'quotes' only, as the cartoon thread is only for cartoons.

The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out 'stop!'

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer. - Bertolt Brecht


How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?: Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845


There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed: ~Gil Bailie

My only wish is... to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own admission, are "half animal, half angel" into persons, into whole persons.
-- Ludwig Feuerbach

“You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.”

-- Robin Williams

"The West knows that it does not possess anything which will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence"

Said Qutb, martyr

The greatest of fault, I should say, is to be conscious of none: Robert Carlyle (1795 - 1881).

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
- Epicurus

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken

Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs: Source: Arundhati Roy, "Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire," Arundhati Roy: Public Power in the Age of Empire

In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced
to talk to God.



Braveheart

Originally Posted by flash

In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced
to talk to God.



Braveheart

and share a pint or three