Quote Only Thread

[barracuda]

‎"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

-Groucho

[Allegro]

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

[Nordic]

‎"The political process in America — and that includes voting — is little more than a trap to keep the people from open revolt" -- Simulist

[Jeff]

They make war to capture markets by murder, raw materials by rape.... Threaten a reduction on the profit of their money, and the beast in them awakens with a snarl. They become as ruthless as savages, brutal as madmen, remorseless as executioners.

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvellous, intoxicating.

[Allegro]

We know ourselves to be made from this earth. We know this earth is made from our bodies. For we see ourselves. And we are nature. We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with a concept of nature. Nature weeping. Nature speaking of nature to nature. … [Refer]. Susan Griffin.

[Jeff]

If you want to be someone today you must nerve yourself
For deeds that could earn you an island exile, or years in jail.
Honesty's praised, but honest men freeze. Wealth springs from crime.
Landscape-gardens, palaces, furniture, antique silver -
Those cups embossed with prancing goats - all, all are tainted.

...

Though talent be wanting, yet indignation will drive me to verse,
such as I - or any scribbler - may still command.

- from Why Satire? (First Century AD)

[brekin]

"Gentlemen of the jury, I postulate to you that the world in which we live, a world of fears has been brought to its present state by the doers, by the scientists, by the soldiers, by the men of muscles. I have seen, and I mean no irreverence, I say this will all the depth of sincerity of which I am capable, I have seen the image of the savior. He had no muscles."

-Moe Levine

[Gouda]

"Courts are not invested with the competence to second-guess the CIA director regarding the appropriateness of any particular intelligence source or method."

~ His Incompetent Honor, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein,
rejecting ACLU arguments to release post-911 CIA torture records.

[Allegro]

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

[Allegro]

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one’s head. [Refer.]

[Allegro]

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. [Refer.]

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Reality is merely an illusion,
albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
it's time to pause and reflect.
- Mark Twain


Many are destined to reason wrongly,
others, not to reason at all;
and others, to persecute those who do reason.
- Voltaire


You never change things
by fighting the existing reality..
To change something,
build a new model
that makes the existing model obsolete.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.
- Ernesto Che Guevara


The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
- Voltaire

The greatest threat to our world and its peace
comes from those who want war, who prepare for it,
and who, by holding out vague promises of future peace
or by instilling fear of foreign aggression,
try to make us accomplices to their plans.
- Hermann Hesse

I think the true test of a genius is the ability to see the follies of one's own times. The ability to change one's own times is the true test of a leader. And the ability to do both is the true test of a visionary, who will never be elected.
- Voltaire

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself... Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.
- H.L. Mencken

[brekin]

"...You asked if I'm scared
And I said so
Everyone can see what's going on
They laugh `cause they know they're untouchable
Not because what I said was wrong
Whatever it may bring
I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace
Maybe it sounds mean
But I really don't think so
You asked for the truth and I told you
Through their own words
They will be exposed
They've got a severe case of
The emperor's new clothes
The emperor's new clothes
The emperor's new clothes"

Sinead O'Connor
Emperors New Clothes

[Allegro]

Although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are somehow answered. We see, now, events forced on which seem to retard or retrograde the civility of ages. But the world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves cannot drown him. He snaps his finger at laws: and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams. [Refer.]

[Allegro]

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create—so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating. [Refer.]

Masculine third-person singular pronouns apply equally to female persons in the above. If you wish.