Every man has three characters--that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.
- Alphonse Karr
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
- Samuel Johnson (referring to false patriotism, rather than indicting all patriotism)
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
- Winston Churchill
A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.
- Albert Einstein
You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.
- Edward R. Murrow, RTNDA Convention Speech, October 15, 1958.
Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
One must make a pessimistic analysis of the situation, but when it's time for action, one must act with hope.
- Gramsci
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
- Marcus Aurelius
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
- Thomas Mann
Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
- Albert Einstein
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Perfection is attained, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does
not go nearly as well with pizza.
- Dave Barry
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
- Galileo Galilei
If a tree falls in a forest and lands on a politician, even if you can't
hear the tree or the screams, I'll bet you'd at least hear the applause.
- Paul Tindale
Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old
enough to know better.
He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask
a question remains a fool forever.
- Chinese Proverb
Hutchins once described the modern university as a series of separate
schools and departments held together by a central heating system. In an
area where heating is less important and the automobile more, I have
sometimes thought of it as a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs
held together by a common grievance over parking.
- "Uses of the University"; Clark Kerr, former President of the University of California system.
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
- Sam Brown
I'll turn him into a flea. A small, harmless little flea. Then I'll put that flea into a box and put that box inside another box, and then I'll mail that box to myself, and when it arrives I'll SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER! It's brilliant brilliant brilliant, I tell you! Genius, I say!
- The Emperor's New Groove (2000)
The future has arrived; it's just not evenly distributed.
- William Gibson
Randy says, "You asked me earlier what is the highest and best purpose to which we could dedicate our lives. and the obvious answer is 'to prevent future holocausts.'"
Avi laughs darkly. "I'm glad it's obvious to you, my friend. I was beginning to think I was the only one."
"What?! Get over yourself, Avi. People are commemorating the holocaust all the time."
"Commemorating the holocaust is not, not not not not not not, the same as fighting to prevent future holocausts. Most of the commemorationists are just whiners. they think that if everyone feels bad about the past holocausts, human nature will magically transform, and no one will want to commit genocide in the future."
"I take it you do not share this view, Avi?"
"Look at Bosnia!" Avi scoffs. "Human nature doesn't change, Randy. Education is hopeless. the most educated people in the world can turn into Aztec or Nazis just like that." he snaps his fingers.
"So what hope is there?"
"Instead of trying to educate the potential perpetrators of holocausts, we try and educate potential victims. They will at least pay some fucking attention.
- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"
Diplomacy is about surviving until the next century. Politics is about surviving until Friday afternoon.
- Sir Humphrey Appleby in "Yes Minister"
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein
Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.
- Bertrand Russell
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Cary Grant, that most stylish of British gentlemen, warned: "it takes five hundred small details to make one favorable impression.
- unknown, quoting Cary Grant
Without publicity a terrible thing happens: nothing.
- P.T. Barnum
Rule of the Great: When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
- anon
"[The web] is trivially simple - massively successful and it's like karaoke - anybody can do it
- Ted Nelson, in an interview with the BBC
"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
- Lin Yutang
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The
unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore
all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw
The cities that currently enjoy the most success as train
destinations are those metropolitan areas that, in their efforts to discourage
you from bringing another car into city limits, stop just short of hiring
people to stand in parking garages and punch you in the face.
- suck.com 29.01.01
There lies the beauty: I'm done with thinking. All it
ever did was make me cry.
- Linda Yablonsky "The Story of Junk"
This isn't as fatuous a statement as it sounds: a lot of famous people,
in the cold light of reality, look nothing like they do on television,
or at least can get away with not looking quite like they do in magazines.
The hair alone ensures that Robert Smith is unmistakeable. Robert Smith,
possibly uniquely, has a famous shadow.
- Andrew Mueller "Rock and Hard Places"
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
She laughed her very French laugh. And if I mention it a second time,
the Frenchness of her laugh, it's because I've just remembered that I
found her laugh special and I'm trying to remember exactly what it was
like, because so often one remembers that something is, was, wonderful
or special without being able properly to recall it, or properly to savour
it, or understand exactly why it was so. One remembers that one would
like to recall it. One remembers in order to be frustrated, in order to
savour not the thing itself but its absence, the shape of its absence.
- Tim Parks, "Europa"
Are we the Dreamers, or some one else's Dream?
Yes, I am a dreamer; for a dreamer is one who can find his way by
moonlight and see the dawn before the rest of the world.
- Oscar Wilde
Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.
- Jules Verne
A diploma only proves you know how to look the answer up.
- Jeff Sinnamon
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it
flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
- I originally attributed this to Frank Saglio, but Erik Woodbury informed me that Frank was quoting Matt Groening :)
Yes...fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is
imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape? The
moneylenders, the know-nothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison;
if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty,
then its our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us
as we can!
- Prof. J.R.R. Tolkien.
I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in
poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently
doing quite well for themselves.
- Emo Philips
Ever consider what our dogs must think of us? I mean, here we come
back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork,
half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!
- Anne Tyler
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax
and get used to the idea.
- Robert A. Heinlein
I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed
contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
- John Steinbeck
The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that
certain other sets of people are human.
- Aldous Huxley
Think of how stupid your average person is.
By definition, half of them are even more stupid than that.
- bob dobbs
trying to describe music is like dancing to architecture
- elvis costello
The great delusion of the human race is that it is somehow entitled
to continue as a species.
That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal: from
which it follows that irregularity - that is to say, the unexpected, surprise
and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.
- Charles Baudelaire
I make a great difference between people - I choose my friends for
their good looks, my acquaintances for their good character, and my enemies
for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of
his enemies - I have not got one that is a fool.
- Oscar Wilde
How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but
to be someone.
- Coco Chanel
The whole of a human being, however much he may write or talk, still
remains hidden in the space and darkness.
- Ana?s Nin
Loneliness is a chameleon, not only different for each of us, but
also different to each of us, varying according to our mood, place and
time. The feeling of loneliness at 3 am may be quite different to how
it feels at midday. When we feel lonely travelling, we may be missing
the bluegums, or Bondi. If our lover has just left, it's different again.
Loneliness is a lyrebird with a different voice every time we hear it.
This is one of its difficulties: we fear loneliness because it resists
our understanding, it has so many guises, it is always a stranger. Perhaps
noticing its changeability is a first step towards understanding. Being
alone does not always make us feel lonely: it can make us feel free, exhilarated,
centred, relaxed, in touch with our sometimes hidden cores.
- Robert Pullan
I don't believe in the existence of angels
But looking at you I wonder if that's true
- Nick Cave / Into My Arms
Love, what's love?"
'It's a feeling in the pit of your stomach.'
"That's indigestion.
- Good Guys Bad Guys
poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
novalis.
>>>>>> Great minds discuss ideas;
>>>>>> Average minds discuss events;
>>>>>> Small minds discuss people.
Charge! Hurrah!
Last words of General Picton of the British 5th Divison,
before he was shot through head leading a charge against
the French Army during the Battle of Waterloo.
Chesire's Law:
You can't break The Rules, but once you know what they are, you can abuse
the hell out of them!
http://digital.net/~cheshire/CheshiresLaw.html
"It's definitely related to religion," she says. "But this is so complex, and your background in that area is so deficient, I don't know where to begin."
"Hey, I went to church every week in high school. I sang in the choir."
"I know. That's the problem. Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds."
- Juanita, talking to Hiro; in "Snow Crash", by Neal Stephenson
The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder - its DNA - xerox it, and embed it on the fertile lining of a well-travelled highway, preferably one with a left-turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines.
In olden times, you'd wander down to Mom's Caf? for a bite and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you didn't leave you hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the blue plate special would be something you didn't recognise. If you did enough travelling, you'd never feel at home anywhere.
But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald's and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald's is Home, condensed into a three-ring binder and xeroxed. "No Suprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the basin.
The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto.
- (abridged) from "Snow Crash", by Neal Stephenson
If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again
be any war.
- Senior Pentagon official, explaining why the U.S. military censored footage showing Iraqi soldiers sliced in two by U.S. helicopter fire.
Jack's 'coffee' arrived, about half of it still in the cup, the rest in the saucer, lapping around the grimy thumb of Jack's server.
"One coffee," the server said. "Enjoy your meal."
The fact that Jack was clearly not having a meal was of no concern to this boy, whose instructions were to say 'Enjoy your meal' on delivery of every order, and that was what he did. Jack reflected on the problems of imposing a corporate culture. There was simply no point attempting to make English kids into Americans. You could put the silly hat on the British teenager, but you still had a British teenager under the silly hat. You could make them say, 'Enjoy your meal', 'Have a nice day,' and 'Hi, my name is Cindy, how may I help you right now?' as much as you liked, but it still came out sounding like 'Fuck off.'
[p.35] "Blast from the Past", by Ben Elton
It seemed to Polly that studying and raving was all that students
did any more. She had been most diappointed to find how little political
activism there was in the colleges. Fear of the future had long since
beaten that out of the young. In the sixties and seventies it had been
possible for students to rail and rant against society in the comfortable
knowledge that they would be shortly joining it at a fairly elevated level.
In the eighties, however, the world for graduates had become as uncertain
as it was for everyone else and few students felt they had the luxury
to worry about other people.
[p.144] "Blast from the Past", by Ben Elton
[During a long debate, comments have been about phallically shaped objects and their supposed deeper meanings.]
Polly never failed to rise to this one.
"Well, what were those bloody missiles but big bloke's willies? Nuclear dickheads, we used to call them."
"Yeah, we all loved that one on our side of the fence," Jack said with heavy sarcasm (or perhaps it was irony). "'Tell us the one about missiles being penis replacements again,' we used to shout. We'd laugh all day."
"You're only taking the piss because actually you felt threatened."
"Terrified. Couldn't sleep. You know, Polly, maybe it's kind of late in the day to say this, but the idea of dissing things because of their so-called phallic shape. It's always struck me as kind of banal."
"Because it reveals an uncomfortable truth about yourself."
"No, because it's dumb. Things get shaped straight and thin for reasons of aerodynamics. Missiles and skyscrapers are shaped the way they are on the soundest principles of engineering, not as monuments to the dick. In fact, so is the dick. The dick is shaped like a dick because that is the most efficient shape for a dick to be. That's why it's dick shaped. I mean a dick shaped like a table would cause all sorts of pratical spatial problems, surely you can see that?"
"Jack, it's a point of satire, not civil engineering."
"Yes, but it's such lazy, unconvincing satire. It always annoys me so much the way you girls trot it out like you're saying something so astute and revealing. Like with cars; a guy gets a cool car and suddenly according to you and other femmos it's his dick. Well, dicks don't look a bit like cars. No guy ever stood outside a Cadillac showroom and said 'Oh, boy, I wish I had one of those. It looks exactly like my dick.' Jesus, if my dick looked like a Cadillac I'd go see a doctor. Personally, I drive a pick-up truck. You ever see a dick with a trailer?"
"Jack, I'm not interested. This is your problem. I never-"
"You might as well say a trombone is a phallic symbol, or a stick of gum! Maybe when a guy shoves a piece of gum into his face what he's really saying is that he is a subconscious homosexual and has a secret desire to be chewing on a big old Cadillac!"
[p.157] "Blast from the Past", by Ben Elton
A little tip for you, never do powerful hallucinogenics and go to
the supermarket, because you stand out. You may not think you do, but
you do. I thought I was just shopping, but apparently I was stroking the
aubergines for four and a half hours.
- Bill Bailey
I don't have e-mail. I'm not on the Internet. I don't have a cellphone
or call waiting or even a beeper. And I'm not proud of it, since my fear,
I guess, is that if someone can't find me using all or any of these means,
they will conclude that, for technical reasons, I don't exist any more.
- From the article "A Waste of Time" by Richard Ford
Anyone can post messages to the net. Practically everyone does. The
resulting cacophony drowns out serious discussion. Online debates of tough
issues are often polarized by messages taking extreme positions. It's
a great medium for trivia and hobbies, but not the place for reasoned,
reflective judgment. Surprisingly often, discussions degenerate into acrimony,
insults, and flames.
-- Clifford Stoll
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous
animals and you know it.
- Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), Men In Black
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear
and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
- Douglas Adams, "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
I'd like to see the big "a" in Art reduced to a little "a".
- David Bowie, interviewed in "The Fine Art of Separating People From Their Money"
Everybody has a dark side
It is those who keep it hidden
you should be most fearful of
- Kevin Greggain
"But I like the inconveniences."
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphillis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.
-from A Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
She'll only break your heart; it's a fact. And even though I warn
you, and even though I guarantee you that the girl will only hurt you
terribly, you'll still pursue her. Ain't love grand?
- Ms Nora Dinsmoor, 'Great Expectations'
In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays.
Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecreate
ground for the vision-place of souls.
- Maj. General Joshua L. Chamberlain October 3, 1889
Why do they bother making cat food into all these cutesy shapes? Do
the cats really give a shit?
- Cliff Bleszinski (www.cat-scan.com)
If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science-fiction
writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper,
utter prophecies and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big
Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins makes us seem harmless.
- Bruce Sterling, in the preface to William Gibson?s "Burning Chrome"
Thus the unfamiliar, the outr?, the monstrous, became familiarized
- a kind of joke, a child?s bogeyman, a cultural reference. ?Ordinary
life? is an obsessive habit: something which must continue, even in the
midst of war or catastrophe. Women in cities devastated by earthquake,
their houses in ruin, still peg out their washing to dry in the sun.
- Brian Aldiss "The Eye Opener"
"Rock and roll! God, what that meant to us when we were young. It was our symbol of rebellion, you know what I?m saying?"
Michael said nothing.
"No," said the man, looking him up and down, "maybe you don?t. Our parents hated rock and roll, and radio stations banned it. But it was our music, and it was going to be our world. We felt everything would be different from then on."
He shrugged. "But it wasn?t. I guess it never is."
- David Garnett "Off the Track"
ADVERTISING: The science of arresting the human intelligence long
enough to get money from it.
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror,
murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and
the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five
hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did they produce? The cuckoo-clock.
- Orson Welles
In the book Double Standards, Drew Youngman was given the definition
of a cult seen below. Strangely this definition not only describes various
mainstream religions but also describes the attitude of many active in
the anti-cult movement itself.
The Australian ARM believes "cults" are identifiable by the following
traits: "The group will have an elitist view of itself in relation to
others and a unique case. [Sic] They are the only ones right, everyone
else is wrong: they are the only ones doing God's will, everyone else
is in apostasy. [...] They alone have the truth and take a critical stance
regarding all others while at the same time exalting their group."
- R. L. Akers; in a Queensland Criminal Code Review Submission written September 1996
Never doubt that a small group of thoughful, committed people can
change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead
Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever
in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.
- Albert Einstein, in a eulogy for Mohandas Gandhi.
I've got this brilliant recipe for quiche! You make the quiche, right,
an' then you cook it, an' then you throw the stupid fuckin' thing out
the window. Then you grill yourself a T-Bone an' eat that instead.
- Cassidy
The creator had a lot of remarkably good ideas when he put the world
together, however making it understandable hadn?t been one of them.
- Terry Pratchett
But look at matrimony! Who is to say which shall be the one judicious
selection out of the nine hundered and ninety-nine mistakes? Which is
to be the one eel out of the barrel of snakes? The girl on the kerbstone
may be the one woman out of every female creature in the universe capable
of making me a happy man, yet I pass her by, and bespatter her with the
mud from my wheels, in my utter ignorance!" Arslau laughed. "No, I have
not married?
- William Gibson & Bruce Sterling "The Difference Engine"
I guess we still have some bugs to work out. That must be why we're
not shipping Windows 98 yet.
- Bill Gates (20th April 1998, after the feature computer crashed during a demonstration at the opening of the Comdex Spring Computer Show in Chicago)
Our contemporary Western society, in spite of its material, intellectual,
and political progress, is increasingly less conducive to mental health,
and tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason and capacity
for love in the individual; it tends to turn them into an automaton who
pays for their human failure with increasing mental sickness, and with
despair hidden under a frantic drive for work and so-called pleasure.
- Aldous Huxley, 1958
Extract from a customer complaint letter sent to The Body Shop...
I recently shampooed my pet rabbit with Body Shop shampoo. Its eyes
bulged out and turned red. If you tested your stuff on animals like everyone
else, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.
To me, boxing is like ballet, except there's no music, no choreography
and the dancers hit each other.
THAT'S LIFE : The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an
inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into
account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
Sometimes the veil between human and animal intelligence wears very
thin -- then one experiences the supreme thrill of keeping a cat, or perhaps
allowing oneself to be owned by a cat.
- C. Manley
CAT: A pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs, and patronizes human
beings.
- O. Herford
We kill the cows to make jackets out of them; then we kill each other
for the jackets we made out of the cows.
- Dennis Leary
Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather restraints.
For years, we thought that a million monkeys sitting at a million
keyboards would produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Today, thanks
to the Internet, we know that's not true.
- Gordon T. Thompson, Mgr. Internet Services, The New York Times
Piss off Satan and don't take me for dumber than I look.
- W.S. Burroughs
I'm so nice, teddybears sneer at me.
- Kenny, "Press Gang"
They're a morbid lot, your christians. Easter is also strange in that
a massive bunny comes around hiding chocolate eggs in your house because
some bloke got nailed to a cross and carked it. I think a thousand tripping
hippies would come up with the works of Shakespeare before they thought
of that.
- Michael Watkin, Brisigoth
What's popular is not always right, what is right is not always popular.
What is to be, will be."
"And what isn't to be sometimes happens.
- L. M. Montgomery
Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.
- Wilson Mizner
Question Authority."
"Why?
- J. Baldwen
A bore is someone who, when you ask them how they are, tells you.
I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all the little children
jump up and down and run around yelling and screaming...They don't know
I'm only using blanks.
--- Emo Phillips
The stupidity of the human race never fails to surprise me.
- attributed to Charles Darwin
We'll never survive!"
"Nonsense! You're only saying that because no one ever has!
- The Princess Bride
The secret to flying: miss the ground.
- J. Davis
Are you frightened of snakes?"
"Only if they dress up as werewolves.
[Animal Auditions]
"What are you?"
"I'm an otter."
"And what do you do?"
"I swim around on my back and do cute little human things with my hands."
"You're free to go. ""What are you?"
"I'm a cow."
"Get in the back of the truck."
"But i'm an animal..."
"You're a baseball glove!"
"...but i'm an animal i have rights!"
"Yeah right - [indicates leather jacket] here's your fucking cousin, get in the back of the truck!"
- Dennis Leary. No Cure for Cancer
The Russian space program is continued so that little boys can dream
of being pilots and little girls can dream of marrying cosmonauts
- Boris Yeltsin, 1997
What luck for rulers, that men do not think.
- attributed to Adolph Hitler
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both
instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged,
and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air,
however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only
six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else
on this planet.
- Six Degrees of Separation
...and sometimes I have really bad days... when, you know, I just
want to hide or scream or bleed or something.
- Neil Gaiman, The Sandman#42
As long as people can hide in the shadows, there will be Goths.
- coyote
That wall paper is killing me. One of us has to go.
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) on his deathbed
Welcome to der Weinerschnitzel, may I take your order please?
`Yeah I want TWO LARGE COKES TWO LARGE FRIES CHILI CHEESE DOG LARGE DR PEPPER SUPER DELUZE WITH CHEESE AND TOMATO'
Would you like whale sperm with that?
`NO!'
- "Weinerschnitzel" by The Descendents
(that's the whole song, by the way)
I would rather lead an absurd life engaged in the particular than
a seamless transcendental life immersed in the universal. Perhaps those
who have tried both would laugh inscrutibly at this preference. It reflects
the belief that the absurdity of human life is not such a bad thing. There
are limits to what we should be prepared to do to escape it - apart from
the point that some of these cures may be more absurd than the disease.
- T. Nagel `The View From Nowhere'
Do I feel beautiful? It depends. If I've been hanging out with Christy
and Naomi, I feel like a piece of shit.
- Kate Moss
A mind is like a parachute? it doesn't work if it's not open.
---Frank Zappa
Never saw the morning 'til I stayed up all night
- Tom Waits
If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist
it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standards
of nonconformity.
I think the great lesson of the 20th century is that you have to
separate the ethics from the aesthetics...The great lesson there is that
you don't have to agree with what the Nazis did, but, yes, be honest about
it, they did have the best uniforms. A lot of people can't come to terms
with something as banal as that.
- Andrew Eldritch
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose
a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc
players and electrical tin openers... choose DIY and wondering who the
fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching
mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your
mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in
a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked
up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life...
But why would I want to do a thing like that?
- Renton, "Trainspotting"
I like that. Talk Hard. I like the idea that a voice can just go somewhere
uninvited and just kind of hang out like a dirty thought in a nice clean
mind. To me a thought is like a virus. You know, it can just kill all
the healthy thoughts and just take over.
- Happy Harry Hardon
#!/hhof/admirations/quotable