Quote Collection
From Sedes Draconis
I quote others only the better to express myself.
-Michel de Montaigne
Words fascinate me. They always have. For me, browsing in a dictionary is
like being turned loose in a bank.
-Eddie Cantor, actor (1892-1964)
Words are like the middle class, a drinking glass, a mask.
Words are like a Spanish town, a wedding gown, a clown.
Words are like a happy dream, a racing team, a wooden beam, a seam.
Words are like a rusty nail, a minor scale, a snail.
Words are like a postcard stamp, a highway ramp, a cramp.
Words are like kaleidoscopes, the taste of soap, a billy goat, a coat.
Words are like a teenage star, a prison guard, a painted star, a car.
-"Words are Like", They Might Be Giants
The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls, and whispered in the sounds of silence.
-"The Sound of Silence", Paul Simon
When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.
-Christopher Darlington, writer and journalist (1890 - 1957)
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read
them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the
appropriation of their contents.
-Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860)
Humour is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour, for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
-Aristotle
The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.
-The Goatherd Boy
Life is like a Game: if you're not having fun at it, then you're not playing it right.
-FRPGer's Bible, Sean Fannon
Christopher Robin, I think the bees suspect something.
What sort of thing?
I don't know. But something tells me that they're suspicious.
Perhaps they think you're after their honey.
Well, yes, it may be that. You never can tell with bees.
-Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne
Exit, pursued by a bear.
-Stage Directions, Winter's Tale III-3, William Shakespeare
Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men;
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water rugs and demi-wolves, are clept
All by the name of dogs: ...
-Macbeth, Macbeth III-1, William Shakespeare
There are four sorts of men:
He who knows not and knows not he knows not: he is a fool - shun him,
He who knows not and knows he knows not: he is simple - teach him,
He who knows and knows not he knows: he is asleep - wake him,
He who knows and knows he knows: he is wise - follow him.
-Arabian proverb
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
-Puck, Midsummer's Night Dream, William Shakespeare
Into a Limbo large and broad, since call'd
The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown.
-John Milton
Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction... Against folly we have no such defense. Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use...
So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive. A fool must therefore be treated more cautiously than a scoundrel.
-Dietrich Bonhöffer, theologian (1906-1945)
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist.
-Verbal Kint, The Usual Suspects
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds
and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy
them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every
human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918- )
... And I could be good, and I would - If I knew I was understood...
-"Too Little, Too Late", BNL
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
-Hamlet, Hamlet, William Shakespeare
The optimist says that we live in the best of all possible worlds and the pessimist fears this is true.
-Branch Cabell, author (1879-1958)
Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own
reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company.
-George Washington
When the fox preaches, look to the geese.
-German Proverb
Nevermore.
-The Raven
There are two kinds of light: the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
-James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)
He who breaks a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.
-Gandalf
If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe.
-Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the U.S (1809-1865)
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
-Abraham Lincoln
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
-Abraham Lincoln
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each
man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
-Marcus Aurelius
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
-Thomas Jefferson, author, architect, and third U.S. president (1743-1826)
Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities.
-Voltaire (pen name of Francois Marie Arouet), Author and Philosopher (1694-1778)
Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those
who dare not, are slaves.
-George Gordon Noel Byron [Lord Byron]
Nothing is more disagreeable to the hacker than duplication of effort. The first and most important mental habit that people develop when they learn how to write computer programs is to generalize, generalize, generalize. To make their code as modular and flexible as possible, breaking large problems down into small subroutines that can be used over and over again in different contexts.
-Neal Stephenson
Give me an hour and I can write you a program to write and compile programs. Give it a day and we can double the number of programs for Mac OS X, although all these programs will do is print a string to the console, but each will print a different string. I would say that this would dilute the average quality of Mac software close to that of Windows software, but while these programs would do less than (most) Windows programs, they would be bug free, so we still win.
-nnooiissee, replying to the age-old justification: "Windows has more software."
If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the
game, the stakes, and the quitting time.
-Chinese Proverb
Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks - those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.
-"Thus Spoke Zarathustra", Friedrich Nietzsche
God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
-Voltaire
When I first said I wanted to be a comedian, everybody laughed. Well, they're not laughing now.
-Bob Monkhouse, British comedian, actor and game show host (1928-2003)
Some people walk on water. Some people walk on broken glass. Some just walk 'round and 'round in their dreams. Some just keep falling down.
-"Ramon", Laurie Anderson
I think...I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check.
-M.C. Escher
Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.
-Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (1885-1962)
The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new.
-Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
Whimsy is like a butterfly juggling teacups, chainsaws, and very small mammoths. Even assuming you could get 'em that small, once you close the shackles over it, it's no longer juggling and all you've got is a mad butterfly with a chainsaw.
- Ursula Vernon, fantasy illustrator
It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
-Walt Disney
Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.
-John Lennon
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature in her manner of operation.
-John Cage, composer (1912-1992)
To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real
feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty of nature. If you want to learn
about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the
language that she speaks in.
-Richard Feynman
The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
-Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-Clarke's Law, Arthur C. Clarke
This is not the Power Age, the Atomic Age, or the Space Age. It is the Age of Endless Change. Science Fiction tries to interpret this endless change and discusses what tomorrow may bring. Many people do not like change. These people and others dismiss science fiction as "fantastic nonsense". It is true that some science fiction has little value. Good science fiction, on the other hand, is a literature of new and fertile ideas.
-Rocket Ship Galileo, Robert Heinlein, author (1907-1988)
The Church says the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the Moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.
-Ferdinand Magellan
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
-Aristotle
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
-The Buddha
Many people obviously expect that, if their ideology has an answer to everything, that's a proof of its correctness. But it's quite the opposite, really, because if nothing can possibly disprove your beliefs, they're unfalsifiable-- and thus have no particular relevance to reality.
-Mark Rosesnfelder, the Zompist
Adam was but human, this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
-Mark Twain
I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must, of course, admit that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform our social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless, this must weigh against it.
-"Skeptical Essays I", Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Science is what we've learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.
-Ricahrd Feynman
Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas?
-Joseph Stalin
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
-Isaac Newton
Every man is a damned fool for at least five minutes every day. Wisdom
consists in not exceeding the limit.
-Elbert Hubbard, author, editor, printer (1856-1915)
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails.
-Clarence Darrow, attorney, orator, and idealist (1857-1938)
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
-Marcel Proust
And what I see is a world of jerry-rigged creatures formed mindlessly by evolution on a limited number of body plans, with only the variation within each generation as raw material. As products of evolution they are astounding. Considered as the supposed result of independent creation, they are amazingly devoid of novelty, imagination or inventiveness.
-Carl "Olduvai George" Buell, Natural History Illustrator
To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often.
-Winston Churchill
If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.
-Tom Stoppard
Any technology distignuishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
-Corollary to Clarke's Law
I always say that the best time to be alive is in a period of decadence... such as our own. Rising empires are intolerant, brutal, zealous, simplistic, and in general way too butch. Decadent empires are sophisticated, cosmopolitan, tolerant, and have way better art and literature.
-Zompist
The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever.
-Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, visionary and pioneer of astronautics (1857-1935)
But hurry please, we have so much time and so little to see. Wait a minute! Strike that. Reverse it. Thank you.
-Willy Wonka
(Yes, it becomes obvious I've played SMAC. But they put together a top notch set of quotes for that game, so I won't apologize for a little derivation.)
I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld.
When I die, they will put my body in a box and
dispose of it in the cold ground.
And in all the million ages to come, I will never
breathe or laugh or twitch again.
So won't you run and play with me here among the
teeming mass of humanity?
The universe has spared us this moment.
-Anonymous (sometimes attributed to Bertrand Russell)
To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.
-Theophile Gautier, writer (1811-1872)
They also serve who only stand and wait.
-John Milton, poet (1608-1674)
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For tryin' to change the system from within.
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them.
First, we take Manhattan . . .
Then we take Berlin!
-"First We Take Manhattan", Leonard Cohen
