Finding Solace in Favourite Quotes: Escaping Despair with Words of Wisdom

[enricfemi]

you may live,but just for a while

wallace

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Question: All mariners know that if a man falls off the boat, you are supposed to yell "man overboard!". What are you supposed to yell if a woman falls off the boat? Answer [Paul Lynde]: Full speed ahead!

 

[Moridin]

'Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.' - Louis Pasteur

'A scientist is happy, not in resting on his attainments but in the steady acquisition of fresh knowledge.' - Max Planck

'Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the grander view?' - Victor Hugo

'There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.' - Richard Feynman

'Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?' - Carl Sagan

'In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual' - Galileo Galilei

'To follow the path: look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master.' - Modern Zen poem

'Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the grander view?' - Victor Hugo

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Has this one been posted yet?
The zen you find at the top of the mountain is the zen you bring with you.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Robert Novak? I love Robert Novak. He has one of the finest minds of the 12th century.

- Paul Begala

 

[Astronuc]

physics goes in the part of my brain with Algebra, British comedy, and making flambe. Ill never understand it

ManiacMike on some internet forum about spacewarps, wormholes and FTL travel.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Without a doubt, Stephen [Hawking] is the most stubborn person in the entire universe!

- Leonard Susskind

 

[Ivan Seeking]

From a couple of CNN viewers commenting on a story about divorce:

Love is fleeting but stuff lasts forever. I want to keep my stuff.

Marriage again? It would be easier to just find a woman that I don’t like and buy her a house.

 

[fourier jr]

The West has never been allowed to forget the Nazi holocaust. For 55 years there has been a continuous outpouring of histories, memoirs, novels, feature films, documentaries, television series... played and replayed in every Western language; there have been museums, memorial sculptures, photo expositions, remembrance ceremonies... Never Again! But who hears the voice of the Vietnamese peasant? Who has access to the writings of the Vietnamese intellectual? What was the fate of the Vietnamese Anne Frank? Where, asks the young American, is Vietnam?
Bill Blum, Killing Hope

This science is the work of the human mind, which is destined rather to study than to know, to seek the truth rather than to find it.
Galois

 

[Astronuc]

At least I don't have to put up with the administriviality.

A friend and co-worker on changing employment.

 

[turbo]

The West has never been allowed to forget the Nazi holocaust. For 55 years there has been a continuous outpouring of histories, memoirs, novels, feature films, documentaries, television series... played and replayed in every Western language; there have been museums, memorial sculptures, photo expositions, remembrance ceremonies... Never Again! But who hears the voice of the Vietnamese peasant? Who has access to the writings of the Vietnamese intellectual? What was the fate of the Vietnamese Anne Frank? Where, asks the young American, is Vietnam?
Bill Blum, Killing Hope

This science is the work of the human mind, which is destined rather to study than to know, to seek the truth rather than to find it.
Galois

You should know that Ho Chi Minh was a patriot. When the OSS contacted him During WWII, he wanted to drive the Japanese out of his country and he promised to do that. The OSS asked what he wanted, and he said that he wanted 12 Colt 1911 pistols with holster rigs and ammunition as a show of US support. One for himself, and one for each of his deputies, and he wanted a promise that the Vietnamese people could rule themsevles, and not be subject as a colony of a foreign government. After the war, our government gave him nothing and gave the region back to France. The roots of that war lie in the deceptions and the unmet promises of WWII.

 

[moe darklight]

Here's my official boring friday with no plans Quote-O-Rama!

My classmates would copulate with anything that moved, but I never saw any reason to limit myself.

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.

You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle-aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life.

- Emo Philips

"What's wrong with getting what you want?"

- McLusky

"Heaven's just a scab away"

- Cedric Bixler-Zavala

I think foosball is a combination of soccer and shish kabobs.

I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too.

I wrote my friend a letter using a highlighting pen but he could not read it; he thought I was just trying to show him certain parts of a piece of paper.

The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall.

When someone hands you a flyer, it's like they're saying here you throw this away.

Y'know, you can't please all the people all the time... and last night, all those people were at my show.

- Mitch Hedberg (R.I.P)

If ignorant people could fly, it'd always be dark out.

- My dad says his dad used to say that. I don't know where it's from but I like it.

(on the Bush administration) Then you write, "Oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.

(to bush) The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday -- no matter what happened Tuesday.

- Stephen Colbert

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.

- George Orwell

Normal people don't understand this concept; they believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.

- Scott Adams

(...) in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie (...)

- Hitler (ironically, he was referring to the Jews' "big lie", not his own)

What, me worry?

- Alfred E. Neuman

But I'm hungry now.

 

[end3r7]

"The volume of success is a product of wide experience, deep imagination, and a lengthy effort.
One may at times find himself lost in an area where his knowledge is useless, and even become reduced to an ordinary line of thinking. But as long as he does not fail to try, he will never reach the point of no return." - moi

This one cracks me up every time
"Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive." - Van Wilder

 

[teknodude]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-cnizLDEE"

 

[matthyaouw]

"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."
Albert Einstein

 

[Astronuc]

One of the frustrations in science and engineering is learning not be frustrated. It helps to have a certain level of stubborness or perserverance, not so much to hold on to old ideas or notions, but to be able to push on regardless, even if it means developing new ideas or understanding.

Somebody is bound to have realized this in their career.

 

[fourier jr]

Evariste Galois was a strange and complex character. Genius, dreamer, poet, revolutionary - he was all these with a passion which would early have burned him out, had fate permitted him a less violent death. He truly belonged to the age which produced the romantic poets, musicians and revolutionaries who were his contemporaries, most of whom died young.
B Melvin Kiernan

Preserve my memory, since fate has not given me life enough for the country to know my name.
Galois (who now has a street & a moon crater named after him, & has one of the best stories in math)

 

[Astronuc]

It is the privilege of adults to give advice. It is the privilege of youth not to listen. Both avail themselves of their privileges, and the world rocks along.
<D. Sutten>


There is nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't aggravate. <Anonymous>


There comes a period when everything is going well - but don't worry - it won't last. <An optimist>

 

[Ivan Seeking]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-cnizLDEE"

I had an employer once tell me the same thing on my first day of work.

 

[Jallu]

I think it's my own, but possibly I picked it up somewhere.

"Once the question is clear, the answer is near."

 

[Astronuc]

College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don't worry about your grade, or the results or success. Success is defined in myriad ways, and you will find it, and people will no longer be grading you, but it will come from your own internal sense of decency which I imagine, after going through the program here, is quite strong...although I'm sure downloading illegal files, but, nah, that's a different story.

Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may.

- Jon Stewart's advice to the graduates of William and Mary, 2004.

'Oops...We Broke the World'

 

[Evo]

"It is better to be rich and healthy than to be poor and sick."

I read this the other day.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Why do today what I can do tomorrow? If I wait until tomorrow I'll be under pressure, and I work better under pressure - Charlie Brown

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Scully: Kuru was transmitted from victim to victim by eating the infected brains of the dead
Mulder: Geez, and I thought my grandpa slurping his soup was bad.

 

[moe darklight]

(paraphrasing)

"forgive: and be free
forget that you have forgiven: and be freer"

Buddha

 

[daveb]

From Mindwalk, "Life is infinitely more than your or my obtuse theories about it" (or something like that).

 

[Astronuc]

Those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.

- Albus Dumbledore


All's well.

 

[Danger]

I can't believe that I never noticed this thread before.
My two favourite quotes are confrontational, in a defensive sort of way. One is fictional, wherein Spider-Man tells some villain "If you ever hit me again, and I find out about it..."
The best one, along the same line, is true, witnessed by and related to me by a very good friend. It was back in the little Ontario town that he came from. A smallish, quiet guy was sitting at the bar having a beer and minding his own business. For no discernable reason, the huge biker-type sitting beside him just hauled off and belted him in the head. Apparently suffering no ill effect, the little guy slowly turned toward his attacker and said "If that's the best you've got, you'd better go home right ****ing now." He sat alone and unmolested for the rest of the evening.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Yeah, they may have running water on Mars, but they don't have plumbing.
- Jon Stewart

There are more bacteria living in your colon than the total number of people who have ever lived on Earth - Neil deGrasse Tyson
Thank God the opposite isn't true - Jon Stewart

 

[Ivan Seeking]

There are more Christians in China than members of the Communist Party - Rob Gifford

THAT was quite a surprising statement! I would assume that only our more mature members can fully appreciate the significance of this.

 

[EugP]

"I'm not trying to knock you out, I just know I will" - Chuck Lidell

I'm a huge UFC fan, and pretty much a genera MMA fan, so this is probably one of the greatest things I've ever heard.

 

[rewebster]

I can't place why this came to mind, but it came to mind while I was mediating the other day-






“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.”

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/oh-the_comfort-the_inexpressible_comfort_of/170845.html


-(no,.. wait,.. I meant..---meditating)

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

- Gandhi

Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

- Hermann Goering

Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent

- Issac Asimov

am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always does to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them. Night fell again. There was war to the south, but our sector was quiet. The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself--and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.

- John Fowles, "The Magus"

Anyone, who truly wants to go to war, has never truly been there before!

- Larry Reeves

Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out. Niether side is glorious. On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing - not to lie under theearth, but to walk upon it - without crutches.

- Peter Weiss

La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid

- Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderios de LaClos (1741-1803

Revenge is a dish best served cold, unless my French deserts me.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

- Ronald Reagan

How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.

- Christiaan Huygens, (1629 –1695), In Humanity

How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: The Renaissance pencilled in for right after the Dark Ages. The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Post-Modern Era, then The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished.

- Chuck Palahniuk, In Philosophy

"One of the main reasons that it is so easy to march men off to war," says Ernest Becker, is that "each of them feels sorry for the man next to him who will die."

Annie Dillard

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

Barbara Kingsolver

In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.

Croesus

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

David Friedman

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Eleanor Roosevelt

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

General Douglas MacArthur I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it. I hate war, and never again will I sanction or support another.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

Jeanette Rankin

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.

Omar N. Bradley

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Howard Thurman

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Thomas Jefferson

War quotes from the wise.

 

[ranger]

I always get a kick out of these kinds of discussions:

"By the way, I always felt that hell might not be such a bad place after all: it would be populated with people of at least a somewhat higher average IQ than heaven. It wouldn't get dull, that's for sure.
~Arto (sciforums)

"Yup looks like all the rational thinkers will go to hell – should provoke some really good debates without interruptions from the idiots who will have gone upstairs. So I’ll see you in hell"
~Cris (sciforums) in response to the above (Arto)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

In my house, we used a smoke alarm as an oven timer - Murphy Brown

 

[fourier jr]

(for all the Canadians)
With the National Policy in ruins, the tariff failing to generate sufficient employment, the West empty, Ontario in revolt, and discontent rife in Manitoba and Nova Scotia, the Old Chieftan rose to the occasion. A time of grave national crisis required strong, imaginative leadership. The Macdonald government resonded by falsifying the 1890-91 census returns, bribing the statistician to exaggerate the number of factories and hands employed. In one riding the census takers were given instructions to include in the list of factories all blacksmiths, shoemakers and artisans engaged in handicraft production. In another, 72 new industries were reported as having begun since 1881 -- in fact not a single one existed. To increase the apparent population, the names of people who had moved to the US were carefully reported as still present in Canada. -- RT Naylor

 

[Astronuc]

"Going barefoot is the practice of not wearing shoes, socks, or other foot covering." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot

For those who might miss the exceedingly obvious.

Well, were would we be without Wikipedia!?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I don't believe in the lesser of two evils. I believe in the evil of two lessers. - a buddy speaking of the field of 2008 Presidential candidates.

 

[morphism]

J'ai toujours fait une prière à Dieu, qui est fort courte. La voici: "Mon Dieu, rendez nos ennemis bien ridicules!" Dieu m'a exaucé.
- Voltaire

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
- Samuel Johnson

And on the more humorous side:

Dressed like he's ready to run a marathon. Fitting because his class is long-winded.
- Professor evaluation

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The money don't matter... as long as I'm getting it. - Groucho Marx

 

[Ki Man]

Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation. -R. Feynman

 

[mgb_phys]

From which we know that Feynman considered himself a physicist not a mathematician.

 

[morphism]

From which we know that Feynman considered himself a physicist not a mathematician.

And that he must've been having quite the masturbation sessions!

 

[ranger]

In light of all the unprofessionalism and incompetence shown by the Metropolitan Transportation Agency (MTA) and the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) and its management, I've been hearing a couple of comments over and over again:

"F*ck the MTA"
~More than half of New York City.

"The MTA is F*cking up"
~More than half of New York City.

http://www.mta.info/alert/images/alerthomenyct-sm.gif

 

[Ivan Seeking]

"I will not be right back after this message" - requested as an epitaph by Merv Griffin.

This reminded me of the epitaph seen on two headstones during a recent funeral: "See you soon"

 

[Ivan Seeking]

"I don't think the military would lie about anything because they are too worried about their public image" - a noted UFO conspiracy theory debunker.

Sometimes the debunkers are more naive than the true-believers.

 

[Astronuc]

"Hey, this is real science. We get to make stuff up."

Mentioned during a recent project meeting.

 

[turbo]

Einstsin in a memoriam on the death of Ernst Mach:

"How does it happen that a properly endowed natural scientist comes to concern himself with epistemology? Is there no more valuable work in his specialty? I hear many of my colleagues saying, and I sense it from many more, that they feel this way. I cannot share this sentiment. ... Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such an authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they come to be stamped as 'necessities of thought,' 'a priori givens,' etc. The path of scientific advance is often made impassable for a long time through such errors. For that reason, it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analyzing the long common place concepts and exhibiting those circumstances upon which their justification and usefulness depend, how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. By this means, their all-too-great authority will be broken."

Any person who aspires to the title of "scientist" cannot claim that title if they have not wrestled with these demons. They are many, and they are very foundational.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Today, from Craigslist:

The bathroom at the Minnesota airport
The bathroom at the park
The bathroom at the rest stop
...

 

[josht]

"If you are always looking down, you will never see what lies above you."
- C.S. Lewis