Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Favorite Quotes

I appreciate the cool quotes that many of us use as our sig lines. I am often changing mine after seeing a new cool one - Ooh! SHINY!

Anyway, since there's way more cool quotes than 100 characters allow, I thought this might be a cool thread. I didn't search to see if it's been done before, but I'm pretty sure it's not been since I've been coming 'round.

I like a lot of Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker quotes. Just stumbled onto some cool ones from Christopher Hitchens:

"Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods."

"Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay."

"My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either. It happens to be my view, but it doesn't challenge any of the findings of Darwin or Huxley or Einstein or Hawking."

(on intelligent design) "Our prefrontal lobes are too small while our adrenal glands are too big."

"Figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure."

"One caveat: I've moved past threesomes. I'm now into foursomes. If someone backs out, then you've still got a threesome. If two people back out, you're still having sex."

"A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man."

Found on this website, which has me laughing out loud...

Speaking of Dogs and Cats - another Churchill:

"I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."

Blessed is the person who has
earned the love of an old dog."
- Sydney Jeanne Seward

More Churchill:

"There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you."

"Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room"

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

BTW, I love Churchill......

"If you are going through Hell.....Keep going"

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on"

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject"

A Twain that I am doing from memory....

It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear ignorant than to open it and remove all doubt.

Jeeez, Rob.... Churchill is alright I guess.... but has he ever been quoted using the word "embiggens"?

Churchill?....that old stuffed shirt?? No way.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is my favorite author. Here's a few of his gems:

"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae."

"Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information."

"Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative."

"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."

I always chuckle when I hear the quote made by Churchill when confronted by a women who pointed out he was intoxicated:

"I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober, and you will still be ugly."

Great thread concept Doc.

A recent post on my site included a couple of quotes from UCLA coach John Wooden.

"Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."

"Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming."

Hear, hear! Vonnegut is the best. In fact, I don't think I could trust anyone who doesn't like him. To be a decent human being, one must read and appreciate Vonnegut. His books are essential and should be required reading for all. Especially young people.

Having said that, while possessing a brilliant intellect (or at least he used to), Christopher Hitchens has become a pathetic, drunken blowhard who has lost his mind and any sense of deep insight that he might have had. He reminds me of a drunk Richard Burton, except without the charm, style and talent. He is a rumply, sad and bitter man. And currently wrong on most issues.

Now a quote from one of my favorite authors (Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas was my Catcher In The Rye when I was a teenager), Hunter S. Thompson:

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

" I do not mean to pry, but you don't by any chance happen to have six fingers on your right hand?"

"That is what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age"

"Comedy's in my blood, which explains why people only laugh when I'm actively bleeding."

"The only thing worse than cannibalism is eating a cannibal's puke."
"And they puke a lot, especially after eating this course that's name translates to 'One Cheek.' I can only assume it's a half-assed attempt at cannibal cuisine."

"I used to think I was good at not stepping on people's toes, but it turned out all the people I knew just had very small feet."

"You might be a redneck if you're not a blueneck or a greenneck."

"MeOWWWWWWWW!" said the cat as it entered purrgatory.

"Welcome to Hell!"
"Thanks for the super-warm welcome."

"I have an inoperable male brain on my tumor."

"If nothing is impossible, then I guess I do the impossible every day."

"There's nothing like screwing a woman made of nails, except maybe nailing a woman made of screws."

"I'm not fat. I'm just morbidly big-boned."

"I feel like I'm throwing golden boomerangs and getting back silver ones."

"I'm running for office. I guess that'll get in me in good enough shape for a desk job."

"I like looking at someone's chest and saying that I can't make heads or tails of it."

"A match made in Heaven is inferior to a lighter made in Hell."

"By the pallor of Grayscale, I have the pallor!"

Forum regulars glance around furtively and move on, as Charles single handedly kills the thread.

When life hands you a lemon, say "Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else you got?" - Henry Rollins

Bren R.

"When God hands you lemons, FIND A NEW GOD." - Powerthirst commercial

I just stumbled onto this quote today:

"Whatever you give a woman, she's going to multiply.
If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby.
If you give her a house, she'll give you a home.
If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal.
If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart.
She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her.
So - if you give her any crap, you'll receive a ton of s***."

My favorite quote is from Muhatma Gandhi: "You can judge the progress of a society by how well they treat their animals."

I agree with all the gushing about Vonegut. Slaughterhouse 5 is my favorite book. Not from Slaughterhouse 5 (but I think actually used in two of his books): "Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."

Finally, one of my favorites is from Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

Einstein also has a ton of great statements, but I can't find my folder where I keep my favorite quotations.

So, THAT's my problem!

Not really a quote, but lyrics which have stuck with me for years.

There are those people who tell you not to take chances
They are all missing what life is about
You only live once, so take hold of the chance
Don't end up like others, the same song and dance

I tried my best. I suppose I should have used two hands.

Please use both hands. No, don't close your eyes.

"The right to express an opinion doesn't include a right to be taken seriously".

"Projection is the pretense of a subjective ideal"

One that I came up with myself; I love quotes.

Ha. Brilliant new Avatar.

from a post left by Tilly on "The West Virginia Surf Report"

"smells like a vagina full of bad decisions"

A couple by Peter Drucker:

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."

"What everybody knows is frequently wrong."

"People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year."

And my favourite:

"If you haven't been fired by the time your 40, your not trying hard enough."

Tact is just not saying true stuff. . . ." Cordelia Chase

“Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is in a democracy the whores are us.” P.J. O’Rourke

“No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy.” Motto of both the 1st Marines and the 1st Marine Division. (*trivia* the official song 1st Marine Division is “Waltzing Matilda“)

“For it is the doom of men that they forget.” Merlin “Excalibur”

Dude, we could fill this thread with Buffyisms!

You bet! I loved the writing for that show, but that one was always one of my favorites. It’s my signature over at AVS.

"I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich." - Gertrude Stein

At least now I know, so I can finally go ahead and follow this treasure map I have.

Here's a few from a web site I just recently joined, healthyskepticism.org :

"Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty."
- Mark Twain

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
- Buddha

“Another error is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients; the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation; if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626): The Proficience and Advancement of Learning
(London, 1605).

“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
- Leo Tolstoy

“The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”
- Mark Twain

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
- Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist and educator, Aphorisms and Reflections, 1907

Never ascribe to malice that which is better explained by incompetence.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

True courage is mixed with circumspection, the kind of healthy skepticism that asks, “Is this the best way to do this?” True cowardice is marked by chronic skepticism, which always says, “It can’t be done.”
-William Bennett

There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility.
- Jacob Bronowski, scientist, broadcaster, The Ascent of Man, 1973

Those are some good quotes, medic8r. I liked 'em so much I went to check out the site. Not exactly what I was expecting, and seemingly not of particular interest to someone that is not in the medical profession!

Yeah, one wouldn't gather it from the name of the site, which is very non-specific. The site encourages doctors to cast a skeptical eye on the claims of those drug reps who bring me my Olive Garden lunches. I am so conflicted, ha ha.

"Lest you forgot the things which your eyes have seen, and teach them to your children and your children's children".

For snarky and sarcastic quotes, despair.com has some cool new t-shirts:

"Toyota - once you drive one, you'll never stop."

"If you don't like my opinion of you, you could always improve."

"The more of my behavior you accept, the less you will have to forgive."

"Don't ever change. I always want to be better than you."

I really tried to get my previous boss to get some of their motivational posters to decorate our, at the time, new office.

When in 1986 Apple bought a Cray X-MP and announced that they would use it to design the next Apple Macintosh, Seymour Cray replied, "This is very interesting because I am using an Apple Macintosh to design the Cray-2 supercomputer."

That is a good one.

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another." - Jonathan Swift

and a few from Bill Cosby:

"Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes."

"There is hope for the future because God has a sense of humor and we are funny to God."

"The essence of childhood, of course, is play, which my friends and I did endlessly on streets that we reluctantly shared with traffic."

"Let us now set forth one of the fundamental truths about marriage: the wife is in charge."

"Don't mess with old men, they didn't get old by being stupid!"

Yes, Dear. You're right.

From the 30th Anniversary party on Ian and Amie's dock: By BobKay, describing the memory of the senses; "... We have sight memory, we have olfactory memory, but we don't have oral memory." Recognizing the bewildered expression on the faces of those in the conversation, he stopped talking for a second, closed his eyes, shook his head left and right and slowly clarified, while tugging on his ear lobe, "... A..U..R.. aural memory," with a resounding "oh.. OH! OK, That make more sense" from the crowd.

Scott

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.” — Banksy

What an interesting perspective.

Yeah. While I couldn't see myself going out and destroying advertisements, I totally get where he's coming from.

Very true!

One of the grave travesties is that corporations are citizens under the law.

He also touches on the misuse/abuse of psychology to sell. Increasingly, over the years, advertisers use psychology to sell their product. What better way to sell, then to get into the inner constructs of the human psyche? With the help of well-paid researchers and psychologists, advertisers now have access to in-depth knowledge about children’s developmental, emotional and social needs at different ages.

In 1999, Gary Ruskin, head of Commercial Alert, and Allen Kanner, a clinical psychologist, wrote a letter to The American Psychological Association (APA). This letter targeted the misuse of psychology in the field of advertising. The letter’s main statement was that psychologists were using their knowledge “to promote and assist the commercial exploitation and manipulation of children”. The letter went on to state that psychologists were “helping corporations influence children for the purpose of selling products to them”. Ruskin and Kanner appealed to the APA, saying that the core mission of the APA - “to advance the understanding of the human psyche in order to promote health” - was being undermined by psychologists' association with advertising.

It is this exploitation and manipulation of children that Ruskin and Kanner, as well as 60 other psychologists that signed the letter, wanted to bring to the public eye. The letter also spoke of the laws that protect children in other countries:

“Sweden and Norway prohibit television advertising directly targeting children below twelve years of age. Greece bans television advertising of toys to children between 7:00am and 10:00pm. Quebec prohibits television advertising directed at children below the age of thirteen. However, in the United States, children have no such protections, nor any protection against the use of psychological insights and expertise to manipulate or influence them”.

Easy to see several reasons why we're a nation of fatsos, when toddlers can identify the Golden Arches.

I'd check in with (the late) Melvin Levine before I jumped to any conclusions.

What difference if the sheep unanimously pass a resolution in favor of vegetarianism if the wolves are of a different opinion on the matter.

Doesn't that depend entirley upon which country is lending air support to the Sheep Insurgents?

Or have the Wolves brokered a no-grandmother-zone agreement?

"I'd like to see how smart Theo Epstein is with the Tampa Bay [Rays] payroll. You got Carl Crawford 'cause you paid more than anyone else, and that's what makes you smarter? That's why I like whipping their butt. It's great, knowing those guys with the $205 million payroll are saying, 'How the hell are they beating us?"

--Buck Showalter on the New York Yankees eeerrrrrr Boston Redsox

Again:

"Bite Me!"----Bob K.

"I don't remember them beating us that much. Maybe there was some different schedule, I don't know."

Terry Francona, 3-27-11

Bob, in Libya we are supporting the wolves against the wolves.

Man, it's the same bullshit they tried to pull in my day. If it ain't that piece of paper, there's some other choice they're gonna try and make for you. You gotta do what Randall "Pink" Floyd wants to do, man. Let me tell you this, the older you do get the more rules they're gonna try to get you to follow. You just gotta keep livin' man, L-I-V-I-N.

Showalter took over part way through last season so they couldn't have played that many games against each other (Orioles) with him has manager. A funny stat as much as his quote is they have had the best record in baseball since then. It will be interesting to see if Boston can fight through this tough start. The AL East is really, really tough this year. Has panic set in Boston?

I'll digree from that opinion... Canada is involved too, unfortunately. Something very important regarding Gaddafi that didn't make the mainstream media --> here .

Yes, Gaddafi and his are wolves. Those fighting him are also wolves. US State Department and Obama administration burned the house down. They ignored the people of Iran and left them to the tender mercies of the murderous mullahs who murdered by the thousands, ignored Hariri who asked for help against Hizbullah, told Mubarek to leave clearing the way for the Muslim Brotherhood, the fountainhead for Islamic Jihadism, [Mubarek of course a dictator but one who maintained peace with Israel, once the Muslim Brotherhood is in charge, there will be war], told Ben Ali to leave and clear the way for Islamicists, told Ali Selah, though a Muslim despot one who allowed the US fleet to provision in Yemen, to get out and clear the way for Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, calls Bashir Assad a reformer (that's pure insane stupidity) ... all in all US policy has released the wolves. Good work.

I guess now's not the time to debut my new Ahmadinejad avatar.

Good thing your avatar is an African lion instead of a lyin' African.

Witty.

Ah, the whispered suggestion of racism. I suppose it is not politically correct to note that the middle east and north Africa are on fire.

As to Africa, maybe medic8r should change his avatar to a picture of Robert Mugabe, a real lion of Africa or Ouattara, or Alhaji Saad Abubakar of Nigeria.

I don't know what the hell you are talking about.

Let me clarify it for you: my post was a sarcastic reference to the kind of person who holds up this sign at political rallies:



I suggest you take your charges of implied racism and shove it up her's and or yours.

Oh. ok. sorry. never mind.

And I am sorry I went off on you. Bad day.

Like a friend said in a PM, "That's why we don't discuss politics."

One of these days, I'll learn.

Doubtful.

Ha. We can hope.

Why set ourselves up for disappointment?

Oops. But politics are entertaining and I thought he was Indonesian.

I like the fire, JP! Keep that radical spirit young. You'll very soon be a senior .

"The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions, yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

Frederick Douglas

Limited, not all struggles are equal. In Sudan, the Janjawid Arab Muslim irregulars have murdered more than 300,000 people. Rapes? Beyond count. How many taken as slaves? You tell me. Now the Janjawid struggle to achieve their ends, their liberty ... a liberty to do as they will with other human beings, to murder them, enslave them and take from them what they want.

Now, the UN is essentially silent on the issue. The Western powers may complain, on occasion, but nothing is done to preserve the lives of these people. The OIC complains that what little complaining the west does in connection with the situation in Darfur speaks to an unfair singling out of Arab Muslims, an interference with the internal affairs of the Sudan.

In India, the Pakistani Lashkar e Taiba murders Jews and Hindus with enthusiasm. In the Philippines Abu Sayaff murders Christians and PULO and BRN murder Buddhists in Thailand. They struggle but not all struggles dignify humanity.

If you ask the murderers, they will tell you, they struggle against being ruled by Christians, or Buddhists, or Hindus, or Jews, or Animists, or, in Darfur, by Blacks. They struggle for supremacy, but if asked, they struggle against oppression.

STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP.

Take your political discussion somewhere else. The internet is a big place with plenty of more appropriate places to alienate your peers.

Don't do this here.

Now that this thread has nothing to do with quotes, a thought about global everything.

If you don't live in North America, western Europe,
Australia, South Korea or Japan (well, 5 weeks ago), your life as a human is quite likely to suck out loud. And Israel, if you'r not Arab or Palestiinian.

80% of all human life blows. Indignation and speculation on it is noble, but pointless.

Viewpoints of commoners will affect no change.

The American World Police and Benevolence Foundation ain't that effective. If it's not a world war, we don't have a great track record, aside from Granada. We only went down there to save American med students who weren't smart enough to get into real med schools. We do protect our own numbies, like when they inadvertantly wander into Iran on a hike in Afghanistan (IDIOTS!)

So, at the end of the day, when everyone's armchair stances on world problems are logged in and duly noted, just be grateful that you got to be the one-in-five who doesn't sleep on dirt.

If you sleep IN and WITH dirt, then maybe you should save some cash and expatriate.

Edit: I was writing this when Peter's post appeared. Had I seen it first, such a strong admonition to cease probably would have gotten my attention. Sorry.

Hmmmm...dirt v. Axioms....

I hate budget decisions!

"The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen." ~Tommy Smothers

I would bet you that plenty of people aren't listening.

I agree with Peter: political and religious discussions have a place, but it's not here. I say, take it to the Huffington Post comments sections, or RedState.com, or some similar place that strikes your fancy.

My take on this is that political and religious comments around here are like salt in a recipe. Maybe a little comment here or there gives a little spice to life. But, if most of a person's posts are his attempt to advance a political agenda, then DUDE, why are you pouring that whole salt shaker in my soup? Enough, already.

Agreed. Or take it to the comments on NPR.org, nytimes.com, foxnews.com, whatever.

Don't forget the restroom walls.

"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls": Paul Simon

"The words of the profits are written on the studio walls and concert halls": Neil Peart

S'why I've never needed a little black book.