|
|
|
"Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves" -- Eric Hoffer “The True Believer”
"The first job of a citizen is to keep your mouth open."
"Rosa sat, so Martin could walk…
"If any question why we died,
"What's the point in having a strong belief system if you can't impose it on everyone else" CLARKE'S THREE LAWS "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”
“The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell.”
“Now, if anything ail a man so that he does not perform his functions ... if he has committed some heinous sin and partially repents, what does he do? He sets about reforming the world.”
“I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.”
"The word 'death' is straightforward enough, but we tend to project a future beyond it for the individual, and have built institutions around it that can negatively affect life before death."
Time that is intolerant
Worships language and forgives
“I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.”
“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject”
“In a three-dimensional world, where people hold two-dimensional opinions, politicians have a field day.”
“That is the way of life. You give up your pleasures one by one until there is nothing left, then you know it is time to go.”
“I left Earth three times, and found no other place to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth.”
“Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.”
“Ideology is the corruption of reason and is morally akin to lying.”
“You can tell you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
“ ‘Thou shalt not’ might reach the head, but it takes ‘Once upon a time’ to reach the heart.”
"Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed that easily."
"I've always felt that quite clearly the good Lord loves diversity. He created 2,500 species of flies. If he had been like some theologians I know, there would have been only one right specie of fly."
"In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from."
"That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical, is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute."
"In politics, absurdity is not a handicap," -- "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
"The path of history is obscured by the weeds of ambiguity."
"It [religion} had set up a God who looked at the world and saw that it was good, against the instinct in me that looked through my eyes at the world and saw that it could be improved."
"Congress passes laws to help the country become better than it was -- if that's possible. It will listen to everybody, but at the end of the day, its members will vote their consciences -- and whoever promises to give them the most money for their next reelection campaign."
"[Dancing is] A perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire."
"A life unexamined may not be worth living, but a lot of people do it."
"A psychiatric problem is when you have a tumor pressing down on some part of the brain, and you become a homicidal maniac. The rest is just trimming your wings for life."
"A husband is a convenient part of the furniture of a house, unless he be a clumsy fixture."
"Former drunks usually take up smoking or find Jesus. The smoker is much more pleasant to have around."
"Stealing is when you take a piece of bread from a hungry child, even if you own that bread. The rest is mere law."
"Eggheads of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your yolks."
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
"Good taste is the enemy of literature."
"If Christ were to return to the world, he would perhaps not be put to death, but be ridiculed. This is martydom in the age of reason."
"Faith without works is nothing. Works without faith is still pretty good"
"Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some"
"Americans are the only people who go hunting on a full stomach"
"The attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots."
"It takes a small mind and a lack of spiritual education to think that your religion is the purest, most powerful and the only religion recognized by God."
"If you want to read about love and marriage, you've got to buy two separate books."
"It's okay to be committed, but it is not okay to be committable."
"Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst."
"If you kill one person, you go to jail; if you kill 20, you go to an institution for the insane; if you kill 20,000, you get political asylum."
"I sit with Shakespeare, and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out of the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed Earth and the tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil."
"Even if you know history you're gonna' repeat it, especially if you have no power."
"Democracies die behind closed doors."
"Civilizations just change over time. It is rare that they are completely overthrown by invading armies. The point where one starts and another begins is artificially drawn by arrogant historians."
"With the religious you can hardly negotiate. They think they have supreme permission to kill people and go to war."
"Never argue religion with men who grow beards for religious reasons"
"Thirty years of noisy, violent churning under the Borgias in Italy produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance, while 500 years of peace, quiet and harmony in Switzerland produced the cuckoo clock."
"I cannot speak of Diego as my husband because that term, when applied to him, is an absurdity. He never has been, nor will he ever be, anybody’s husband."
"A gaffe occurs not when a politician lies, but when he tells the truth."
"It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties — the freedom of association — which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile."
"The hedonist usually does less harm than the fanatic."
"Good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, the experience usually comes from bad judgment."
"Great men are almost always bad men."
"It's very good to shut up sometimes..."
"Politics without morals is greed at best; fascism at worst. Morality without a political program is worse than useless; it is immoral!"
"About five years separate puberty from the legal age of consent. As a result, some girls will give birth out of wedlock, and some boys will kill without authorization."
"O Liberty! Liberty! how many crimes are
"Stealing, if you do not already have money, is a perilous matter."
"Ach, a luin, is buide duit
Ah, blackbird, it is good for you
"Perjury is the tool the powerless use to balance the heavy hand of Justice"
"It is an illusion to think that faith, tied to weak reasoning, might be more penetrating; on the contrary, faith then runs the grave risk of withering into myth or superstition."
"Truth just is, but error must have reason"
"Always vote for the guy who's least likely to send the cops into your neighborhood and hassle your friends"
"If you shut your eyes to a frightening sight, you end up being frightened. If you look at everything straight on there is nothing to be afraid of."
There was a young man who said, 'God,
'Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd;
A protest sung by soldiers on the Chemin des Dames (who mutinied) so irritated French military commanders that they offered exemption from all military duty to anyone who would denounce its author. He was never found, but in 1919, a communist author, Paul Vaillant-Couturier, published the poignant text:
It's finished, we've had enough,
----Quoted in the NY Times (Nov., 8, 1998) in a story |
© 2001 by Yves Barbero
(415) 285-4358
To contact by e-mail, click here
