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Favorite Quotes 2


mcbigski

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Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.

~Teddy Roosevelt, Greatest President of the United States ;)

I don't know why, but this quote just strikes a cord with me. In a world where it is so easy to lose sight of what really should be our priorities, quotes like this are sobering.

Voltaire has a ridiculous number of great quotations, as do both Senecas. This one, by Seneca the Younger, is another personal favorite:

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

My favourite from Voltaire. What is Canada but a few acres of snow.
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“Under my very nose it is all so beautiful. It makes me want to sing. With words? Yes. Sometimes I think a moment is so beautiful. I want to toss it handfuls of delicious words so gluttony will keep it there.”

— Hélène CIxous, Promethea

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I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist:

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative." ~ John Stuart Mill

Mea culpa :leaving:

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell

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“If you are a woman. If you are a Person of Colour. If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you’re a person of size, if you’re a person of intelligence, if you’re a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world. And it’s gonna be really hard to find messages of self-love, and support anywhere, especially women’s and gay men’s culture. It’s all about how you have to look a certain way or else you’re worthless. You know when you look in the mirror, and you think, ‘Ugh, I’m so fat, I’m so old, I’m so ugly’, don’t you know that’s not your authentic self, but that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will take your hard-earned money and spend it on some turnaround cream that doesn’t turnaround shit.

When you don’t have self-esteem, you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for. You will hesitate to ask for a raise. You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote. You will hesitate to dream.

For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution. And our revolution is long-overdue.”

Margaret Cho

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The one in my signature, obviously.

Also this, by Einstein (it's probably been posted by now, ain't exactly original, but it reflects my own beliefs pretty well): "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

Also, I don't know the exact quote, but I liked something K.J. Parker said a few times in her Fencer trilogy. It goes along the lines of, "Most wars aren't won by the winners, they're lost by the losers". Or, "War is usually just the act of surviving long enough for the other side to make a mistake and lose by their own actions."

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And overpowered by memory

Both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely

For man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching

Before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,

Now for his father, now for Patroclus once again

And their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.

-Homer, The Iliad

The father mourning with his son's killer... those classics..

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And overpowered by memory

Both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely

For man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching

Before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,

Now for his father, now for Patroclus once again

And their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.

-Homer, The Iliad

The father mourning with his son's killer... those classics..

Great quote!

=-=-=

" Stay together, friends.

Don’t scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made of being awake..."

-Rumi

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  • 2 weeks later...

"You have to be careful when talking to philosophers. They often sound very logical and intelligent. But, remember, philosophers often disagree with each other. This just proves that philosophy is a good way of being wrong with great certainty."

-Anonymous

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"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred."

- Richard Dawkins

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  • 2 weeks later...

"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. In an evolving universe, who stands still moves backwards."

-Robert Anton Wilson

'Those of us who have no avocation for martyrdom must learn, when we realize how much neophobia remains built into the contraptions of "society" and "the State," the art of surviving in spite of them. In a word, we must "get wise" in both the Socratic meaning of the phrase and in the most hardboiled street meaning. Neophobia functions as an Evolutionary Driver, forcing the neophiliac to get very smart very fast."'

-Robert Anton Wilson

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