Favourite Quotes

[Trish]

I suppose it is something like air-breathers who don't appreciate air until they're under water.

That does seem pretty damned accurate.

 

[JLT]

I just tracked down a quote from Arthur C. Clarke that my observation on fish reminded me of. It may not be a "favorite quote" but it should be:

"We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish."

(Well, there are electric eels, but sure.)

 

[GrahamLewis]

"The pilgrimage image suggests that the goal of this particular journey known as life is not to prove that we are perfect, but to find some happiness, some joyful peace of mind in the reality of our own imperfection."

Ernes Kurtz & Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection, p.138

 

[Trish]

"But my pain's a fair price, to take away your smile."

Euripides, Madea

 

[Rath Darkblade]

"But my pain's a fair price, to take away your smile."

Euripides, Madea

Ah, Medea. One of my favourite literary characters, well-known for her gruesome revenge.

To be fair, though, Jason (as portrayed by Euripedes) is a real piece of work. To put it mildly.

 

[GrahamLewis]

"All wisdom is plagiarism; only stupidity is original."

Hugh Kerr, "Preacher, Professor, Editor," Theology Today (April 1988)

 

[Louanne Learning]

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

— Philosopher James P. Carse, in “Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility,” offers a different way to view existence.

 

[JLT]

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

--Mark Twain

 

[Homer Potvin]

"'Remember when' is the lowest form of conversation."

--Tony Soprano

 

[Louanne Learning]

"If you don't scream a power ballad out at least once a week in the car, you're bottling things up."

- girl code

 

[Riddley Walker]

“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac…We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act…"

- George Orwell

 

[Rath Darkblade]

People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.

― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

 

[Night Herald]

"'Remember when' is the lowest form of conversation."

--Tony Soprano

"Don't prolong the past. Don't invite the future. Just be here now."
- Bhagavan Das (paraphrased?)

 

[Iain Aschendale]

People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.

― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

In Japan, earthquake and tsunami information is handled by the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Very slow weather punctuated by sudden and disastrous storms.

 

[JLT]

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."

--Albert Schweitzer

(and I think he means you guys)

 

[Homer Potvin]

"What is morally appropriate in a wartime environment?"

--Robert McNamara

 

[Rath Darkblade]

"What is morally appropriate in a wartime environment?"

--Robert McNamara

Hmm, I wasn't there when he was around (too young), but wasn't he one of JFK's Secretaries of State for Defense when the Vietnam War was raging? Just wondering.
================
"The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

 

[GrahamLewis]

"What is morally appropriate in a wartime environment?"

--Robert McNamara

This would fit in nicely in a philosophy forum.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Philosophies of the Global South (Africa) consider harmony to be ‘the mother of all values’- harmonizing with others.

The concept of ubuntu provides the ethical framework – ubuntu means humanness

As South African theologian Desmond Tutu wrote in his book No Future Without Forgiveness (1999) -

Ubuntu … speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, ‘Yu, u nobuntu’; ‘Hey, he or she has ubuntu.’ This means they are generous, hospitable, friendly, caring, and compassionate … It is not ‘I think therefore I am.’ It says rather: ‘I am human because I belong.’ I participate, I share … Harmony, friendliness, community are great goods. Social harmony is for us the summum bonum – the greatest good.

 

[Homer Potvin]

This would fit in nicely in a philosophy forum.

Feel free to use it when you find one.

Hmm, I wasn't there when he was around (too young), but wasn't he one of JFK's Secretaries of State for Defense when the Vietnam War was raging? Just wondering.

And LBJ's. And president of the World Bank and the Ford Motor Company. Fascinating but controversial historical figure. He's been condemned and rehabilitated several times as the modern contextual lens evaluating the Vietnam era (or any era) changes with age.