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Return to Virtual Collections 20080802:rla Quote Collection
... and the rise of the medicated masses, and it reminds us that too often the pain of existence is the point of existence. — Bryan Abrams — 20080802 —
The bullshit we live in without complaint is astonishing. — In Old Moab by Ron Carlson — 20080526 —
From the TV series Roswell: Liz Parker: The difficult part is, when you follow your heart ... you leave normal ... you go into the unknown, and once you do you can never go back. — 20080128 —
Mollie Ivins on the ACLU: I can't think of anything I'd rather do with my worldly goods than fund folks who will be a pain in the ass to whatever powers come to be. — 20070704 —
From the movie Living Out Loud: [Thinking, after watching the news] Judith Moore: Awful, awful, what do they expect us to do with all this information? What am I suppose to do about crack babies? Terrorism? I can't stand those terrorists, they're so mad at everybody, I wish they'd just get over it! Maybe I should adopt a crack baby, sent it to a good school, get a chance of ... Oh shut up! I'm gonna raise an inner city child in this building? I can't stand the people in this building, with their jeeps and their loafers. Their mean, stuck-up private school kids will make fun of my crack baby, my crack baby will have no play dates, poor kid. Awful, what do they expect us to do with all this information? What am I suppose to do with all this information? Awful, awful, awful. — 20070614 —
PLAYBOY: Your girl friend is Terri Seymour, a reporter on the TV show 'Extra.' What attracted you to her? COWELL: There's something I call the daytime test. If you take a girl out at night, it's a breeze. You can drink; it's dark. The daytime is whole new area. She passed the daytime test. Playboy Magazine - Feburary 2007 — 20070318 —
Blogger Steve Wells has counted the number of people killed in the Bible. God takes the lives of 2,270,365 (not including the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the many plagues and famines, etc.). Satan is responsible for only 10 deaths, those of Job's seven sons and three daughters. — Playboy Magazine - Feburary 2007 — 20070303 —
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. — George Bernard Shaw — 20070105 —
PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. — THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce — 20061209 —
MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later. — THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce — 20061105 —
THE OPTIMIST: "I have no friends, no family, no money, no food, no job, no credit, no luck, no hope, and no future. However, I do have matches, toothpicks, chewing gum, paper clips, rubber bands, shoelaces, and Scotch Tape. Maybe things aren't so bad." — George Carlin — 20061105 —
I often think how different the world would be if Hitler had not been turned down when he applied to art school. — George Carlin — 20061105 —
Expressions I Question: IN YOUR OWN WORDS. You hear it in classrooms. And courtrooms. They'll say, "Tell us ... in your own words ..." Do you have your own words? Personally, I'm using the ones everybody else has been using. Next time they tell you to say something in your own words, say, "Nigflot blorny quando floon." — George Carlin — 20061105 —
I think many years ago an advanced civilization intervened with us genetically and gave us just enough intelligence to develop dangerous technology but not enough to use it wisely. Then they sat back to watch the fun. Kind of like a human zoo. And you know what? They're getting their money's worth. — George Carlin — 20061105 —
The greater one's understanding, Beelzebub, the less choice one has. For the love of Heaven itself, my friend -- if you can, remain ignorant! — To Reign in Hell: A Novel by Steven Brust — 20061105 —
The conventional notions of happiness cannot possibly be taken seriously by anyone whose intellectual or moral development has progressed beyond that of a 3 week old puppy. — John W. Gardner, US official (1912-2002) — 20060929 —
In the time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes an act of rebellion. — George Orwell — 20060923 —
They say not to look back, but if you're not sure what lies ahead, what else is there but looking back? — A Kiss of Shadows by Laurel K. Hamilton — 20060909 —
Like yelling at the rain for being wet. It just is. — A Kiss of Shadows by Laurel K. Hamilton — 20060909 —
Sometimes you just stayed numb, because anything else was not helpful. Sanity relied on numbness, sometimes. — A Kiss of Shadows by Laurel K. Hamilton — 20060909 —
IDOL, n. An image representing symbolically some object of worship. That the image is itself worshiped is probably not true of any people in the world, though some idols are ugly enough to be divine. The honors paid to idols are justly deprecated by the true believer, for he knows that nothing with a head can be omniscient, nothing with a hand omnipotent and nothing with a body omnipresent. No deity could fill any of our requirements if handicapped with existence. — THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce — 20060805 —
Using technology to clean up the mess made by technology doesn't seem too intelligent. — George Carlin — 20060805 —
The reason the mainstream is thought of as a stream is because of its shallowness. — George Carlin — 20060708 — Hard work is a misleading term. Physical effort and long hours do not constitute hard work. Hard work is when someone pays you to do something you'd rather not be doing. Anytime you'd rather be doing something other than the thing you're doing, you're doing hard work. — George Carlin — 20060708 — Office Space Out - A UC Irvine study found that on average a worker can focus for just 11 minutes at a time before being interrupted (by e-mail, a co-worker, phone, etc.) and is unable to refocus for another 25 minutes. — Playboy Magazine - July 2006 — 20060618 — Hedonic Tredmill, n. - The tendency for a person's economic expectations and desires to increase at the same rate as his or her income, resulting in no net gain in satisfaction or happiness. — Playboy Magazine - July 2006 — 20060618 — CORPORATION, n. - An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. — THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce — 20060618 — If you ask me, this country could do with a little *less* motivation. The people who are causing all the trouble seem highly motivated to me. Serial killers, stock swindlers, drug dealers, Christian Republicans. I'm not sure motivation is always a good thing. — George Carlin — 20060618 —
All patriarchal societies are either preparing for war, at war, or recovering from war. — George Carlin — 20060606 — If this is the best God can do, I'm not impressed. Results like this do not belong on the resume of a supreme being. This is the kind of stuff you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. — George Carlin — 20060606 — So I worship the sun. But I don't pray to the sun. You know why? Because I wouldn't presume on our friendship. It's not polite. I've often thought people treat God rather rudely. Trillions and trillions of prayers every day, asking and pleading and begging for favors. "Do this; give me that; I need this; I want that." And most of this praying takes place on Sunday, his day off! It's not nice, and it's no way to treat a friend. — George Carlin — 20060606 — I've always drawn a great deal of mortal comfort from Humpty Dumpty. The part I like best: "All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again." That's because there is no Humpty Dumpty. And there is no God. None, not one, never was. No God. Sorry. — George Carlin — 20060606 — DISENCHANT, v.t. -- To free the soul from the chains of illusion in order that the lash of truth may draw blood at a greater number of points. — THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce — 20060516 — Watch on television the greatest evolutionist in America today, the world's expert on ants, Harvard Professor Edward O. Wilson, and he will tell you that Christianity is outmoded, that its directives have led to a short-term exploitation of nature and that we need an evolution-based ethics to help us preserve our planet. — Faith & Reason by Michael Ruse — Playboy Magazine - April 2006 — 20060507 — The Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They rebelled. There are many copies. And they HAVE a plan. — Battlestar Galactica — 20060507 — Never practice what you preach. If you're going to practice it, why preach it? — Lincoln Steffens, American Journalist — 20060429 — REASONS FOR GIVING UP HOPE: Nothing works, nothing counts, nothing fits, no one cares, no one listens, standards have fallen, everyone's fatter, lines are longer, traffic's worse, kids are dumber, and the air is dirty. I'll be back later with more reasons for giving up hope. In the meantime, try to come up with a few of your own. — George Carlin — 20060403 — I've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to "God" are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate. — George Carlin — 20060203 — I'm an outsider by choice, but not truly. It's the unpleasantness of the system that keeps me out. I'd rather be in, in a good system. That's where my discontent comes from: being forced to choose to stay outside. — George Carlin — 20051230 — You're born in pain and pain is what we're in most of the time. And I think that the bigger the pain, the more gods we need. — John Lennon — 20051230 — The person who responds with the most elaborate lie gets the highest score for sanity. The person who tells the absolute truth does not. Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not. — Lila - An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig --20051001-- Each person you come to is a different mirror. And since you're just another person like them maybe you're just another mirror too, and there's no way of ever knowing whether your own view of yourself is just another distortion. Maybe all you ever see is reflections. Maybe mirrors are all you ever get. == Lila - An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig --20050903-- When societies and cultures and cities are seen not as inventions of "man" but as higher organisms than biological man, the phenomena of war and genocide and all the other forms of human exploitation become more intelligible. "Mankind" has never been interested in getting itself killed. But the superorganism, the Giant, who is a pattern of values superimposed on top of biological human bodies, doesn't mind losing a few bodies to protect his greater interests. == Lila - An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig --20050731-- If Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one doesn't seek the absolute "Truth." One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. == Lila - An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig --20050626-- Pain or damage don't end the world, or despair, or fuckin' beatin's. The world ends when you're dead. Until then you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man and give some back. == Deadwood == Al Swearengen --20050419--
America the Blind No academic discipline is without both substantive and methodological aspects. And Quality has no connection with either one of them. Quality isn't a substance. Neither is it a method. It's outside of both. If one builds a house using the plumb-line and spirit-level methods he does so because a straight vertical wall is less likely to collapse and thus has a higher Quality than a crooked one. Quality isn't method. It's the goal toward which method is aimed. == Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig --20050206-- If you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened. Your ego isolates you from the Quality of reality. When the facts show that you've just goofed, you're not as likely to admit it. When false information makes you look good, you're likely to believe it. On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment. You're always being fooled, you're always making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a big ego to defend is at a terrific disadvantage. If you know enough mechanics to think of them as a group, and your observations coincide with mine, I think you'll agree that mechanics tend to be rather modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they're not quiet and modest at first, the work seems to make them that way. And skeptical. Attentive, but skeptical. But not egoistic. There's no way to bullshit your way into looking good on a mechanical repair job, except with someone who doesn't know what you're doing. == Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig --20050109-- It's the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don't know where to start because no one has ever told them there's such a thing as Quality in this world and it's real, not style. Quality isn't something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start. == Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig --20041204--
Imagine When bad fortune occurs, the unresourceful, unimaginative man looks about him to attach the blame to someone else; the resolute accepts misfortune and endeavors to survive, mature, and improve because of it. == Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern by Anne McCaffrey --20041106-- Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to the end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig --20041009-- You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something. -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig --20041002-- You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig --20040925-- ... a ghost which calls itself rationality but whose appearance is that of incoherence and meaninglessness, which causes the most normal of everyday acts to seem slightly mad because of their irrelevance to anything else. This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is the what the ghost says. -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig --20040919-- But we are also perhaps a hundred feet above the reservoir, looking across it into a kind of Western spaciousness. Barren hills, no one anywhere, not a sound; and there is something about places like this that raises your spirits a little and makes you think that things will probably get better. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig --20040919-- "Worlds governed by artificial intelligence often learned a hard lesson: Logic Doesn't Care." -- YIN-MAN WEI, "This Present Darkness: A History of the Interregnum", CY 11956 People are only mean when they're threatened, and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It's all part of this culture. -- Morrie Schwartz Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say "I want mine now," you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it. -- Morrie Schwartz Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. -- John Lennon Paradox as it may seem, we likewise find life meaningful only when we have seen that it is without purpose, and know the "mystery of the universe" only when we are convinced that we know nothing about it at all. -- The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan W. Watts Move forward by going deeper. -- Thinking In The Future Tense by Jennifer James Many of the ancient questions of life now require new answers. -- Thinking In The Future Tense by Jennifer James Perceive the problems you face and achieve insight into the beliefs that have produced them. -- Thinking In The Future Tense by Jennifer James Animals spend much of their time dozing and idling pleasantly, but, because life is short, human beings must cram into the years the highest possible amount of consciousness, alertness, and chronic insomnia so as to be sure not to miss the last fragment of startling pleasure. -- The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan W. Watts "I" who is going to improve the bad "me." "I," who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward "me," and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently "I" will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make "me" behave so badly. -- The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan W. Watts The more we accustom ourselves to understanding the present in terms of memory, the unknown by the known, the living by the dead, the more desiccated and embalmed, the more joyless and frustrated life becomes. -- The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan W. Watts I have bought this wonderful machine--a computer. Now I am rather an authority on gods, so I identified the machine--it seems to me to be an Old Testament god with a lot of rules and no mercy. -- The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
MOYERS: There is a fetching story about President Eisenhower and
the first computers ... It's characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong. -- Joseph Campbell Turn off your computer, turn off your machine and do it yourself, follow your feelings, trust your feelings. -- Ben Kenobi To understand who a person really was, what his or her life really meant, the speaker for the dead would have to explain their self- story -- what they MEANT to do, what they actually did, what they regretted, what they rejoiced in. That's the story that we never know, the story that we never CAN know -- and yet, at the time of death, it's the only story truly worth telling. -- "Speaker For The Dead" by Orson Scott Card When it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart. -- "Speaker For The Dead" by Orson Scott Card This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we REALLY believe, and those we never think to question. -- "Speaker For The Dead" by Orson Scott Card
By law, a landlord can become Everything always gets better in the end, so if is not better, then it's not the end. -- Maxine Gray The world is unfair, screwed up, and cruel. But it's also beautiful, and absolutely worth every effort and dream of your heart to improve it. -- Ian Kleinfeld
Seen a man standing over a dead dog lyin' by the highway in a ditch Mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with. -- The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
o Be impeccable with your word.
Life is a gamble, at terrible odds ... Morale is a chameleon, shifting its purchase on our hearts according to our inconstant moods rather than any absolute truth. Wear down the human soul and the will to live falters. Reality makes no difference; when hearts lose hope, they crumble. But give back that hope, even if reality denies it, and our souls rejoice even when logic gives no cause for optimism. -- Spherical Harmonic by Catherine Asaro ...difference of opinion is advantageious in religion. The several sects perform the office of a common censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. - Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia" The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings. - H. L. Mencken Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am. - René Descartes
He looked down into her face. "Walk with me to the crossroads, Lucia." "Always," She still remembered the words he had shared with her in the quiet night:The Veiled Web by Catherine Asaro Tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune. Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold I've always felt that theists were more ruthless than atheists. Shards Of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold Have you ever seen a fat coyote? Coyotes eat to live. Coyotes don't say, "Well, I'm kind of a sad coyote today. I think I'll have an extra rabbit." They just eat what they need. And then then they walk off. -- Phillip C. McGraw People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. - Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold
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