Quotes - Part Twenty-Six

 

435.                   A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what’s left of your unit.

--PS Magazine, August 1993 issue, page 9

436.                   Do not trust the way you see yourself when your mind is turbulent and remember that even pain is temporary.  Honor your boundaries, treat yourself gently, let go of perfection, and feel your emotions without letting them control you.  You have enough experience to face the storm and evolve from it.

--Yung Pueblo, Resilience When asked, “How do you get through the tough moments?”

437.                   Of course, anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.

--David Quammen

438.                   It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment; it’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

--Dan Quayle

439.                   I base my fashion taste on what doesn’t itch.

--Gilda Radner

440.                   But is zero divided by zero also one? If no fruits are divided among no one, will each still get one?

--Srinivasa Ramanujan as a young child

441.                   I don’t like making plans for the day because then the word “premeditated” gets thrown around in the courtroom.

--@rebelcircus

442.                   Don’t have the stats to hand, but RedEye would guess that the number of copies of “Doom” involved in handgun killings last year was significantly lower than the number of handguns involved in handgun killings.

--RedEye, in Edge magazine

443.                   You know what would be cool? A One Ring loose-leaf binder. It would have one ring, and you could use it in the darkness. To, you know, bind things.

--Alter Reiss

444.               It’s a journey; not every step we take will be forward.

--Elrond in "Rings of Power”

445.               We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.

--François de La Rochefoucauld

446.               Until humans learn to tolerate – no, that’s not enough; to positively value each other – until we can value the diversity here on earth, then we don’t deserve to go into outer space and encounter the infinite diversity out there.

–Gene Roddenberry

447.               Sometimes I think war is God’s way of teaching us geography.

--Paul Rodriguez

448.               Understanding your partner’s childhood trauma and triggers is a love language.

--Ricch Rody

449.               Diplomacy is the art of saying, “Nice doggie,” until you can find a rock.

-Will Rogers

450.               Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them.

--Will Rogers

451.               I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: “No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall”.

--Eleanor Roosevelt

452.               I was bad at getting girls in high school, even when I tried to use the angle of being in a band.  I’d be like, “Yo, what’s up girl?  You wanna come see my band on Friday?”

“Maybe… What the name of your band?”

“Marching

--Tim Ross

453.               In the fall of 1972, President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection.

--Hugo Rossi

454.               Truth is. Belief is not required.

--Gerry Roston

455.               We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.

--Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

456.               Every time I date a man I think: Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?

--Rita Rudner

457.               I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry.

--Rita Rudner

458.               I want to have children, but my friends scare me. One of my friends told me she was in labor for 36 hours. I don’t even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours.

--Rita Rudner

459.               I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.

--Rita Rudner

460.               My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can’t decide to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.

--Rita Rudner

461.               My husband is English and I’m American. I wonder what our children would be like. They’d probably be rude, but disgusted by their own behavior.

--Rita Rudner

462.               Never play peekaboo with a child on a long plane trip. There’s no end to the game. Finally I grabbed him by the bib, and said, “Look, it’s always gonna be me!”

--Rita Rudner

463.               Only someone who understands something absolutely can explain it so no one else can understand it.

--Rudnicki’s Nobel Prize Principle

464.               If you’re not in my circle of trust, you’re probably in my triangle of suspicion or rhombus of doubt.

--Sara K. Runnels

465.               Strange things happen when you’re in debt. Two weeks ago my car broke down and my phone got disconnected. I was one electric bill away from being Amish.

--Tom Ryan

466.               When a man goes on a date he wonders if he is going to get lucky. A woman already knows.

--Frederick Ryder

467.               The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus, and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan.  Many people don’t like that statement, but few can argue with it.

--Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

468.               The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

--Carl Sagan

469.               Those who take lightly promises they make to those they love are people who find little lasting satisfaction in life. This is not an easy time in which to live. That does not mean that it has to be a difficult time to love, but it does mean that you will find unusual stresses upon your lives and your relationship.

--Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

470.               I’m writing my PhD thesis in theoretical physics, and every time I have to decide between using > and <, I think to myself, “The crocodile wants to eat the bigger number.”

--@sapphirelily

471.               Why does everyone force introverts to be talkative and leave their comfort zone, but no one forces extroverts to shut up, even for a minute, to make the zone more comfortable?

--@sarcasmmother

472.               If you strike me down, I shall become bluer and shinier than you can possibly imagine. That and my voice will echo. Like this: ECHO!!! Echo! echo…

--sarge21, “PD Central”

473.               Family doesn’t push your buttons, they installed them.

--Adam Savage

474.               The only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.

--Adam Savage

475.               Remember kids, all human progress is behind a vanguard of homicidal maniacs.

--Adam Savage

476.               The right hand doesn’t know that the left hand has been cut off.

--Paul D. Schmitter

477.               Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, “Where have I gone wrong?” Then a voice says to me, “This is going to take more than one night.”

--Charles Schulz, “Peanuts”

478.               Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion.

--Norman Schwartzkopf

479.               If we would get off our butts and provide the necessary funding for research, we would have a cure for all types of cancers.

--Norman Schwarzkopf

480.               Abraham Lincoln once said that if you’re a racist, I will attack you with the north.

--Michael Scott

481.               Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you’ve got a T‑shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn’t your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.

--Jerry Seinfeld

482.               There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, “I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.”

--Jerry Seinfeld

483.               When you enjoy something, you must never let logic get too much in the way. Like the villains in all the James Bond movies. Whenever Bond breaks into the complex: “Ah, Mr. Bond, welcome, come in. Let me show you my entire evil plan and then put you in a death machine that doesn’t work.”

--Jerry Seinfeld

484.               It’s a shame that stupidity isn’t painful.

--Todd Selburg

485.               In life, you’ll be misunderstood.  At some point, you’ll be made out to be something you’re not.  When this happens, it’s not as important to defend yourself as it is to know yourself.  Know who you are, know what you mean, and know enough to feel secure even though you’re not seen.

--@sgrstk

486.               [Opera is when] a tenor and a soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone.

--George Bernard Shaw

487.               When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do they part.

--George Bernard Shaw

488.               The USA is having so many disasters and tragedies, you’d almost think it was built on thousands of ancient Indian burial mounds.

--@shutupmikeginn

489.               One very important ingredient of success is a good, wide-awake, persistent, tireless enemy.

--Frank B. Shutts

490.               I’m just sayin’, everyone that confuses correlation with causation eventually ends up dead.

--@SilverVVulpes

491.               The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.

--Roger Simon

492.               Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals… except the weasel.

--Homer Simpson

493.               We love Edgar Allan Poe, because he portrays universal human emotions like: loss, grief, unrequited love, burying your enemy alive in the cellar, and being scared out of your mind by a bird.

--@SketchesbyBoze

494.               Most cutting thing you can say is, “Who’s this clown?” because it implies they’re a) a clown, and b) not even one of the better-known clowns.

--@skullmandible

495.               Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10-foot radius takes full damage from the fireball.

--Slashdot

496.               Not only does Jesus save, but he makes nightly off-site backups.

--Slashdot

497.               Everyone’s “fifteen minutes of fame” is turning into everyone’s reality show slo-mo farewell montage.

--Emily Slatten

498.               If you do a job too well, you will get stuck with it.

--Slous

499.               Nothing can be done in one trip.

--Snider

500.               We are the Superconductors. Resistance is futile.

--Colonel Sponsz, on Slashdot

Quotes - Part Twenty-Five

 

403.                   The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

--Eden Philpotts

404.                   Trust the overthinker who tells you they love you.  They have, most assuredly, thought of every reason not to.

--L.K. Pilgrim

405.                   “Armageddon” got some astronomy right. For example, there is an asteroid in the movie, and asteroids do indeed exist.

--Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy

406.                   For the Discovery Institute to accuse a pro-evolution board member of the Texas Board of Education of having her religion bias her actions is like Jeffrey Dahmer telling you to be a vegetarian.

--Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy

407.                   You don’t actually have to be able to understand the lyrics, you’ve just got to feel like you could if you wanted to.

--Chuck Plotkin (Producer for Bruce Springsteen)

408.                   The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

--Plutarch

409.                   Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway,

--Edgar Allan Poe

410.                   The goodness of a true pun is in direct ratio of its intolerability.

--Edgar Allan Poe

411.                   If you have a digital watch, which way is clockwise?

--Police Scanner

412.               Not my circus.  Not my monkeys.

--Polish proverb

413.               Trauma compromises our ability to engage with others by replacing patterns of connection with patterns of protection.

--Stephen Porges

414.               Setting the AI reactions for a giant spiderbot is pretty easy… hate, hate, hate, hate.

--Steve Powers

415.               My mom said she learned how to swim. Someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. That’s how she learned how to swim. I said, “Mom, they weren’t trying to teach you how to swim.”

--Paula Poundstone

416.               Two French Admirals were berating a US Naval Attaché, “Why must we speak to you in English. Why don’t you have to learn French instead of our having to learn English?”

To which the Attaché replied, “Maybe because we arranged it so you didn’t have to learn German?”

--Jerry Pournelle, Friday April 4, 2003

417.               “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence, but that dude that’s yell-singing is replaced by Animal from The Muppets.

--@poutinesmoothie

418.               We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last 100 years and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in.

--Secretary of State Colin Powell

419.               The ability of skinny old ladies to carry huge loads is phenomenal.  Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.

-- Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

420.               All fungi are edible.  Some fungi are only edible once.

--Terry Pratchett

421.               Coffee was only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your slightly older self.

--Terry Pratchett, Snuff

422.               Everything I know I learned at the public library; school taught me to spit.

--Terry Pratchett

423.               I’m not the world’s greatest expert, but I would have thought the wizards, witches, trolls… would have given her a clue.

--Terry Pratchett, mocking J.K. Rowling’s claim that she did not write fantasy

424.               It is better to build a seismograph than to worship the volcano.

--Terry Pratchett

425.               It is hard to convey five-dimensional ideas in a language evolved to scream defiance at the monkeys in the next tree.

--Terry Pratchett

426.               It was so much easier to blame it on Them.  It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us.  If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault.  If it was Us, what did that make Me?  After all, I’m one of Us.  I must be.  I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them.  No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them.  We’re always one of Us.  It’s Them that do the bad things.

--Terry Pratchett

427.               Never trust an engineer who is laughing.

--Terry Pratchett

428               Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon…

--Terry Pratchett

429.               People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time.

--Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

430.               The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.  Take boots, for example.  He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances.  A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars.  But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars.  Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.  But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years.  A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.  This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

431.               Satire is meant to ridicule power.  If you are laughing at people who are hurting, it’s not satire, it’s bullying.

--Terry Pratchett