1. Miller0700

    Miller0700 Contributor Contributor

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    Favorite Quotes

    Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Miller0700, Mar 31, 2016.

    There's no theme. They don't even have to relate to writing. Inspirational quotes, movie quotes, humorous quotes, deep quotes, religious quotes, atheistic quotes, you get the idea.

    I'll start:


    We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
    -Stephen Hawking


    Playing the "Misery Olympics" really isn't helpful whether the topic at hand is depression, discrimination, or pretty much anything else. We all have our burdens to bear, and trying to out-complete each other in "who has it worse" is a pointless pissing contest that accomplishes nothing but the death of empathy.
    -SynchingShip


    For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: Know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.
    -Neil deGrasse Tyson


    I said it's a cold universe and I don't mean that metaphorically. If you go out into space, it's cold. It's really cold and we don't know what's up there. We happen to be in this little pocket where there's a sun. What have we got except love and each other to guard against all that isolation and loneliness?
    -David Chase


    That last line, as others have pointed out, is a spectacular way to understand kids in high school. They're never listened to, only told what to do, which irritates a lot of them. By the time they're 17-18, they want to be treated differently; not necessarily as adults but not talked down to as children. Listen to what they have to say because sometimes they need to be heard or they'll surprise you by what they have on their mind.
    - PopeOwned


    “If you can't afford to take care of your veterans, don't send them to war.” - Bernie Sanders


    "Modern" humans have been around for about 100,000 years. It's no wonder that we know very little about what went on for most of that time. WE think all humans were just sitting around in caves grunting and hunting woolly mammoths. But think about it this way:

    Imagine that a football field represents human history, where every yard = 1000 years. Put your heels on one goal line. Now look down at your feet - your toes mark the American revolution. Now take a step. You're now standing on the marker for the battle of Hastings. Take another step and you've reached the time of Christ. Now look up at the rest of the field. Take two more steps and you've reached the very edge of recorded history. You're standing on the 4 yard line, and everything that has ever happened in "recorded" history - the rise of every empire, the Crusades, the discovery of the New World, all of the wars... all of it is now behind you, and in front of you is another 96 yards of human history that we know almost nothing about.
    Beernpotatoes
     
  2. PBNJDraftNumbA

    PBNJDraftNumbA Member

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    Francis Bacon: It is better to begin with doubt and end in certainty, than to begin with certainty to end in doubt.
    The quote is not a perfect one, but it is close.
     
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  3. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."-Oscar Wilde
    "Magic is just science we don't understand."-Spiderman
    "He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice"-Albert Einstein
    "War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace."-Thomas Mann
    "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."-Bertrand Russell
    "Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate."-Bertrand Russell
    "Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel."-Socrates
    "Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off."-A New Scientist Editor (Re-quoted by Richard Dawkins)
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2018
  4. Aaron Smith

    Aaron Smith Banned Contributor

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    I really like Hemingways (or I believe it is) quote on nobility: "There is nothing noble in being superior to others. True nobility comes from being superior to your former self."

    In the end, what is the point of comparing yourself to others, when even the strongest, the wisest, and best people have so much to learn?
     
  5. Earp

    Earp Contributor Contributor

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    Two at random:

    "Prose is architecture, not interior decoration."
    - Ernest Hemingway

    “Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.”
    - Hunter S. Thompson
     
  6. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Go forth with your crazy self. At least you are willing to be who are, and that is all that really matters. - Me- :p
     
  7. Alejandro89

    Alejandro89 Member

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    "Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits." Ludwig Wittgenstein.
    I spent so many hours trying to make sense of that quote until a friend gave me her interpretation: live in the present. It all became so clear, in a lot of ways.
     
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  8. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Well, people say live in the present, and it's definitely the highest priority, but considering the past and future are also useful, and people make quotes about them too. One of the dangers of quotes is these kinds of famous remarks are often generalized, and so there's a risk people might take them too literally. They're contextual. Just a thought.
     
  9. Alejandro89

    Alejandro89 Member

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    You are right, but to me the interaction between me, my friend and a quote that belongs to one of the most brilliant man in history makes it extremly special, specially considering I've fallen to the vicious of not paying attention to the present most of my life. Also, It was a humbling experience, I was feeling all smart trying to find some ocult meaning, and she, in a few facebook lines showed me that sometimes less is much more (in my search for it meaning, not the quote in itself)
     
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  10. Komposten

    Komposten Insanitary pile of rotten fruit Contributor

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    I do have a file with a small collection of quotes somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. :(
    Anyway, here's me all-time favourite:

    "Never fear shadows. They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby." - Ruth E. Renkel
     
  11. Lifeline

    Lifeline South. Supporter Contributor

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    Here is a real good one :D

    "Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic." - Wolfgang Riebe
     
  12. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Encouraging people to think they're better than professionals seems to me highly irresponsible, especially considering many people will already tend to think that. "I don't need the training because I have this great idea!" is a beautiful way to fuck up because you should have learnt more about what you are doing. Some amateurs are really good. But most are amateurs for a reason, and in certain fields you pretty much need official training to be any good.
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2016
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  13. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    "My heart bleeds for the Snicker-Snack company."
    Linus.
     
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  14. JLT

    JLT Contributor Contributor

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    I think that most modern scientist feel just the opposite about this, except on the most trivial level. From what I gather, any really good question generates more questions than answers.

    My favorite quotes:

    “Sometimes you have to forget your principles and do what's right.”
    --Variously attributed to Dave Van Ronk or an anonymous voter, as reported by Richard Rovere

    "Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is like expecting the bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian."
    -- Dennis Wholey

    "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
    -- Hunter S. Thompson

    "A master is someone who has made more mistakes than you, has made mistakes you haven't made yet, and has learned how to embrace them--thus learning to see them coming before they happen. So you go towards mastery one mistake at a time. How many mistakes can you stand? As many as it takes to be a master. The master has persevered past the errors until he's made all of them."
    -- William Cumpiano, master luthier
     
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  15. PBNJDraftNumbA

    PBNJDraftNumbA Member

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    Do you want someone who thinks they can sing, who can't, singing your country's anthem?
    I prefer someone who trains, looks at where improvement is needed.
    Yes, I want someone who is confident in his or her skills-- but I also want someone to look for ways to improve on their best.
    This is my take on the quote in question; not that it is accurate, but it is a challenge: Do you want to settle or improve?
    Scientific method is about looking to replicate or diffentiate a fact. It practices... leaving room for improvement.
    So, it is more about becoming better, no matter how good one thinks he or she's got it.
    That is how I look at Francis Bacon's quote.

    The very fact that I posted a quote as my favorite and someone questions its validity makes the point.
    I could be wrong. Perhaps I'm wrong. I'm wrong. Well, through the doubting~scientific method, maybe I will be proven as such. Otherwise, yes, I am right :p But, given I like the quote, I prefer to go with your stance... I am wrong. :)

    So... all that the above means is, you are probably right.
    Congrats.
     
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  16. GrandJury

    GrandJury Member

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    "When I die, I want to go peacefully like my grandfather did- in his sleep. Not screaming, like his passengers."
    -Bob Monkhouse
     
  17. Earp

    Earp Contributor Contributor

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    ”The poor are collectively unseizable. They are not only the majority on the planet, they are everywhere and the smallest event speaks of them. This is why the essential activity of the rich today is the building of walls — walls of concrete, of electronic surveillance, of missile barrages, minefields, frontier controls, and opaque media screens.“

    — John Berger



    "To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself... Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."

    - Mark Twain



    "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
    We're finally on our own
    This summer I hear the drumming
    Four dead in O-hi-o."

    Neil Young



    "We wish to be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten."

    - Ralph Waldo Emerson



    "The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances."

    - Harry Browne



    and one that will be recognized as absolutely true by anyone who has tried it, at any level:

    "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."

    - Niccolo Machiavelli
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2016
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  18. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Wut?
     
  19. Raven484

    Raven484 Contributor Contributor

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    “I believe that every human has a finite amount of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.”
    Neil Armstrong
     
  20. Raven484

    Raven484 Contributor Contributor

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    The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. Arthur C. Clarke
     
  21. Wayjor Frippery

    Wayjor Frippery Contributor Contributor

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    Hi-def is merely the latest in a string of evolutional leaps that have transformed the way we sit slumped in front of a box wishing we were dead.
    ― Charlie Brooker
     
  22. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Interesting perspective. Depressing, but interesting. I prefer to look positively myself.
     
  23. Wayjor Frippery

    Wayjor Frippery Contributor Contributor

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    Charlie Brooker (English satirist and broadcaster) is the most positive man in Britain.

    Fact.

    /irony off
     
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  24. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    This is a long one but there's really no way it works without the whole thing. (On the idea of "homosexuality is a threat to the American Family", after dismissing it) "But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are a band of gay bandidos. Who get into a van everyday, and wander from village to dell. And as night begins to fall, they go back into a suburban neighborhood. To that cul-de-sac, where only one house stands.And in the window, a young American family is just setting down for their first meal. And these queers, these queers, don their black cloaks and hoods, with matching pumps, very tasteful. And they charcoal up their faces and sneak up to that house. And open the door, and start fuckin' each other in the ass! And another American family is destroyed!"-Lewis Black
     
    Last edited: Mar 7, 2017
  25. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    (When asked about the demand that the Da-Vinci Code movie should have a disclaimer saying "this is a work of fiction") "I've often thought that the Bible should have a disclaimer saying "this is a work of fiction."-Ian McKellen (dat sass :D).
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2016

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