Quotes for Grabs

[robkelk]

Most of the death and immortality quotes come from a site I found about 3 years back. Sorry, didn't know any were off! ^_^;

I'm always hesitant to use "unsourced" quotes, for that very reason. A case in point:

• “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
  
• “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”
  
• “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”
  
• “You’re entitled to your own opinions. You’re not entitled to your own facts.”
  

All of these have been attributed to Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan; many have also been attributed to James R. Schlesinger. Here's the actual quote:

“Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.”
– Bernard Baruch, Deming (New Mexico) Headlight, 6 January 1950

And as long as we're sharing quotes...

Every step is a first step if it's a step in the right direction.
– Tiffany Aching, in I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett

Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.
– Ray Bradbury, Brown Daily Herald, March 24, 1955

Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, "We've always done it this way." I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.
– Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper

A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things.
– Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, quoted by Henry S. Tropp

You can't solve problems by running away from them, it was said, and like the good child she had once been, she had believed this. But it wasn't true. Some problems could only be solved by running away from them
– Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.
– Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

I told Ethan that I speak in an unrestricted manner to animals -- things like, aren't you just the cutest little kitty... that kind of thing, which I wouldn't dream of doing to humans. Then I realized I wish I could.
– Douglas Coupland, Microserfs

Hunting hawks do not belong in cages, no matter how much a man covets their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They are far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful.
– Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior's Apprentice

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. ... Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.
– Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Do a good job. You don't have to worry about the money; it will take care of itself. Just do your best work — then try to trump it.
– Walt Disney, quoted in How to Be Like Walt : Capturing the Magic Every Day of Your Life

Too many times we stand aside and let the waters slip away, / 'Til what we put off 'til tomorrow has now become today, / So don't you sit upon the shoreline and say you're satisfied, / Choose to chance the rapids and dare to dance the tide.
-- Garth Brooks and Victoria Shaw, The River

The depth of a person's character is not measured by his or her physical strength, but by the depth of his or her nobility.
– Frank Peretti, The Wounded Spirit

We always romanticize that our elders are wise, because of their years of experience. But you know what? Stupid people get older, too.
– Matt "Dr. Heckle" Black, Seattle comedian.

War, Peace, and Everything in Between

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War

You can’t fool people into loving you.
– Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

We hold each other’s lives in our open hands, not in clenched fists.
- Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron

War is what happens when language fails.
– Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.
– Gen. George Marshall, as quoted in Freedom's Advocate: a twenty-five year chronicle by Aaron Levenstein

It's always the old to lead us to the war / It's always the young to fall / Now look at all we've won with the sabre and the gun / Tell me is it worth it all.
– Phil Ochs, I Ain't Marching Anymore

It is said that when Alexander was on campaign he ate the food of a common soldier. I've always thought that was a bit hard on the poor soldier.
– Hans Rancke-Madsen, March 7, 2011

Nobody can doubt that the entire range of applied science contributes to the very format of a newspaper. But the headline is a feature which began with the Napoleonic Wars. The headline is a primitive shout of rage, triumph, fear, or warning, and newspapers have thrived on wars ever since.
– Marshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride : Folklore of Industrial Man

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
– Will Rogers, quoted in Wit

There are a dozen different ways of delivering destruction in impersonal wholesale, via ships or missiles of one sort or another, catastrophes so widespread, so unselective that the war is over because that nation or planet has ceased to exist. What we do is entirely different. We make war as personal as a punch in the nose.
– Juan Rico, in Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

Seems to me the only difference between your friends and your enemies is how long they stand around chatting before they shoot you.
– Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honor

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We're not giving up. We're waiting for a better opportunity to win.
– Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar

I guess it just doesn't look very heroic to sneak up behind somebody and shoot them in the back. I can't help thinking it would be more efficient, though.
– Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior's Apprentice

The loonies who sought a glorious death in battle found it very early on. This rapidly cleared the chain of command of the accumulated fools. The survivors were those who learned to fight dirty, and live, and fight another day, and win, and win, and win, and for whom nothing, not comfort, or security, not family or friends or their immortal souls, was more important than winning. Dead men are losers by definition. Survival and victory. They weren't supermen, or immune to pain. They sweated in confusion and darkness. And ... they won.
– Lois McMaster Bujold, Borders of Infinity

I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.
– Gen. Patton (George C. Scott), Patton

It is always useful to have an enemy who is prepared to die for his country, this means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.
– Terry Pratchett, Jingo

People are okay, taken two or three at a time. More than that and they start to choose up sides and wear armbands.
– George Carlin, Brain Droppings

Love, Hate, and Everything in Between

There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are people who put it back.
– Charles de Lint quoting Elizabeth David, The Ivory and the Horn

I tell you what : I give you all of my strength - I seal it inside a little green envelope and mail it to you with hope and peace and much much love. Take all you need and take it quickly.
– Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

If you want to get close to somebody, you have to tell him or her something intimate about yourself. They'll tell you something intimate in return, and if you keep this going, maybe you'll end up in love.
– Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!

Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.
– Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit — Will Travel

If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.
– Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity

"To forgive oneself"—? No, that doesn't work: we have to be forgiven. But we can only believe this is possible if we ourselves can forgive.
– Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.
– Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honor

A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

People like that woman make it clear just how asinine it is to believe that human beings have some kind of in-built universal sense of goodness. These days I think that everybody's just one spit away from being a mall bomber.
– Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!

That old saw about ‘to understand all is to forgive all’ is a lot of tripe. Some things, the more you understand the more you loathe them.
– Juan Rico, in Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

Scratch a lover, and find a foe.
– Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

Learning and Education

Check your assumptions. In fact, check your assumptions at the door.
– Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.
– Vannevar Bush, Science is Not Enough

For generations, scientists and philosophers have tried to explain ordinary reasoning in terms of logical principles—with virtually no success. I suspect this enterprise failed because it was looking in the wrong direction: common sense works so well not because it is an approximation of logic; logic is only a small part of our great accumulation of different, useful ways to chain things together.
– Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind

You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.
– Marvin Minsky, quoted by Rebecca Herold in Managing an Information Security and Privacy Awareness and Training Program

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask – half our great theological and metaphysical problems – are like that.
– C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
– C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew

Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
– Oscar Wilde, A Few Maxims For The Instruction Of The Over-Educated

“Why?” Dallben interrupted. “In some cases,” he said, “we learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.”
– Lloyd Alexander, The Book of Three

Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be!
– Arthur C. Clarke, Electronic Tutors

Wisdom never comes to those who believe they have nothing left to learn.
– Charles de Lint, The Ivory and the Horn

Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge.
– George Santayana, The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy

Answers are easy. It's asking the right questions which is hard.
– The Fourth Doctor, “The Face of Evil,” Doctor Who

Real smarts begin when you quit quoting other people
– Chuck Palahniuk, Pygmy

Children, Childhood, and Being Childlike or Childish

When I was ten, I read fairytales in secret and would be ashamed if I had been found doing so - Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown-up.
– C.S. Lewis, On Stories

I fancy that most people who think at all have done a great deal of their thinking in the first fourteen years.
– C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

I have long felt that the way to keep children out of trouble is to keep them interested in things. Lecturing to children is no answer to delinquency. Preaching won't keep youngsters out of trouble, but keeping their minds occupied will.
– Walt Disney, Deeds Rather Than Words

That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be twelve years old. They patronize; they treat children as inferiors. I won't do that.
– Walt Disney, quoted in The Quotable Walt Disney

I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward.
– L. Frank Baum, personal inscription to Mary Louise Baum Brewster

This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end each program by saying, 'You've made this day a special day by just your being you. There's no person in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are.' And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service.
– Fred Rogers, testimony before U.S. Senate committee (1 May 1969)

The first thing you have to do if you want to raise nice kids, is you have to talk to them like they are people instead of talking to them like they're property.
– Frank Zappa, on The Howard Stern Show (1987)

This is such a phenomenal place to be. I'm an adult busy working, but the little boy in me is screaming and running around and laughing.
– Chris Hadfield, commanding the International Space Station, 13 February 2013

Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
– Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

Careful the things you say, / Children will listen. / Careful the things you do, / Children will see. / And learn. / Children may not obey, / But children will listen.
--Stephen Sondheim, Into The Woods

Won't somebody please think of the children?
-Helen Lovejoy, The Simpsons

Money, Wealth, Trade, and Value

Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
– Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory

Sometimes one pays most for things one gets for nothing.
– Albert Einstein, The Saturday Evening Post, 26 October 1929

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.
– Albert Einstein, "Death of a Genius," LIFE magazine

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
– Robert Service, The Cremation of Sam McGee

Information doesn't want to be free. Information wants to be valuable.
- Tim O'Reilly quoting Larry Wall, "Information wants to be valuable"

A man should never neglect his family for business.
– Walt Disney, quoted in How to Be Like Walt : Capturing the Magic Every Day of Your Life

We're forgetting one much bigger point: if we reward art, we get more of it. And why should you have a shitty job in Tesco or a call centre and have great talent but not be able to go to market with it? Markets aren't perfect at all but the Left has tended to mythologise and animate them as evil. They're the least-bad thing we have for producing art and culture.
– Andrew Orlowski, The Register, "The Big Debate: OK gloomsters, how can the music biz be FIXED?"

Doug

Ich sage euch: man muß noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können.
("I tell you: one must still have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star. ")
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

'I hate a Roman named Status Quo!' he said to me. 'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,' he said, 'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.'
– Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

When you get into trouble 5,000 miles from home, you’ve got to have been looking for it.
– Will Rogers, quoted in Sanity Is Where You Find It : An affectionate history of the United States in the 20's and 30's

If you end up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.
– Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book

Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.
– Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

Seize the day, whatever's in it to seize, before something comes along and seizes you.
– Lloyd Alexander, The Arkadians

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
– Oscar Wilde, "The Relation of Dress to Art," The Pall Mall Gazette (February 28, 1885)

Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
– Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

I'm a very dangerous fellow when I don't know what I'm doing.
– The Fourth Doctor, “Destiny of the Daleks,” Doctor Who

God will forgive you; He's perfect. Me? I've got problems...
– Father Noah 'Hardstep' Rivers, Hell Town

J'ai toujours fait une prière à Dieu, qui est fort courte. La voici: Mon Dieu, rendez nos ennemis bien ridicules! Dieu m'a exaucé.
(“I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: "O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!" God granted it.”)
– Voltaire, letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville, 16 May 1767

The gods give no gifts without hooks embedded.
– Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

William Turner: "You didn't beat me. You ignored the rules of engagement! In a fair fight, I'd kill you!"
Jack Sparrow: "Well, that's not much incentive for me to fight fair then, is it?"
– Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Nobody's going to help you / You've just got to stand up alone / And dig in your heels / And see how it feels / To raise a little Hell of your own
– Trooper, Raise a Little Hell

Eimi

I was wondering what electrons are actually doing when they sit in your hard drive in an old laptop at the back of your closet. I mean, how does an electron sit still — is it like a cartoon M&M learning back in a folding beach chair? Is it like an angry little steel ball bearing hovering there, just waiting to go nuts on protons? What’s the mechanism that starts and stops the electron? Who’s its dungeon master?
– Douglas Coupland, JPod

You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
– Randall Munroe, http://xkcd.com/701/, 12 February 2010

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.
– Douglas Adams, quoted by Richard Dawkins

When I don’t understand, I have an unbearable itch to know why.
– Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit — Will Travel

The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.
– Freeman Dyson, Imagined Worlds