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One of my favorite quips from anyone in the military. (Concerning some Boyscouts on a military base.)
Female Interviewer: So, General what things are you going to teach these young boys when they visit your base?
General: We're going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery, and shooting.
FI: Shooting! That's a bit irresponsible, isn't it?
Gen: I don't see why, They'll be properly supervised on the rifle range.
FI: don't you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching to children?
Gen: I don't see how. We will be teaching them proper rifle discipline before they even touch a firearm.
FI: But you're equipping them to become violent killers!
Gen: Well, you're equipped to be a prostitute, but you're not one, are you?
*Silence and interview ended*
One of my favorite quips from anyone in the military. (Concerning some Boyscouts on a military base.)
Female Interviewer: So, General what things are you going to teach these young boys when they visit your base?
General: We're going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery, and shooting.
FI: Shooting! That's a bit irresponsible, isn't it?
Gen: I don't see why, They'll be properly supervised on the rifle range.
FI: don't you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching to children?
Gen: I don't see how. We will be teaching them proper rifle discipline before they even touch a firearm.
FI: But you're equipping them to become violent killers!
Gen: Well, you're equipped to be a prostitute, but you're not one, are you?
*Silence and interview ended*
Heh. I worked at a Scout camp for a few years, and our firearms instructor (both of them, actually--one was a 30-something Marine who saw action in Kosovo, and the other was a 60-something Army veteran who had seen action in Viet Nam) was fond of stuff like that. I wish I had his e-mail address, so I could send that to him.
Some quotes from one of my sergeants while I was in the Army.
"It is better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it."
"You must be rigidly flexible."
"You can't smoke a rock."
"If you don't puke after the run, then you weren't trying hard enough."
Aside from #3, I'd heard all of those in the Scouts. #2 and #4 were also favorites of my high school track coach. Good stuff.
"Is there something scratching in here? Shhhhh. Scratching things, everybody stop! Everybody stop! I've got to listen to the scratching things. Stop scratching, YOU! Stop scratchiiiing... Thank you... You're the scratchy thing, you're the scratchy thing. Cock off!"
- Adam Lennard, the Sleep Talkin' Man
"Predictably, the Peking fossil is now sometimes called 'Beijing Man.' Why, since we are speaking English rather than Chinese, do we go along with 'Beijing' at all, when referring to China's capital? There's a rather charming programme on British television called Grumpy Old Men, which is a genially edited collection of grouses and grizzles of just this kind. If I were on it, I would say something like the following.
We don't dab on a splash of Eau de Köln to drown out the smell of Mumbai Duck, or go waltzing to the strains of 'The Blue Dunaj' or 'Tales from the Wien Woods'. We don't compare Neville Chamberlain, the Man of München, to Napoleon's retreat from Moskva. Nor yet (though give it time), do we take our snuffling little pet Beij for walkies. What's wrong with Peking, when it's the English language we are speaking?"
- Richard Dawkins, in a brief digression from The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution
Skeptic: "Professor Haldane, even given the billions of years that you say were available for evolution, I simply cannot believe it is possible to go from a single cell to a complicated human body, with its trillions of cells organized into bones, muscles, and nerves, a heart that pumps without ceasing for decades, miles and miles of blood vessels and kidney tubules, and a brain capable of thinking and talking and feeling."
J.B.S. Haldane: "But madam, you did it yourself. And it only took you nine months."
"The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought."
- Peter MedawarI couldn't have said it better myself.
Truly a classic!
Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.-Frederic Bastiat
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together
in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal
system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." -Frederic Bastiat
"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the
beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would
otherwise involve... But how is this legal plunder to be identified?
Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to
them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn't belong.
See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing
what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then
abolish that law without delay ... No legal plunder; this is the
principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic." -Frederic Bastiat
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within
limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add
'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's
will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." -Thomas Jefferson
This is probably my favorite quote ever.
"It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle." - Abraham Lincoln
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as 'bad luck.'" - Robert Heinlein
"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity." -Thomas Jefferson
"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man!
Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself
in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on
his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery
than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose." -Thomas Jefferson
"We are all doubtless bound to contribute a certain portion of our income to the support of charitable and other useful public institutions. But it is a part of our duty also to apply our contributions in the most effectual way we can to secure this object. The question then is whether this will not be better done by each of us appropriating our whole contribution to the institutions within our reach, under our own eye, and over which we can exercise some useful control? Or would it be better that each should divide the sum he can spare among all the institutions of his State or the United States? Reason and the interest of these institutions themselves, certainly decide in favor of the former practice."-Thomas Jefferson
“Some people eat too much; some people eat too little. Nothing else about diet really matters.”
– Kary Mullis, Nobel laureate in chemistry, 1993
This is more of a story than an actual quote, but here goes:
In my university life drawing class, the professor was going over misconceptions people have about how the human body is put together. This an excerpt:
Prof. Phillips - "Now, what most people don't realize is that the skull doesn't just have a top, front, and sides--it actually has a bottom plane where the skull joins the neck..."
He paused for a moment, looked directly at me, and craned his neck.
"...well, not that guy, but most people..."
Thanks, man. Everyone already knows I look like the troll out of the AD&D Monster Manual, you don't have to reinforce the point.
PARIS, le 7 Juillet. Monsieur le Landlord--Sir: Pourquoi don't you mettez some savon in your bed-chambers? Est-ce que vous pensez I will steal it? La nuit passee you charged me pour deux chandelles when I only had one; hier vous avez charged me avec glace when I had none at all; tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other on me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice. Savon is a necessary de la vie to any body but a Frenchman, et je l'aurai hors de cet hotel or make trouble. You hear me. Allons. BLUCHER.
- Mark Twain, in 'Innocents Abroad'
"The mind does not exist to determine the truth, but to rationalise its prejudices."
~Bertrand Russell"Lose your fear, Take your place in the sun, Turn the world under your feet."
~My Father."I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
~ Stephen Roberts"Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen."
~ Michel de MontaigneAll great truths begin as blasphemies.
~ George Bernard ShawEvery 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.
~ George OrwellThe trouble with the world is that the stupid are c%&#&ure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
~ Bertrand RussellYou know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do.
~ [Usenet]Men who believe absurdities will commit atrocities.
~ VoltaireThe nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
~ George OrwellHumanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
~ Tom RobbinsCould a being create the fifty billion galaxies, each with two hundred billion stars, then rejoice in the smell of burning goat flesh?
~ Ron PattersonForeign aid is when the poor people of a rich country give money to the rich people of a poor country.
~ Gary Hart, BC Comic Strip
Wow, that's an impressive bunch of quotations. Thanks!
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within
limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add
'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's
will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." -Thomas JeffersonThis is probably my favorite quote ever.
Another great one.
Here's one of my favorite quotations:
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."
-- The Dalai Lama