Quotations
(last updated: 2004-08-29)
(new in last update: layout, section divisions, about a third of the
quotes)
I considered branching each section out into its own page, but I
decided that keeping the whole thing in one file is easier for me to
update and upload, as well as for others to download. I also get to
experiment with anchors and add it to my too-short list of HTML coding
abilities.
E-mail me at glenn dot butler at gmail dot com if you have a quote I should
add or if you spot a spelling or coding gaffe.
SECTIONS:
Courage & Ambition: valor,
making your own life, and getting back on the horse.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death
that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it
to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn
the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be
nothing. Only I will remain."
-- Bene Gesserit litany against fear, from Dune by Frank Herbert
"Yonder are the Hessians. They were bought for seven pounds and
tenpence a man. Are you worth more? Prove it. Tonight the American flag
floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow!"
-- John Stark at the Battle of Bennington, 1777
"If we must perish in the fight, let us die like men."
-- George Washington
"All our dreams can come true--if we have the courage to pursue them."
-- Walt Disney
"Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting, but
never hit soft."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he
has struck before you crush him."
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"I just don't care about the criticism I receive every day, because I
know the cause I defend is right."
-- Oriol
"There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their 'discomfort' like a favorite shirt."
-- Jhonen Vasquez
"Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance or hypocritical
humility. I chose honest arrogance."
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade
unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a
Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to
speak up."
--Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor
"A man is judged by his values. His values are marked by that which he
will not compromise."
-- G.E. Nordell
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing."
-- Edmund Burke
"The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire."
-- Richard M. Nixon
"I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or
get busy dying."
-- Andy DuFresne in "The Shawshank Redemption"
"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human
soul."
-- Samuel Clemens
"All glory comes from daring to begin."
-- Eugene F. Ware
Morell: Man can climb to the highest summits; but he cannot dwell there.
Marchbacks (springing up): It's false: there can he dwell forever, and
there only. It's in the other moment that he can find no rest, no sense
of the silent glory of life. Where would you have me spend my moments,
if not on the summits?
-- from Candida
by George Bernard Shaw
"Excellence demands competition. Without a race there can be no
champion, no records broken, no excellence--in education or in any
other walk of life."
-- Ronald Reagan
"Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail
better."
-- Samuel Beckett
"Energy and persistence conquer all things."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find
the way."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even
though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits
who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray
twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and
spiritually. One must fight
for a life of action, not reaction."
-- Rita Mae Brown
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I
shall move the world."
-- Archimedes, Pappus of Alexandria
"Though we are not now that strength, which in old days moved Earth and
Heaven, that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts,
made weak by time and fates, but strong in will. To strive, to seek, to
find, and not to yield."
-- from "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"A philosophy of life: I'm an adventurer, looking for treasure."
--from The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your
Dream by Paulo Coelho
"If at first you do succeed, try something harder."
-- Ann Landers
"The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this:
Decide what you want."
-- Ben Stein
"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
-- Helen Keller
"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast;
for I intend to go in harm's way."
-- John Paul Jones, 1778
"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood.
I'd type a little faster."
-- Isaac Asimov
"Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means
effort, pain, difficulty.... I have never in my life envied a human
being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led
difficult lives and led them well."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sun-dial in
the shade?"
-- Benjamin Franklin
"You cannot harm one who has dreamed a dream like mine."
-- Indian (Ojibwe tribe) prayer of protection
against enemies
"Great souls have wills; feeble souls have wishes."
-- Chinese proverb
"Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which
difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish."
-- John Quincy Adams
"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."
-- Henry Ford
"As long as you are going to think anyway--you might as well think BIG!"
-- Donald Trump
"Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand."
-- Baruch Spinoza
"We now live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It wasn't a
miracle; we just decided to go."
-- Jim Lovell in "Apollo 13"
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're
right."
-- Henry Ford
Art & Words: the spiritual need
for art, and the economy of words.
"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons
exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton
"Writing poetry is one of the most intellectually grueling tasks in
existence. Unlike prose writing, there is no room for error. A
good poem must possess the elegance of a mathematical proof, the weight
of a philosophical treatise, and beauty of a artistic masterpiece. It
is with this reverence for the craft of poetry that I spit upon those
who vomit words onto a page and tell me that their subconscious has
written a poem for them; that it does not have to beautiful, because
the world is only ugliness, that it does not have to make sense,
because there is no reason for anything, and that if only I were a
little more enlightened, I would just 'feel' it and understand. Such a
creature is no better than a rapist--he has stolen the dignity and
purity of one of man's most useful and beautiful innovations--the poem."
-- Julianne Shelby
"I can't help somebody who thinks, or thinks he thinks, that editing a
newspaper is censorship, or that throwing bricks is a demonstration
while building tower blocks is social violence, or that unpalatable
statement is provocation while disrupting the speaker is the exercise
of free speech...Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're
innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning
the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across
incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off,
they're no good any more, and [he] knocks their corners off. I don't
think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you
get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little
or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead."
-- Tom Stoppard
"Words should be weighed, not counted."
-- Jewish folk saying
"Basically, I have this theory that there are five kinds of truth.
(This is Joe's Theory of the Five Truths.) There is the truth you tell
to casual strangers and acquaintances. There is the truth you tell to
your general circle of friends and family members. There is the truth
you tell to only one or two people in your entire life. There is the
truth you tell to yourself. And finally, there is the truth that you do
not admit even to yourself. And it's that fifth truth that provides
some of the most interesting drama."
-- J. Michael Straczynski
"Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive."
-- Badger in Crow
and Weasel by Barry Lopez
"I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of
the bowels."
-- John Calvin
"The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are
lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in."
-- Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare
Intelligence:
"Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats."
-- Howard Aiken
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
-- Ernest Hemingway
"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart
like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain
unfolding to success...Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep,
friends, love, everything."
-- Nikola Tesla
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn
from the experience of
others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
-- Douglas Adams
"If there is a way to do it better, find it."
-- Thomas Edison
Existence & Reason:
reality, facts, and How It Is.
"Any successful engineer soon learns that the universe doesn't respect
our opinions."
-- Steven Den Beste
"The universe is just there; that's the only way a Fedaykin can view it
and remain the master of his senses. The universe neither threatens nor
promises. It holds things beyond our sway: the fall of a meteor, the
eruption of a spiceblow, growing old and dying. These are the realities
of this universe and they must be faced regardless of how you feel
about them. You cannot fend off such realities with words. They will
come at you in their own wordless way and then, then you will
understand what is meant by 'life and death.' Understanding this, you
will be filled with joy."
-- Muad'Dib in Children
of Dune by Frank Herbert
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I
have never used any other, and I trust I never shall."
-- from Age of
Reason by Thomas Paine
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
-- Aldous Huxley
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened"
-- Sir Winston Churchill
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away."
-- Philip K. Dick
"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact,
every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of god;
because, if there is one, he must more approve of the homage of reason,
than that of blindfolded fear"
-- Thomas Jefferson
"How many legs does a dog have if you cal the tail a leg? Four. Calling
a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above
falsehood, as oil does above water."
-- Miguel de Cervantes
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our
inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the
state of facts and evidence."
-- John Adams
"The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of
destruction. Men are mortal; but ideas are immortal."
-- Richard Adams
"Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion
and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning
will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and
crimes from society."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without
proof."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"Nothing endures but change."
-- Heraclitus
"There's a smart-ass comment that engineers sometimes use. When hearing
someone emphatically declare, ‘We can't do that!’ someone else may
reply, in exasperation, ‘Why not? Does it violate the laws of physics?’
We can't go faster than light. We can't violate the second law of
thermodynamics. These are hard and fast restrictions imposed on us by
the Universe; it isn't possible for us to fail to comply with these
laws. But for lesser issues, it's not so clear. There are some who have
enormous faith in the power of law. Not the laws of physics, mind, but
the laws of man. But in a sense they seem to conflate the two, and for
some reason I've never understood seem to think that if you pass a law
against something-or-other, then mysterious forces will transform
space-time and thereafter whatever-it-was will cease to happen, because
it will be impossible. Advanced practitioners of this principle have
perfected an even more sophisticated version of this approach: they
don't even need to formally pass laws. What they do is talk about
'emerging international law', which sort of spontaneously springs out
of nowhere, and once it's in being, the fabric of the universe is
modified"
-- Steven Den Beste
Education:
"It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be
entirely uneducated."
-- Alec Bourne
"Only the educated are free."
-- Epictetus
"Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are
dimmed."
-- R.S. Ingersoll
"Ignorance must be battled."
-- Isaac Asimov
"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do."
-- Bertrand Russell
Religion:
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
-- Galileo Galilei
"I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power
of rational decision, to drain people of their free will--and a hell of
a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of
idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing
more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain."
-- Gene Roddenberry
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every
form of tyranny known to the mind of man."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Politics, Government, and The United
States: theory, practice, and patriotism.
"Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis
for a system of government! Supreme executive power derives from a
mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!"
-- Dennis in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
"America is the land of opportunity, not the land of free lunch"
-- Sean McDermott
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the
point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation
to tolerate speech."
-- Justice Anthony Kennedy
"'My country, right or wrong,' is a thing that no patriot would think
of saying. ... It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.'"
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton
"The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among free men."
-- James Buchanan
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty."
-- Tacitus
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are
naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short
phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if
it stops moving, subsidize it."
-- Ronald Reagan
"America is too great for small dreams."
-- Ronald Reagan
"I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so
effective as their stringent execution."
-- Ulysses S. Grant
"Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a
democracy the whores are us."
-- From Parliament of Whores by P.J. O'Rourke
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured,
the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all,
irrevocably."
-- Judge Aaron Satie
"Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters.
I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a
gun. Safety locks? You'll pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll
pull the trigger. We'll see who wins."
-- Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
"This American system of ours...call it Americanism, call it
capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a
great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most
of it."
-- Al Capone
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire,
a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should
it be left to irresponsible action."
-- George Washington
"It takes but one to make a war, not two, and those who do not have
swords may still die upon them."
-- Eowyn in The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
"I was looking at a coin and I saw that it said 'in god we trust,' and
I thought to myself, 'I don't trust in god.' And then I did some
looking into it and I found that the Constitution and the law seemed to
be on my side, so I filed a suit. It's kind of neat. I think everyone
should do it."
-- Michael A. Newdow
"This is a bad day. I'm glad that I work and live in a country where
when we have a bad day, we go fix it."
-- Milt Heflin, Chief Flight Director, STS-107
"Of course, almost every Democrat thinks the sovereign remedy for any
of our ills is the appropriation of public money."
-- Calvin Coolidge
"The chief business of the American people is business."
-- Calvin Coolidge
"Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most
important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one
which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to
the growth of civilization than any other institution established by
the human race."
-- William Howard Taft
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means.
I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy
in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I
traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more
public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for
themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less
was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1766
"The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right."
-- William Safire
"There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses."
-- John Hancock, on his signature to the Declaration
of Independence
"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me. But it can keep
him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."
-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have
made a fine slave catcher."
-- John J. Miller
"The War was not merely a display of brute courage and endurance, but a
conflict between men of thought, as well as of action, and in dead
earnest for something beyond the battlefield."
-- Frederick Douglass
"A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular."
-- Adlai Stevenson
Happiness, Personality, and Human
Life:
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
-- Ernest Hemingway
"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible
to find it elsewhere."
-- Agnes Repplier
"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the
overcoming of it."
-- Helen Keller
"You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral
imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words,
not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose.
Act."
-- Barbara Hall
"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence
but in the mastery of his passions."
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Self-esteem isn't determined by worldly success, physical appearance,
popularity, or anything we can't entirely choose for ourselves.
But it is a function of our honesty, integrity, and rationality--and
these we have control over."
-- Nathaniel Branden
"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical
substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."
-- Carl Jung
"If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it."
-- Andy Rooney
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night
and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
-- e. e. cummings
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who
could not hear the music."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's
opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
-- Oscar Wilde
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known."
-- The Princess Irulan in Dune by Frank Herbert
"As an irrigator guides water to his fields, as an archer aims an
arrow, as a carpenter carves wood, the wise shape their lives."
-- Buddha
Humorous Quotes: har de har har.
"You practice in advance so that your instincts are trained to respond
in a planned manner. For example, I run for an hour every day and sing
in the shower. As a result, should any combat situation present itself,
I am perfectly conditioned to run away screaming."
-- Kevin Killiany on the TrekBBS
"Ah, chivalry! Fair ladies in pointy hats with scarves on the end, the
parfit gentil ca-nish heading off on Quests, brave pageboys, stout and
merry smiths, etc. Brutish nasty and short, as the saying goes, except
for those who ended up on top; for them life was brutish, nasty and
long. Hard to tell which is worse, when you really think about it."
-- James Lileks
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve
immortality through not dying."
-- Woody Allen
"Going to war without France is like going hunting without your
accordion."
-- General Norman Schwartzkopf (Ret.)
"I just love the subtext of the Veggie Tales series. They believe in
God...and they're vegetables."
-- A poster on the TrekBBS
"The very existence of flame throwers proves that sometime, somewhere,
someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over
there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.'"
-- George Carlin
"Recently, a couple of the Democratic presidential candidates were
bragging about spending time in jail, as if we're still in the '60s.
It's a real challenge to top that with a cartoon."
-- Allen Forkum
"Marriage is an adventure, like going to war."
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton
"Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum: I think I think therefore I think I am."
-- Ambrose "Bitter" Bierce
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone,
but they've always worked for me."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an
infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even
considering if there are men on base."
-- Dave Barry
"Time to stop beating around the bush. Beat the bush itself. Give it a
good thrashing, and say 'bad bush!' in a loud stern tone."
-- Fred Barling
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
-- George Carlin
"They told us irony and sarcasm were dead. Oh yeah, sarcasm is so dead.
And as for irony, as long as the Fox News Channel can claim Geraldo
Rivera as a 'war correspondent,' irony is alive and well."
-- Lewis Black
"If it doesn't work, beat it with a hammer. If that doesn't work, get a
bigger hammer."
-- Jesse James
"Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace your
nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of
incredible obscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred
years, 'Woo the muse of the odd.' ... You may be a geek. You may have
geek written all over you. You should aim to be one geek they'll never
forget. Don't aim to be civilized. Don't hope that straight people will
keep you on as some kind of pet. To hell with them. You should fully
realize what society has made of you and take a terrible revenge. Get
weird. Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly,
thoroughly weird, and don't do it halfway. Put every ounce of
horsepower you have behind it. ... Don't become a well-rounded person.
Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky
person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a
pufferfish."
-- Bruce Sterling, speech to the Computer Game
Developers Conference, March 1991
"When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or
not. But as I grew older, it got so I only remembered the latter."
-- Samuel Clemens
"Life is like peeing into an electric fan. It may or may not shock you,
but it'll definitely get all over you."
-- Jeffrey Chang
"They keep saying 'they are evil and we will win because we are good
and they are evil...' yeah, and shaka when the walls fell."
-- Jeffrey Chang
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
-- Douglas Adams
"France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals. France is miserable
because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable
because they live in France."
-- Samuel Clemens
"It's hard to make a program foolproof because fools are so ingenious."
-- Anonymous
"Sorry, folks, we evolved from monkeys, not Edward James Olmos."
-- A poster on the TrekBBS
"If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing."
-- Anonymous
"Your explanations are pure, one-hundred percent, weapons-grade
Bolognium!"
-- Q-bert Farnsworth in some episode of Futurama
the name of which I forget
Miscellaneous: quotes that just
didn't fit anywhere else.
"Asking 'who ought to be the boss?' is like asking 'who ought to be the
tenor in the quartet?' Obviously, the man who can sing tenor."
-- Henry Ford
"Bygones, bygones. Let bygones fall where they may. This has been a
dirty day."
-- Bijaz in Dune
Messiah by Frank Herbert
"I do all this explaining, have all this rationale, and what does it
get me? I've become so focused on defining every phenomenon; I never
bother to look for solutions. I don't want to fix the broken VCR, I
want to take it apart, figure out exactly what was wrong, why it was
wrong, what I could have done to keep it from breaking, whether or not
the inventor of the VCR ever spent the night in Venice, whether or not
fixing the VCR would be congruous with Objectivist philosophy, what
kind of a God would break my VCR, etc."
-- Julianne Shelby
"If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from
within or without, we must try to extinguish it."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Lewis, 9 May
1798
"The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more
foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are."
-- Samuel Clemens
"A witty saying proves nothing."
-- Voltaire
"Forget mystery and accept love. There's no mystery about love. It
comes from life."
-- Muad’Dib in Dune
Messiah by Frank Herbert
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
-- Cassius in Julius
Caesar by William Shakespeare
"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly."
-- Thomas Paine
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the
subject."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
"A dreamer lives forever, and a toiler dies in a day."
-- John Locke
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
"If a Ku Klux Klansman hits me on the back of the head with a brick
while I’m at the ATM, the operative world is not 'Klansman.' It
is 'brick.'"
-- Larry Elder
"From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of
friends."
-- Hilaire Belloc
"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with
another must wait till that other is ready."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and
not deserve them."
-- Samuel Clemens
"Our language has widely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has
created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And
it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone."
--Paul Tillich
"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its
own way."
-- from Anna
Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The
occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the
occasion. We cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of
ourselves. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in
honor or dishonor, to the latest generation ... We shall nobly save, or
meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth."
-- Abraham Lincoln, address to Congress, 1862
"Megatron must be stopped...no matter the cost."
-- Optimus Prime
"Goodbye. I am leaving because I am bored."
-- George Saunders, final words
Aristotle: inventor of science
and logic, father of modern civilization, cool dude.
(I realise the Aristotle section is rather anemic. I'll definitely be
adding to it substantially when I finally grab up a Complete Works tome
and immerse myself in it.)
"The high minded man must care more for the truth than for what people
think."
"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into
despotisms."
"We make war that we may live in peace."
-- from The
Nichomachean Ethics
"Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness
that we deserve them."
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it."
"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive
them of their arms."
"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality
which guarantees the others."
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a
habit."
"Misfortune shows those who are not really friends."
-- from The
Eudemian Ethics
"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his
enemies, for the hardest victory is over self."
"Philosophy is the science which considers truth."
"Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are
more certain they are their own."
"All proofs rest on premises."
"Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any
respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they
claim to be absolutely equal."
"What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing."
"Happiness depends upon ourselves."
"Wit is educated insolence."
"The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a
thousandfold."
"All men by nature desire to know."
"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."
"Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right
person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose
and in the right way--that is not easy."
Ayn Rand:
"In the name of the best within you, do not
sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the
values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted
by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never
achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate
is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels
unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable
spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the
not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in
lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able
to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you
desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.
"But to win it requires total dedication and a total
break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a
sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the
value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the
essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight
with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that
yours is the morality of life and that yours is the battle for any
achievement, any value, and grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has
ever existed on this earth."
-- John Galt in Atlas
Shrugged
"Don’t help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it.
Don’t work for my happiness, my brothers--show me yours--show me that
it is possible--show me your achievement--and the knowledge will give
me the courage for mine."
-- Steven Mallory in The Fountainhead
"The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently;
they are most helplessly in its power."
"Face a challenge and find joy in the capacity to meet it."
"One of these centuries, the brutes, private or public, who believe
that they can rule their betters by force, will learn the lesson of
what happens when brute force encounters mind and force."
-- Ragnar Danneskjöld in Atlas Shrugged
"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new
roads armed with nothing but their own vision."
-- Howard Roark in The
Fountainhead
"The thinking child is not antisocial (he is, in fact, the only type of
child fit for social relationships). When he develops his first values
and conscious convictions, particularly as he approaches adolescence,
he feels an intense desire to share them with a friend who would
understand him; if frustrated, he feels an acute sense of loneliness.
(Loneliness is specifically the experience of this type of child--or
adult; it is the experience of those who have something to offer. The
emotion that drives conformists to "belong," is not loneliness, but
fear--the fear of intellectual independence and responsibility. The
thinking child seeks equals; the conformist seeks protectors.)"
--"The Comprachicos"
"To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by
persuasion."
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's
whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization
is the process of setting man free from men."
"There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns
or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by
means of logic, have always resorted to guns."
"When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final
arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us
will win, but both will profit."
"Now look at me! Take a good look! I was born and I knew I was alive
and I knew what I wanted. What do you think is alive in me? Why do you
think I'm alive? Because I have a stomach and eat and digest the food?
Because I breathe and work and produce more food to digest? Or because
I know what I want, and that something which knows how to want--isn't
that life itself? And who--in this damned universe--who can tell me why
I should live for anything but that which I want? Who can answer that
in human sounds that speak for human reason?"
-- Kira Argounova in We the Living
"Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by
adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his
background to himself."
"It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You
should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value
to your listener."
-- Francisco D'Anconia in Atlas Shrugged
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would
choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the
people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or
nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of
wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared,
looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand
that wealth has to be created."
"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to
enjoy yourself and live."
-- John Galt in Atlas
Shrugged
"'Why yes, I can,' said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he
could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity.
'The man who uses another's pity for him as a weapon.'"
-- Atlas Shrugged
"Can this country achieve a peaceful rebirth in the
foreseeable future? By all precedents, it is not likely. But America is
an unprecedented phenomenon. In the past, American perseverance became,
on occasion, too long-bearing. But when Americans turned, they turned.
What may happen to the welfare state is what happened to the
Prohibition Amendment.
"Is there enough of the American sense of life left
in people--under the constant pressure of the cultural-political
efforts to destroy it? It is impossible to tell. But those of us who
hold it, must fight for it. We have no alternative: we cannot surrender
this country to a zero--to men whole battle cry is mindlessness.
"We cannot fight against collectivism, unless we
fight against its moral base: altruism. We cannot fight against
altruism, unless we fight against its epistemological base:
irrationalism. We cannot fight against anything, unless we fight for
something--and what we must fight for is the supremacy of reason, and a
view of man as a rational being.
"These are philosophical issues. The philosophy we
need is a conceptual equivalent of America's sense of life. To
propagate it, would require the hardest intellectual battle. But isn't
that a magnificent goal to fight for?"
-- "Don't Let it Go"
"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can
win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can
profit."
--"The Anatomy of Compromise"
"An error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith,
because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second
destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error."
-- John Galt in Atlas
Shrugged
"To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'"
-- Howard Roark in The
Fountainhead
"Do you want...love...to be....causeless?"
"Love is its own cause! Love is above causes and
reasons. Love is blind. But you wouldn't be capable of it. You have the
mean, scheming, calculating little soul of a shopkeeper who trades, but
never gives! Love is a gift--a great, free, unconditional gift that
transcends and forgives everything. What's the generosity of loving a
man for his virtues? What do you give him? Nothing. It's no more than
cold justice. No more than he's earned."
Her eyes were dark with the dangerous intensity of
glimpsing her goal. "You want it to be unearned," she said, not in the
tone of a question, but of a verdict.
"Oh, you don't understand!"
"Yes, Jim, I do. That's what you want--that's what
all of you really want--not money, not material benefits, not economic
security, not any of the handouts you keep demanding." She spoke in a
flat monotone, as if reciting her thoughts to herself, intent upon
giving the solid identity of words to the torturous shreds of chaos
twisting in her mind. "All of you welfare preachers--it's not unearned
money that you're after. You want handouts, but of a different kind.
I'm a gold-digger of the spirit, you said, because I look for value.
Then you, the welfare preachers...it's the spirit that you want to
loot. I never thought and nobody ever told us how it could be thought
of and what it could mean--the unearned in spirit. But that is what you
want. You want unearned love. You want unearned admiration. You want
unearned greatness. You want to be a man like Hank Rearden without the
necessity of being what he is. Without the necessity of being anything.
Without...the necessity...of being."
-- Cherryl & James Taggart in Atlas Shrugged
"If there is no black and white, there can be no gray, since gray is a
mixture of the two."
"I swear--by my life and my love of it--that I will never live for the
sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
-- Multiple characters in Atlas Shrugged
"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a
contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is
wrong."
-- Hugh Akston in Atlas
Shrugged
"The mind leads, the emotions follow."
"Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others--misfortune is not a
mortgage on achievement--failure is not a mortgage on
success--suffering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal
of existence--man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone's altar nor for
anyone's cause--life is not one huge hospital."
-- "Apollo 11"
"Perhaps, in those days, there were a few among men, a few of clear
sight and clean soul, who refused to surrender that word. What agony
must have been theirs before that which they saw coming and could not
stop! Perhaps they cried out in protest and in warning. But men paid no
heed to their warning. And they, those few, fought a hopeless battle,
and they perished with their banners smeared by their own blood. And
they chose to perish, for they knew."
-- Narrator in Anthem
"Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in
nature, without technology, is wholesale death."
-- "The Anti-Industrial Revolution"
"An emotion as such tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact
that something makes you feel something."
-- "Philosophical Detection"
"I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the
meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for
being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the
sanction.
"It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes
grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing
of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and
the judgment of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the
truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the
only edict I must respect.
"Many words have been granted me, and some are wise,
and some are false, but only three are holy: 'I will it!'"
-- Narrator in Anthem
"It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and
achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature--and the rest will
betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its
meaning--and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The
rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or The Fountainhead that they
will betray: it is their own souls."
-- Introduction to The
Fountainhead
He rose. "Why," he asked, "should I swill everything down ten times? I
know all that."
-- Gail Wynand in The
Fountainhead
"Incidental question: a librarian writing about library building,
insists that libraries must be made to look as accessible to the public
as possible--to 'bring the library nearer to the people.' 'Spacious and
inviting entrances are placed at grade level, close to the public
thoroughfare, with as few steps as possible between the pedestrian and
the building.' This may be quite sound in relation to library
architecture, but the question it raises, in a more general sense, is
this: is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture
before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a
sufficient deterrent from reading?"
-- Note made while researching The Fountainhead, February 27, 1937
"There's something magical about that moment when you're an
18-20-year-old & have spent almost all of your life within a school
curriculum. There's a deep, hard-to-articulate yearning for
intellectual freedom, heroism, and the subtle difference between doing
things right and doing the right thing. And bam!, someone hands you a
copy of Atlas Shrugged and it
feels like it was written just for you."
-- Vinod
Robert Anson Heinlein: "Dean of
science fiction writers."
"I predicted that the years immediately following 1941 would be a
period of great and radical change...change so great that most people
would not be able to understand it, assimilate it, cope with it, and
that the whole world would start behaving irrationally, crazy. Does
anyone want to dispute that it has?"
"Too many of the letters I receive demand something--an autograph or a
signed picture or 'send this information at once as my term paper is
due on Monday'--and all of these demands appear without stamped and
self-addressed envelopes at least 19 times out of 20."
"Sin lies in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are
invented nonsense. (Hurting oneself isn't sinful--just stupid.)"
"Political tags--such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist,
fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth--are never basic criteria.
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be
controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists
acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest
number. The latter are surely curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in
altruism. But they make better neighbors than the other sort."
"Perhaps the warmest pleasure in life is the knowledge that one has no
enemies. He easiest way to achieve this is by outliving them. No action
is necessary; time wounds all heels."
-- introduction to Expanded
Universe
"Do-gooding is like treating hemophilia--the real cure is to let
hemophiliacs bleed to death... before they breed more hemophiliacs."
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say
to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you
are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression, no
matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a
man whose mind has been hoodwinked, contrariwise, no amount of force
can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not
fission bombs, not anything--you can't conquer a free man; the most you
can do is kill him."
-- John Lyle in "If This Goes On--"
"Of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism'
is the worst."
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"In sober truth no person can ever be truly responsible for another
human being. Each of us faces up to the universe alone, and the
universe is what it is and doesn't soften the rules for any of us--and
eventually, in the long run, the universe always wins and takes all.
But that doesn't make it any easier when we try to be responsible for
another--as you have, as I have--and then look back and see how we
could have done it better."
-- Uncle Tom in Podkayne
of Mars
"The way to live a long time--oh, a thousand years or more--is
something between the way a child does it and the way a mature man does
it. Give the future enough thought to be ready for it--but don't worry
about it. Live each day as if you were to die next sunrise. Then face
each sunrise as a fresh creation and live for it, joyously. And never
think about the past. No regrets, ever."
-- Lazarus Long in Time
Enough to Love
"War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled
violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your
government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy
just to be killing him but to make him do what you want him to do. Not
killing--but controlled and purposeful violence."
--Sergeant Zim in Starship
Troopers
"A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore."
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"Some people say--I've heard talk--that married men should not go [to
war]. Because of their families. But this involves contradiction, a
fatal one. The family man dare not hang back and expect the bachelor to
do his fighting for him. It is manifestly unfair for me to expect a
bachelor to die for my children if I am unwilling to die for them
myself. Enough of that attitude on the part of married men and the
bachelor will refuse to fight if the married man stays safe at
home--and the republic is doomed. The barbarian will walk in unopposed."
-- Ira Johnson in To
Sail Beyond the Sunset
"Anything that is moral for a group to do is moral for one person to
do."
-- from Podkayne
of Mars
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders,
give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new
problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight
efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-- Lazarus Long in Time
Enough for Love
"I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am
free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I
tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free
because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."
-- Prof in The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress
"You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker
than you can convince one man by logic."
-- Zed in Revolt
in 2100
"If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion."
-- Lazarus Long in Time
Enough for Love
"I've never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the
one true religion by faith - it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a
universe."
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
-- Lazarus Long in Time
Enough for Love
"A sword never jams, never has to be reloaded, is always ready. Its
worst shortcoming is that it takes great skill and patient, loving
practice to gain that skill; it can't be taught to raw recruits in
weeks, nor even months."
-- Oscar Gordon in Glory
Road
"Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits
of the social group without being willing to pay--and claims a halo for
his dishonesty."
-- John Joseph Bonforte in Double Star
"Always yield to temptation, It may never pass your way again."
-- Lazarus Long in Time
Enough for Love
"Peace is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to
military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story--unless
that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties. But, if
there ever was a time in history when 'peace' meant that there was no
fighting going on, I have been unable to find out about it."
-- Rico in Starship
Troopers
"The death rate is the same for us as for anybody...one person, one
death sooner or later."
-- Ellen in Tunnel
in the Sky
"We've lasted through the preliminary bouts; the main event is coming
up. But it's not for sissies."
-- introduction to "Pandora's Box"
"Whatever you've done, whatever you've been, is all, totally, one
hundred percent, your own fault. All."
-- Richard Colin Campbell Ames in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
"The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive."
-- Alexander Hergensheimer/Alex Graham in Job: A Comedy of Justice
"Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
-- Lorenzo Smythe in Double Star
"Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your
second shot perfect."
-- Lazarus Long in Time
Enough for Love
"Geniuses are justifiably contemptuous of the opinions of their
inferiors."
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"I don't like to be called 'Doctor'...When they began handing out
doctorates for comparative folk-dancing and advanced fly fishing, I
became too stinkin' proud to use the title. I won't touch watered
whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees."
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"A man who refuses to take his own death into account in making plans
is a fool."
-- Lazarus Long in Time
Enough for Love
"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate
its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and
will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to
seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or
driving underground all heretics."
-- Postscript to Revolt
in 2100
Babylon 5: the best-constructed sci-fi
show I've ever seen.
"Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. There would never be
another. It changed the future, and it changed us. It taught us that we
have to create the future, or the others will do it for us. It showed
us that we have to care for one another, because if we don't, who will?
And that the true strength comes from most unlikely places. Mostly
though, I think it gave us hope. That there can always be new
beginnings. Even for people like us."
-- Ivanova in "Sleeping in Light"
"Who asked you to play God?"
"Every damn patient who comes through that door, that's who! People
come to doctors because they want us to be gods. They want us to make
it better--or make it not so. They want to be healed and they come to
me when their prayers aren't enough. Well, if I have to take the
responsibility, then I claim the authority too. I did good. And we both
know it. And no one is going to take that away."
-- Sinclair & Franklin in "Believers"
"Sleep well?"
"Sleeping is not the problem. Waking up --that is a
problem. I've always had a hard time getting up when it's dark outside."
"But in space it's always dark."
"I know, I know."
-- Sinclair & Ivanova in "Signs and Portents"
"And so it begins."
-- Kosh in "Chrysalis"
"Now, we gave you a promise. And we are bound by that promise. And damn
you for asking for it! And damn me for agreeing to it! And damn all of
us to hell, because that is exactly where we're going! We talked about
peace. You didn't want peace! We talked about cooperation. You didn't
want cooperation! You want war! Is that it? You want a war? Well,
you've got a war!"
-- Sheridan in "And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder"
"Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet.
He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be
somewhere else."
-- Delenn in "Severed Dreams"
"There, you see! I'm going to live."
"So it would seem. Well, it's an imperfect universe."
"Bastard."
"Monster."
"Fanatic."
"Murderer."
"You are insane!"
"And that is why we'll win."
"Go be the ambassador to Babylon 5 they say. Will be an easy
assignment. Ah, I hate my life!"
"So do I."
"Shut up!"
--Londo & G'Kar in "Convictions"
"What you are asking could be considered treason."
"Or the first step in restoring our people to their rightful place in
the galaxy, depending on who writes the history books. I think it will
be us."
-- Londo & Refa in "The Geometry of Shadows"
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us.
And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast terrible
in-between"
-- Emperor Turhan in "The Coming of Shadows"
"Mass drivers! They have been outlawed by every civilized planet!"
"These are uncivilized times."
"We have treaties."
"Ink on a page!"
-- Londo & Refa in "The Long, Twilight Struggle"
"This is the White Star Fleet. Negative on surrender--we will not stand
down."
"Who is this? Identify yourself."
"Who am I? I am Susan Ivanova, Commander, daughter of Andrei and Sophie
Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance, and the boot that is going to
kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth--I am Death incarnate,
and the last living thing that you are ever going to see. God sent me."
-- Ivanova & Earthforce Captain in "Between the
Darkness and the Light"
"There is always choice. We say there is no choice only to comfort
ourselves with the decision we have already made."
-- Lady Morella in "Point of no Return"
"It's a Russian thing. When we're about to do something stupid, we like
to catalog the full extent of our stupidity for future reference."
-- Ivanova in "A Voice in the Wilderness, Part II"
"You take, Zathras die. You leave, Zathras die. Either way, it is bad
for Zathras."
-- Zathras in "Babylon Squared"
"G'Quon wrote, 'There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It
is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is
not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair.
Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of
dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all
around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of
revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take
us. We know only that it is always born in pain.'"
-- G'Kar in "Z'Ha'Dum"
"Yes, yes, Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other people's
needs. Very sad life. Probably have very sad death, but at least there
is symmetry."
-- Zathras in "War Without End, Part I"
"Trust Ivanova, trust yourself, anybody else: shoot them."
-- Ivanova in "No Surrender, No Retreat"
"We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not
fertile, and nothing can grow there. Too much, the best of us is washed
away."
-- G'Kar in "Objects in Motion"
"You don't follow an order because you know for sure it's gonna work
out. You do what you are told, because your CO has the moral authority
that says you may not come back, but the cause is just, and fair, and
necessary."
-- Garibaldi in "Walkabout"
"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought,
wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible
things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now
I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the
universe."
-- Marcus in "A Late Delivery from Avalon"
"I will confess that I look forward to the day when we have cleansed
the universe of the Centauri and carved their bones into little flutes
for Narn children. It is a dream I have."
-- G'Kar in "Midnight on the Firing Line"
"No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of
arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need
for freedom. Against that power tyrants and dictators cannot stand. The
Centauri learned that lesson once. We will teach it to them again.
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free."
-- G'Kar in "The Long Twilight Struggle"
"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three
ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest."
-- G'Kar in "Survivors"
"The avalanche has already started; it is too late for the pebbles to
vote."
-- Kosh in "Believers"
"When I said my quarters were cold, I did not mean 'Oh, I think it is a
little chilly in here. Perhaps I'll throw a blanket on the bed.' No! I
said it was cold! As in, 'Oh look--my left arm has snapped off like an
icicle and shattered on the floor!'"
-- Londo in "The Illusion of Truth"
"I suppose there'll be a war now, hmm? All that running around and
shooting at one another. You would've thought sooner or later it would
go out of fashion."
-- Londo in "The Gathering"
"When others do a foolish thing, you should tell them it is a foolish
thing. They can still continue to do it, but at least the truth is
where it needs to be."
-- Dukhat in "In the Beginning"
"Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne
of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts."
-- Londo in "Ceremonies of Light and Dark"
"I would rather have someone who opposed me out of an honest belief in
the rightness of his cause than someone who is always on my side
because it was expected and required."
-- Delenn in "Rumors, Bargains, and Lies"
"No one here is exactly what he appears."
-- G'Kar in "Mind War"
"There comes a time when you look into the mirror and realize that what
you see is all that you will ever be. Then you accept it, or you kill
yourself. Or you stop looking into mirrors."
-- Londo in "Chrysalis"
"Prophecy is a guess that comes true. When it doesn't, it's a metaphor."
-- Vir in "The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari"
"The truth points to itself."
-- Kosh in "In the Beginning"
"Nothing's the same anymore."
-- Sinclair in "Chrysalis"
"These are my three wives: Pestilence, Famine, and Death."
-- Londo in "The War Prayer"
"Understanding is a three-edged sword: Your side, their side, and the
truth."
-- Sheridan in "Interludes and Examinations"
"A stroke of the brush does not guarantee art from the bristles."
-- Kosh in "TKO"
"I am a Ranger! We walk in the dark places no others will enter, we
stand on the bridge and no one may pass; we live for the one, we die
for the one!"
-- Marcus in "Grey 17 is Missing"
"Sometimes, peace is another word for surrender."
-- Ivanova in "The Fall of Night"
"You cannot build an empire based on slaughter and deceit!"
-- Urza Jaddo in "Knives"
"Be careful of shadows. They move when you're not looking."
-- Sinclair in "The Geometry of Shadows"
"What the hell is your problem?"
"For starters, I don't know you, therefore I don't trust you."
"The world is full of people you don't know."
"I worry about that all the time."
-- Lochley and Garabaldi in "No Compromises"
"You cannot harm one who has been touched by Vorlons."
--Lyta in "Wheel of Fire"
Star Trek: producing quality viewing
until 2000.
"They say time is the fire in which we burn."
"It's like a predator. It's stalking you. You can try to outrun it with
doctors, medicines, new technologies, but in the end, time's going to
catch up with you and make the kill."
-- Soran in "Generations"
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back
home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's
wondrous--with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But
it's not for the timid."
-- Q in "Q Who?"
"You'd shoot a man in the back?"
"It's the safest way, isn't it?"
-- Odo & Garak in "Call to Arms"
"It's the truth! I'm as human as any of you! What have I got to do to
prove it?"
"Die."
"Oh, very funny, Worf. Eat any good books lately?"
-- Q and Worf in "Déjà Q"
"I object to you. I object to intelligence without reason. I object to
power without constructive purpose."
-- Spock in "The Squire of Gothos"
"Of all the stories you told me, which ones were true?"
"My dear doctor, all of them were true."
"What about the lies?"
"Especially the lies."
-- Bashir & Garak in "The Wire"
"Procreation does not require changing how you smell, or writing bad
poetry, or sacrificing various plants to serve as tokens of affection."
-- Odo in "The Forsaken"
"It has always been easier to destroy than to create."
-- Spock in "The Wrath of Kahn"
[Following a retelling of "The Boy who Cried Wolf"]
"If you lie all the time, no one is going to believe you, even when
you're telling the truth."
"Are you sure that's the point, Doctor?'
"Of course. What else could it be?"
"That you should never tell the same lie twice."
-- Bashir & Garak in "Improbable Cause"
"Laws change depending on who's making them, Commander, but justice is
justice."
-- Odo in "A Man Alone"
"The truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination."
-- Garak in "Improbable Cause"
"Live now, make now always the most precious time. Now will never come
again."
-- Picard in "The Inner Light"
"Normal is what everyone else is and you are not."
-- Soran in "Generations"