Your favourite (serious) quotes

Alkthash

I was what you are now and I am what you will become.

 

gentlemanorcus

"At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."

-Italian Proverb

"Life is pain, princess. Anyone who says differently is selling something."

-The Man in Black, The Princess Bride

A single death is a tregdy. A million is a statistic."

-Erich Mariah Remarque

"The graves are full of indispensible men."

- Charles de Gualle

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

-Erasmus

BlackHumor

Just found this recently:

"If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event - and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed."

 

-Nietzche

 

Also big fan of the voiceover over the ending of Crimes and Misdemeanors:

 

captainbrass

"Being and Time is a formidably difficult book - unless it is utter nonsense, in which case it is laughably easy."

Roger Scruton, on Heidegger, in The Oxford History of Western Philosophy. Best one-sentence book review ever.

BlackHumor

Unfortunately I can't find the source for this quote:

"People speak about women as if they could be understood like business or architecture, using general principles and comprehensive studies. They seem to think that the median desire and attitude of every human female can be discovered and those results will allow for an understanding of each individual. This seems just as ridiculous as calculating the median properties of every stone on earth, and then treating each boulder and pebble as if it were a three pound slab of quartz. I imagine the people who generalize women have just as many problems as they would have with the stones."

 

LouieW

gentlemanorcus,

"At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."

-Italian Proverb

I actually found that pretty insightful for some reason, so thanks for sharing it. I wonder if you could reverse that and say they both come from the same box too.

"Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt"-supposedly Abraham Lincoln, but I have seen other attributions as well.

MillerCross

I actually found that pretty insightful for some reason, so thanks for sharing it. I wonder if you could reverse that and say they both come from the same box too.

I think that Alkthash's quote covers that, if you remember its origin. (Granted, it doesn't refer to pawns and kings, but to men and corpses, but still)

Alkthash

If I remember right it was a pretty common Roman epitaph, because even in death Romans are fatalistic jerks. It showed up a lot in Renaissance, usually in the form of a skeleton telling off a person in authority or a healthy virgin, because artists sure love stark dichotomies sometimes. 

 

---

I think that Alkthash's quote covers that

Okay who do I see about changing my nick on the forum, since everybody knows who I am anyways?

Raydere

"Sure, the hours are long and she’s under a lot of stress most of the time, but she loves the challenge she gets by overcoming it. To her, nothing beats that feeling of satisfaction.“
--Tomohisa Kaname, Puella Magi Madoka Magica

MillerCross

Okay who do I see about changing my nick on the forum, since everybody knows who I am anyways?

any mod ever should help with that.

MillerCross

"I wanted controversy, arguments, fights, discussions, people in anger waving fists in my face saying, 'how dare you?'".

Patrick McGoohan, confirming why he's the best writer.

LouieW

Juan,

I think that Alkthash's quote covers that, if you remember its origin. (Granted, it doesn't refer to pawns and kings, but to men and corpses, but still)

I guess I was thinking more about how both those at the bottom and the top of the social ladder come from incredibly fragile beginnings (i.e., a dependent baby in a womb/infant), but I definitely agree that Crake's quote is pretty similar.

JHM

Maybe I'm cliché by this point, but I'm going to have to quote my favourite author here:

"...I’ve conceived of stories that were just too disturbing for me to write. If you can write something, then it’s only so disturbing. Anything truly disturbing can’t even be written. Even if it could, no one could stand to read it. And writing is essentially a means of entertainment for both the writer and the reader. I don’t care who the writer is—literature is entertainment or it is nothing."—Thomas Ligotti

Alkthash

So he's like a horror hipster now. "I could totally write the stories in my head, but they are like too disturbing for you worthless useless sacks of shit to handle"

captainbrass

I think he means "I wouldn't write really disturbing stories even if I could, because they aren't entertaining." That's the reverse of hipsterism.

Alkthash

Wait, why does Mr. everything is fundamentally useless give a shit about entertaining folks? Besides the royalty check from his publishing company I guess. 

MillerCross

I think both sentiments are not as mutually exclusive as you seem to think they are.

I love to work in the comics medium -- I really do -- and I've realised that a total contempt for the intelligence of the audience is the key to success. You know that Doom Force thing I did recently for D.C.? -- the pisstake of X-Force, right? Well, eighty percent of the people who sent letters of comment in on the story actually took the thing seriously! They didn't see the joke! It's horrific. Tom Peyer phoned me up and read page after page of these insane letters. That was the turning point. That is the moment that I became a super-villain. -- Grant Morrison

I seriously love this man.

JHM

^^^ Sort of. The point is that there is a difference between what is "disturbing" in an entertaining way and things that are truly disturbing, which are basically impossible to write because you find yourself too disturbed to even sketch them out, and even if you did you wouldn't want to read them. Or think about them.

^^ What did Ligotti ever do to you?

^ True. Also, great quote. I love Grant Morrison.

Alkthash

Mostly from all the times you've rambled about him he sounds like a total jackass. You have only yourself to blame for this contempt Myrm. 

JHM

I'm not Myrmidon. I'm JHM. Completely different poster.

 

P.S. If you think that I'm some kind of sock-puppet for Myrmidon, I'd like you to go and seek out some of my earlier posts. I haven't posted in a while, so you might have forgotten me, or not joined until after I semi-left, but still, we're not the same person. By a long shot.

Kraken

"We're so familiar with written language that we sometimes forget how outlandish a concept it must have seemed to our ancestors. Writing allowed people to copy and transfer their thoughts and their tribal codes of conduct to others, even unto generations they themselves would not live to personally instruct, affect or control. The words themselves must have seemed alive and immortal and as "holy" as ghosts. Written law was thus a way of mastering time and influencing the future, a weapon greater than fire and steel, I hope you'll agree. When read, the written word made the head buzz and ring and fill up with voices and commands from nowhere, as if God Himself had come thundering down through the symbols, off the page and into the room, fertilising and impregnating the mind with his Ghostly, unmistakable presence."

Grant Morrison is weirded out by language.

JHM

^ Makes me want to listen to The Pop Group.

Kraken

"Writing comics? Still the best job in the world. I sit around all day making shit up and see it illustrated, in 99% of cases, exactly as I imagined it, if not better. I've been doing this a long time now, and I'm going to do it until I die. Which probably won't be long, given the constant insane deadline pressure. But fuck it. Anything worth doing takes work. Some people do question if it's worth it, given that the industry makes no friends and takes no prisoners and is not kind to people without the chops or the commitment or a thick skin. You know what? I've got forty books out there that some people wear on their fucking skin, and I didn't manage that by arsing around on the internet all day. That's right. I managed it AS WELL AS arsing around on the internet all day. I have powers."

I want Warren Ellis' powers.

thenamelesssamurai

"What those old Greeks, whom one must credit with a little knowledge of philosophy, took to be the task of a whole lifetime, doubt  not being a skill one acquires in days and weeks; what the old veteran warrior achieved after keeping the balance of doubt in the face of all inveiglements, fearlessly rejecting of sense and thought, incorruptibly defying self anxieties and the wheedling of sympathies - that is where nowadays everyone begins"

- Soren Kierkegaard.

Flyboy

This. 

What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?

The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealthand the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms in not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. 

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

AttObl

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded. "

-Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

"Information, the first principle of warfare, must form the foundation of all your efforts. Know, of course, thine enemy. But in knowing him do not forget above all to know thyself. The commander who embraces this totality of battle shall win even with inferior force. "

- Spartan Battle Manual, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

"Every war is the result of a difference of opinion. Maybe the biggest questions can only be answered by the greatest of conflicts."

- JC Denton, Deus Ex.

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

- H.P. Lovecraft.

"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."

- Joseph Stalin.

"History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been."

- Joseph Stalin.

Whale

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?

 

Joseph Stalin.

 

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

Commissioner Pravin Lal Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

Malkavian

We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be. They are a powerful living idea - a meme, to use the terminology of Richard Dawkins that has propagated itself from paper universes into actuality, with unknown consequences. The Bomb, too, was only an idea that someone hammered into being.

But the superheroes showed me how to overcome the Bomb. Superhero stories woke me up to my own potential. They gave me the basis of a code of ethics I still live by. They inspired my creativity, brought me money, and made it possible for me to turn what I love doing into a career. They helped me grasp and understand the geometry of higher dimensions and alerted me to the fact that everything is real, especially our fictions. By offering role models whose heroism and transcendent qualities would once have been haloed and clothed in floaty robes, they nurtured in me a sense of cosmic and ineffable that the turgid, dogmatically stupid “dad” religions could never match. I had no need for faith. My gods were real, made of paper and light, and they rolled up into my pocket like a superstring dimension.

-Grant Morrison

Kraken

Maybe when I grow older I'll say to myself: "Hey yeah, remember that thing that Grant Morrison said? I agree with him on every personal level, for those words resonate in my heart and spirit."

Perhaps. But not now, for I still have life left to live.