Quotes, famous or not...

"When I am weaker than you, I ask you for my freedom because that is according to your principles. When I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles."

~ Frank Herbert

 

I think this quote had more influence on me than almost any other.

From the "Knowledge or Certainty", an episode from the 1973 BBC series "The Ascent of Man", transcribed by Evan Hunt:

The Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science--or outside of it--we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined, within a certain tolerance. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance. And I propose that name in two senses: First, in the engineering sense--science has progressed, step by step, the most successful enterprise in the ascent of man, because it has understood that the exchange of information between man and nature, and man and man, can only take place with a certain tolerance.

But second, I also use the word, passionately, about the real world. All knowledge--all information between human beings--can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in *any* form of thought that aspires to dogma. It's a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that scientists were refining, to the most exquisite precision, the Principle of Tolerance--and turning their backs on the fact that all around them, tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair.

The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930s it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it, the ascent of man, against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.

It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false: tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. *This* is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality--this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge or error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we *can* know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."

We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to *touch people*.

 

"Face your fears, or they will climb over your back."

"Long pretense creates a reality"

 

Both of mine above are from Dune as well. That series had lots of great quotes.

 

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth.
I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. ~

Neil Armstrong

 

Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing - but none of them serious.

Alan Minter

 

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.

Bill Shankly

 

"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."


"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men 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."


"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."


-Thomas Jefferson

 

"Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit"

"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic."

"The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth."

"All proofs inevitably lead to propositions which have no proof. All things are known because we want to believe in them."

"Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right"

 

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible."

"Many things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that you become totally ignorant."

"The difference between sentiment and sentimentality is easy to see. When you avoid killing somebody's pet on the glazeway, that's sentiment. If you swerve to avoid the pet and that causes you to kill pedestrians, that is sentimentality."

 

"Only a fool believes one political party or ideology is right all the time."
F.L. Shelton

 

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

 

"Leftists are the only organism on the planet....from single cell amoeba to high order mammals...who purposely seek to limit access to natural resources that facilitate their existence"

Me

 

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."~ Pogo

 

"You had best un(*)(*)(*)(*) yourself or I will unscrew your head and (*)(*)(*)(*) down your neck!" - Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (Full Metal Jacket)

 

"I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings, and I HATE people like that!"

~ Tom Lehrer

 

"If you sink anymore of our War Ships we will send Vulcan Bombers against your largest Airfields and use Tactical Nuclear Weapons" (Margret Thatcher)

 

"...What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify is a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure...." - Thomas Jefferson: Letter to Colonel Smith, Nov. 13, 1787.

 

I think this quote embodies one of the most fundamentally beautiful conceptions of humanity and human nature.

"The line of the ocean cut the sky. The ocean mounted as the city descended. She passed the pinnacles of the bank buildings. She passed the crowns of courthouses. She rose above spires of churches.

Then there was only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Roark."

-The Fountainhead

 

"You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity."~RAH

i think this applies to NYC right now.

 

"Speaking of which you know, will give us all a little peace and quiet"

Directed at my loudmouthed, leftie talking point parroting brother over last Thanksgiving's dinner.

Iced our relationship for a number of months....

 

Ah, Thanksgiving politics...

 

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899

Although this quote has been attributed to Mr. Duell, it has been speculated that this is an urban legend and/or just a joke from back then. Nonetheless, a funny quote.

 

"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." - Elwood Blues

 

"Can you keep your sub-conscious out of my way please?" - Space Drift