Favorite Quotes and Lyrics
This is a collection of random quotes and lyrics that I find
funny, deep, poignant, whatever. Which is which should be
fairly self-evident...
"I like the winter," Finny assured me for the fourth time, as we came
back from chapel that morning.
"Well, it doesn't like you." Wooden plank walks had been placed on many of
the school paths for better footing, but there were icy patches everywhere on
them. A crutch misplaced and he could be thrown down upon the frozen wooden
planking, or into the ice-encrusted snow. [...]
"The winter loves me," he retorted, and then, disliking the whimsical
sound of that, added, "I mean as much as you can say a season can love. What
I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you
back, in whatver way it has to love." I didn't think that this was true, my
seventeen years of experience had shown this to be much more false than true,
but it was like every other thought and belief of Finny's: it should have been
true. So I didn't argue.
---
Until now, in spite of everything, I had welcomed each new day as though
it were a new life, where all past failures and problems were erased, and all
future possibilities and joys open and available, to be achieved probably
before night fell again. Now, in this winter of snow and crutches with
Phineas, I began to know that each morning reasserted the problems of the night
before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn't make
yourself over between dawn and dusk.
John Knowles, A Separate Peace
A shade of sorrow passed over Taliesin's face. "There are those," he said
gently, "who must first learn loss, despair, and grief. Of all paths to
wisdom, this is the cruelest and longest. Are you one who must follow such a
way? This even I cannot know. If you are, take heart nonetheless. Those who
reach the end do more than gain wisdom. As rough wool becomes cloth, and
crude clay a vessel, so do they change and fashion wisdom for others, and what
they give back is greater than what they won."
Lloyd Alexander, The High King
The chronicle of Prydain is a fantasy. Such things never happen in
real life. Or do they? Most of us are called on to perform tasks
far beyond what we believe we can do. Our capabilities seldom match
our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent,
we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.
Lloyd Alexander, Author's Note, The Book of Three
Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.
Ellis "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman)
The Shawshank Redemption
It was like having it this close to your dreams, and then watching them
brush past you, like a stranger in the crowd. At the time you don't
think much of it. You know, we just don't recognize the most
significant moments of our lives while they're happening. Back then
I thought "Well, there'll be other days." I didn't realize that
that was the only day.
Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham (Burt Lancaster)
Field of Dreams
Back at the line to Babych... long shot!
Potvin had trouble with it... Adams shoots, scores! Greg Adams!
Greg Adams! Adams gets the winner, 14 seconds into the 2nd
overtime, and the Vancouver Canucks are going
to the Stanley Cup final!
Jim Robson, 1994 (from the signature of Ian Disend
<idisend@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca>)
Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to
feel comfortable? That's when you know you've found somebody really
special -- when you can just shut the fuck up for a minute, comfortably
share a silence.
Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman)
Pulp Fiction
Ninety per cent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrassment.
Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
The New Pledge: I pledge allegiance to, and wrap myself in, the flag of the
United States Against Anything Un-American, and to the Republicans for which
it stands, two nations, under Jesus, rich against poor, with curtailed liberty
and justice for all except blacks, homosexuals, women who want abortions,
Communists, welfare queens, tree huggers, feminazis, illegal immigrants,
children of illegal immigrants, and you if you don't watch your step.
Matt Groening
Geeks are good at using resources efficiently. Most people can only count
to 10 on their fingers. I can count to 1023.
Patri Friedman <patri@izzy.com>
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to
favor freedom and yet avoid confrontation, are people who want crops
without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and
lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its waters.
Frederick Douglass, in a letter to Gerrit Smith, March 30, 1849
(The following quote is much more powerful in the context of the
whole novel.)
Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just
outside the beltway near Connecticut Avenue. A decidedly odd-looking
building, it had grandeur with its marble columns and gilt spires. The
beliefs represented by that impressive structure seemed curious to
Ryan, a lifelong Catholic, but the people who held them were honest and
hardworking, and fiercely loyal to their country, because they believed
in what America stood for. And that was what it all came down to,
wasn't it? Either you stand for something, or you don't, Ryan
told himself. Any jackass could be against things, like a petulant
child claiming to hate an untasted vegetable.
Tom Clancy, Clear and Present Danger
If a romantic is out of touch with reality, then thank God for
romantics, because it is their dreams, undaunted by the limitations of
reality, which shape a future beyond imagination.
(source unknown)
If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.
(source unknown, but heard on the radio in Chicago)
Obsessions are like fire and water: good servants, but bad masters.
Attributed to "an old folk saying" by Wilson on Home
Improvement
(the episode where Tim crushes Jill's Nomad with a
3-ton beam)
I cannot agree that either the length of time a majority has held
its convictions, or the passions with which it defends them, can
withdraw legislation from this Court's scrutiny.
Supreme Court Justice Blackmun, dissenting in
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986)
If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches,
that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not
progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn't even begun to
pull out the knife.
El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X)
People ask, "Are you afraid this will be damaging to your career?" I mean,
I played Shylock for two years and tried to rip a man's beating heart out
of his living body. It didn't damage my career at all. I've played
Leontes, who tried to kill one of his children. It didn't damage my
career. I don't understand how people could think that playing a
homosexual could be harmful. That's not an actor. That's somebody who's
more concerned about his own image.
Patrick Stewart, quoted in the Entertainment Weekly
special Star Trek issue (Fall 1994).
Whatever happens, I'll leave it all to chance
Another heartache, another failed romance
On and on, does anybody know what we are living for?
Queen,
"The Show Must Go On"
Innuendo (1991)
With the first link, a chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first
thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably. [...]
The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we are all damaged.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart)
Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Drumhead"
When the [last] scene is finally finished and the camera clicks off for
good at about 12:30 a.m., [Patrick Stewart] stands on a scaffold above
the bleary-eyed production crew and delivers a surprise farewell
address.
"I've been cleaning out my trailer and I found a piece of paper," he
tells the crowd in his inimitable "Make it so" brogue. "It's a quote
that I read at [the late Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's]
memorial, and it suddenly seemed really appropriate.
"`To walk, we have to lean forward,'" he reads from the writing of
British psychotherapist Robin Skynner, "`lose our balance, and begin to
fall. We let go constantly of the previous stability, falling all the
time, trusting that we will find a succession of new stabilities with
each step.... Our experience of the past, and of those dear to us, is
not lost at all, but remains richly within us.'"
Entertainment Weekly (5/6/94) in an article
about the final episode of Star Trek: The Next
Generation.
Outlawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing
sex in order to win the war against AIDS.
Ronald Siegel, Intoxication
Laws that are so widely disobeyed and which cannot be enforced only promote
disrespect for the law in general.
New Jersey State Assemblyman Stephen Mikulak, concerning the 55 MPH speed limit
Claming that sex ed. leads to irresponsible sex is like claiming that
driver education leads to car accidents.
Laurie Mann <lmann@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu>
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
William James
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom
that is in it -- and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits
down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid
again -- and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold
one anymore.
Mark Twain
The next two items are courtesy of the
Bartlett's
Familiar Quotations server.
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of
chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course
others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
Patrick Henry, Speech in the Virginia Convention, 1765.
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey
to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man
is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once
the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
John Philpot Curran, Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790.
The remaining quotes come from Johnny Zed, a cyberpunkish
novel by John Gregory Betancourt. It's set in a not-too-distant
future in which Congress is corrupt, the populace is indifferent, and
the entire Mid-Atlantic region is an urban cesspool known as "The
Sprawl."
The novel traces the activities of an insurgent group known as The
Disruption which attempts to restore dignity and liberty to the
citizens of the U.S. Each chapter has a little quote preceding it,
ostensibly from the teachings of the Disruption. I don't agree
with all of them but they raise some intriguing ideas.
The subtle, truly debilitating manifestations of a degenerate society
are twofold. First, the ruling class no longer cares about the
proletariat. Second, the proletariat no longer cares.
Once upon a time the government of the United States of America was
based on the doctrine of revolution: that, when people are
dissatisfied with the way things are run, they have the inalienable
right to rebel and form a new, more perfect government. Abraham
Lincoln's decision to fight the Confederate States (the question of
human rights aside [and that was never truly the question]) can be
seen as the first great blow to our society.
The French had a saying -- noblesse obligé -- to
describe the duties of
the ruling class. However, the British were the only ones to
understand the concept, to understand the responsibilities that come
with power and position. That is why the King of England is still
alive. If the ruling class fails in its duty to society -- as it did
in France, and Russia, and China -- is it any surprise that the people
rise up to set things aright once more? Here, in America, Congress
has forgotten its duty. I leave the conclusion to you.
What is the price of discontent? Revolution. And what is the price
of revolution? Discontent. It's a vicious circle.
If you must win no matter what, cheat.
Machiavelli said the ends justify the means. Of course he was wrong.
When you believe in something strongly enough, you don't have to
justify your actions to anyone.
There is a difference between murdering a man and killing a man.
Murder involves a deliberate act for personal vengeance. Killing is
an act which has no personal feeling, as with an army fighting a war.
There can be pointless killing. But it is still not murder.
There is no such thing as a perfect government. The closest to
perfection Man has yet come is a benign dictatorship. Government by
committee has always led to corruption, and always will.
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This page last modified on Tue Feb 19 11:04:42 2002