Favorite quotes

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'Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.' Mephistopheles/ Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

NY Senator Chauncey Depew, at a dinner, once made a cruel crack to [President] William Howard Taft about Taft's large abdomen, " 'I hope, if it is a girl, Mr. Taft will name it for his charming wife.' " To which Taft responded, 'if it is a girl, I shall, of course, name it for my lovely helpmate of many years. And if it is a boy, I shall claim the father's prerogative and name it Junior. But if, as I suspect, it is only a bag of wind, I shall name it Chauncey Depew.’"

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." -- Tom Waits

new beginnings are always disguised as painful endings. - lao tzu

This is an excerpt from a commencement speech given by by Wellesley High teacher David McCullough on 2012/06/06.

... In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another -- which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality -- we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point -- and we're happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that's the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole. No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it... now it's "So what does this get me?" As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans. ... If you've learned anything in your years here, I hope it's that education should be for, rather than material advantage, the exhilaration of learning. You've learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the chief element of happiness. I also hope you've learned enough to recognize how little you know... how little you know now... at the moment... for today is just the beginning. It's where you go from here that matters.

“...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile

-Shakespeare

Life is like a game in which God shuffles the cards, the devil deals them and we have to play the trumps. - yugoslav saying

Only just stumbled upon this quote and it sat me on my arse.

The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself. Eric Hoffer

^^ that one's a keeper!

A few quotes that hold relevance to me;

" A lie told often enough, becomes truth." - Vladmir Lenin

"As long as you hate, there will be people to hate." - George Harrison

"My soul has drowned in the tears I cannot cry." - Kai Hansen

"their real god is money, jesus just drives the armored car and his hat is made in china."

Thanks Blabby

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one. Charles Mackay

"Remember, when your life isn't going the way you want it to, that your life is somebody else's fairy tale." [Erik Rune Medhus]

Go after Excellence; Success will follow you

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."-- Benito Mussolini