So... yes, your favourite quotes. Could be anything... philosopher, artist, politician, the guy down the street.
Quote from: "The Statue of Liberty""Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door. "
Quote from: "Desmond Tutu"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
Quote from: "Nelson Mandela""No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."
Quote from: "Martin Luther King Jr.""Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."
Quote from: "H. Jackson Brown Jr."Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have."
Quote from: "Khalil Gilbran"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."
"If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember."
The following is my favorite, because it is what really got me THINKING about my beliefs at the time. It is what essentially led me to Agnosticism. Thank Epicurus! =D>
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
? Epicurus
Off the top of my head:
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments. There are consequences. - Robert Ingersoll
I always want to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been specific. - Lily Tomlin
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. - Oscar Wilde
Quote from: "Charles de Gaulle"Only peril can bring the French together. One can't impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 different kinds of cheese.
I don't necessarily agree with this one, but I think the guy was alot smarter than I was...
Quote from: "Ghandi"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
Quote from: "Lao Tzu""In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it."
"Thirty spokes share the hub of a wheel;
yet it is its center that makes it useful.
You can mould clay into a vessel;
yet, it is its emptiness that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows from the walls of a house;
but the ultimate use of the house
will depend on that part where nothing exists.
Therefore, something is shaped into what is;
but its usefulness comes from what is not."
Not so much a quote but a 10 min video with more amazing quotes than I care to write. If ya got 10 minutes I highly recommend watching it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcO4TnrskE0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcO4TnrskE0)
Quote from: "From the film Jacob's Ladder (1990) url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099871/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099871/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1[/url]"]
Louis: If you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth.
There is something about this quote that appeals to me.
I think of this quote not in terms of dying but about letting go and moving on from crappy situations.
Sometimes the assholes we encounter in life help us overcome our inertia and make changes.
I liked the Louis character in that film, everyone should have a Louis in their life. :)
"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike; founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth."
- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Short
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."-Benjamin Franklin
"Priests and conjurors are of the same trade." Thomas Paine
"The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity.... Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism." -- The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in a sermon preached in October, 1831
"With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured--especially in other people."
--Edward O. Wilson, "Consilience: the unity of knowledge"
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment to begin improving the world." -- Anne Frank
Frank
If our species never questioned social norms our species never would have left the caves. Me
Quote from: "Brian37"If our species never questioned social norms our species never would have left the caves. Me
Doubtful, the caves aren't a very life-sustaining area. Humanity would have been forced to leave the caves to find food and water, which basic needs tend to over-ride any sort of philosophical or cultural reasoning.
Also human's probably didn't begin in caves but sought refuge in them, meaning they had already "left" the caves because they weren't native to them anyways...
"Religion offers an idealized, however
incorrect, explanation for existence. Freedom
from ignorance is freedom from being
controlled by the powers seeking to repress
the truth." -Justin McClelland
(I wrote this - Check it out in my book entitled "I Don't Want to Die")
Quote from: "W.C. Fields"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance then baffle them with bullshit.
This is quote can pretty much describe the entirety of human history and the human condition.
Quote from: "Shiranu"Quote from: "Brian37"If our species never questioned social norms our species never would have left the caves. Me
Doubtful, the caves aren't a very life-sustaining area. Humanity would have been forced to leave the caves to find food and water, which basic needs tend to over-ride any sort of philosophical or cultural reasoning.
Also human's probably didn't begin in caves but sought refuge in them, meaning they had already "left" the caves because they weren't native to them anyways...
Um you might want to look up the word "Metaphor". People do go around calling our first homo sapien humans "CAVEMEN!"
The sentence is simply saying humans progressed, not that they literally lived in caves.
Quote from: "Brian37"Quote from: "Shiranu"Quote from: "Brian37"If our species never questioned social norms our species never would have left the caves. Me
Doubtful, the caves aren't a very life-sustaining area. Humanity would have been forced to leave the caves to find food and water, which basic needs tend to over-ride any sort of philosophical or cultural reasoning.
Also human's probably didn't begin in caves but sought refuge in them, meaning they had already "left" the caves because they weren't native to them anyways...
Um you might want to look up the word "Metaphor". People do go around calling our first homo sapien humans "CAVEMEN!"
The sentence is simply saying humans progressed, not that they literally lived in caves.
It was a joke :.
The below quotes are all from Robert M Sapolsky's Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers:
When its two-thirty on those [sleepless] mornings, I always have a brain tumor. These are very useful for that sort of terror, because you can attribute every conceivable nonspecific symptom to a brain tumor and justify your panic. Perhaps you do, too; or maybe you lie there thinking that you have cancer, or an ulcer, or that you've just had a stroke. Even though I don't know you, I feel confident in predicting that you don't lie there thinking, "I just know it; I have leprosy." True?
Independent replication of results is essential in science. Years into a chase, a scientist triumphs and publishes the structure of a new hormone or brain chemical. Two weeks later the other guy comes forward. He has every incentive on earth to prove that the first guy was wrong. Instead, he is forced to say. "I hate that son of a bitch, but I have to admit he's right. We get the identical structure." That is how you know that your evidence is really solid, from independent conformation by a hostile competitor
To put exercise in perspective, imagine this: sit with a group of hunter-gatherers from the African grasslands and explain to them that in our world we have so much food and so much free time that some of us run 26 miles in a day, simply for the sheer pleasure of it. They are likely to say, "Are you crazy? That's stressful." Throughout hominid history, if you're running 26 miles in a day, you're either very intent on eating someone or someone's very intent on eating you.
[on the Amish]This is relatively benign gibberish, and history buffs may even feel comforted by those among us who live the belief system of medieval peasants.
I, for example, am resoundingly mediocre at soccer, but nothing keeps me from my twice-weekly game. Invariably there comes a moment when I manage to gum up someone more adept that I; I'm panting and heaving and pleased, and there's still plenty more time to play and a breeze blows and I suddenly feel dizzy with gratitude for my animal existence.
[on other primates suffering depression and other mental illnesses] It would seem relatively straightforward to pull together some sound psychotherapeutic advice for these unhappy beasts. But in reality, it's hopeless. Baboons and macaques get distracted during therapy sessions, habitually pulling books off the shelves, for example; they don't know the days of the week and they constantly miss appointments; they eat the plants on the waiting room, and so on.
If you want to improve health and quality of life, and decrease the stress, for the average person in a society, you do so by spending money on public goods—better public transit, safer streets, cleaner water, better public schools, universal health care. The bigger the income inequality is in a society, the greater the financial distance between the wealthy and the average. The bigger the distance between the wealthy and the average, the less benefit the wealthy will feel from expenditures on the public good. Instead, they would derive much more benefit by spending the same (taxed) money on their private good—a better chauffeur, a gated community, bottled water, private schools, private health insurance. As Evans writes, "The more unequal are incomes in a society, the more pronounced will be the disadvantages to its better-off members from public expenditure, and the more resources will those members have [available to them] to mount effective political opposition." He notes how this "secession of the wealthy" pushes toward "private affluence and public squalor." And more public squalor means more of the daily stressors and allostatic load that drives down health for everyone. For the wealthy, this is because of the costs of walling themselves off from the rest of society, and for the rest of society, this is because they have to live in it.
The problem is
You think
you have time.
The Buddha
Quote from: "Jmpty"The problem is
You think
you have time.
The Buddha
So the Buddha said that. So? Humans have said the same similar things prior to and outside Buddhism.
In a very basic sense it is not a stretch for a human to see things, plants, animals and other humans die and come to this same conclusion, even if they never became or become famous.
Buddhism has no monopoly on wisdom nor did it's founder have any clue about scientific evolution. "You think you have time" is a mundane observation humans have made all the time.
Quote from: "The Buddha"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Quote from: "The Buddha"Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
Quote from: "Siddartha, Hermann Hesse"When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal."
Quote from: "KMFDM 'Dogma'"So what do you want?
You want to be famous and rich and happy
But you're terrified you have nothing to offer this world
Nothing to say and no way to say it
But you can say it in three languages
You are more than the sum of what you consume
Desire is not an occupation
You are alternately thrilled and desperate
Sky high and fucked
Let's stop praying for someone
To save us and start saving ourselves
Let's stop this and start over
Let's go out
Let's keep going
Quote from: "Neitzsche"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
And finally one that just makes me laugh:
Quote from: "Cave Johnson"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!
I love Cave Johnson :D.
If it happens that the human race doesn't make it, then the fact that we were here once will not be altered, that once upon a time we peopled this astonishing blue planet, and wondered intelligently at everything about it and the other things who lived here with us on it, and that we celebrated the beauty of it in music and art, architecture, literature, and dance, and that there were times when we approached something godlike in our abilities and aspirations. We emerged out of depthless mystery, and back into mystery we returned, and in the end the mystery is all there is.? James Howard Kunstler
"Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes, the bear eats you."
The Big Lebowski
Quote from: "Brian37"If our species never questioned social norms our species never would have left the caves. Me
What kind of pompous ass quotes himself?
Quote from: "Brian37"So the Buddha said that. So? Humans have said the same similar things prior to and outside Buddhism.
One thing the Buddha said, which was unusual for the time, was to question everything - including the words of the Buddha. Most people back then demanded that their "wisdom" be accepted.
Quote from: "Jmpty"Quote from: "Brian37"If our species never questioned social norms our species never would have left the caves. Me
What kind of pompous ass quotes himself?
So? Oh I forgot, only famous people and rich people should be quoted. It's written in law somewhere isn't it? DAMN YOU GOT ME!
Pompus, you want pompous? "I don't give a fuck", how is that for Pompous?
Ok crybaby, I'll quote a famous person to placate your own insecurities, "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions" Thomas Jefferson.
If you quoted yourself and I liked your quote, I'd simply say "Thats a good one", not "You are being a showoff".
You are an idiot to think good ideas should not come from yourself? Do you lack self confidence in your life?
What you did here would be like staring at my fingertip while I point at the moon. How about a little dose of grow up.
Oh and just to piss you off more, here is another one I came up with.
"Any culture or religion that doesn't allow it's girls or women to make their own life choices deserves nothing but scorn and contempt" ME.
FUCK, there I go again.
QuoteIs a member of a contingent of individuals referring to themselves as "The Smurfs". Collectively we refer to ourselves as "Alpha Smurf". The group consists of 2 physicists (myself being one), 3 Psycho Smurfs, 1 Engineer Smurf, 1 Bio smurf, 2 Farmer Smurfs, 1 Doctor Smurf GP, 3 Electronic Smurfs (or hacker Smurfs), 1 Archeo Smurf, 30 individuals in all. There are no Smurfettes. The Smurfs originate from a sports/adventure club who collectively took up the study of a book referred to as "The Bible". We took on the likeness of Smurfs from the various field of life's endeavors we are in. We have found/encountered a new and different interpretation of the book and have taken on the undertaking to make that interpretation known to others/people.
:rollin: #-o :lol: Solitary
One of the lines in the long Bioshock Infinite ending... spoilers be ahead...
[spoil:19w0j196]
QuoteElizabeth: "We swim in different oceans but land on the same shore. It always starts with a lighthouse."
Booker: "I don't understand..."
Elizabeth: "We don't need to. It'll happen all the same."
Booker: "Why?"
Elizabeth: "Because it does. Because it has. Because it will."
[/spoil:19w0j196]