Great Quotes II: Source and Context are Key

[Flying Pig]

On the set of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', when, wanting to see stray horses wandering through the battle, director Michael Curtiz told the wranglers to "Bring on the empty horses". When Niven and Flynn cracked up laughing, he responded with:"You people, you think I know f nothing; I tell you: I know f all"

I've heard the same about a Quebecois NCO with Anglophone Canadian soldiers, intending to mean 'I know blooming everything'.

 

[Borachio]

Well, just so. It's using the f word as a general intensifier. Which it normally is. (Though generally as the gerund, or do I mean the present participle? I probably do.)

The fact that there's the idiom "f all," meaning nothing, is what causes it to back-fire, with hilarious results.

 

[madviking]

A prerequisite of not coming across like a dickhead when you say stuff like that is that you actually not be a dickhead , so Kayne fails.

Kanye is a dickhead, but he's at least a talented dickhead.

Whatever makes “Hey Ya” good, [“I Gotta Feeling”] is the evil side of that. It is the anti-matter to the matter of “Hey Ya.”

http://www.avclub.com/articles/eugene-mirman-why-the-black-eyed-peas-i-gotta-feel,92678/

 

[Phrossack]

"Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?"
-Paul Shepard

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

... "the apparent evil is often the shortest way to the good, the unpleasant indispensable to prepare the pleasant, misfortune the condition of obtaining a more perfect happiness."
- Sri Aurobindo

 

[Borachio]

Use TAO to help rule people.

This world has no need for weapons,
Which soon turn on themselves.
Where armies camp, nettles grow;
After each war, years of famine.

The most fruitful outcome
Does not depend on force,
But succeeds without arrogance
Without hostility
Without pride
Without resistance
Without violence.

If these things prosper and grow old,
This is called not-TAO.
Not-TAO soon ends.

Lao Tzu

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

A couple from Mr. Einstein

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

The Yogin sees God in all things, not only in all beings but in all events. He is the flood, He is the earthquake, He is Death that leads to a higher life, He is Pain that prepares us for a higher bliss. This is a thing that cannot be argued; it has to be seen. And sight is only possible to the calm heart and the unperturbed understanding.
- Sri Aurobindo

 

[Mouthwash]

"A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation." -Friedrich Nietzsche

 

[Borachio]

T'ien
Chih tao
Heaven's TAO
Is a stretched bow,
Pulling down the top,
Pulling up the bottom.
If it's too much, cut.
If it's not enough,
Add on to it:
Heaven's
TAO.

The Human Route
Is not like this,
Depriving the poor,
Offering to the rich.

Who has a surplus
And still offers it to the world?
Only those with TAO.

Therefore the Sage
Acts and expects nothing,
Accomplishes and does not linger,
Has no desire to seem worthy.

Lao Tzu

 

[imperialman]

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Capt Picard

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

"Show me a movement without a force of uncompromising idealism working somewhere in its sum of energies and you have shown me a movement which is doomed to failure and abortion or to petty and inconsiderable results."

"There is a difference however between the fanatic of an idea and the true idealist: the former is simply the materialistic, executive man possessed by the idea of another, not himself the possessor of it; he is haunted in his will and driven by the force of the idea, not really illumined by its light."

-Sri Aurobindo

 

[Borachio]

Trying to control the world?
I see you won't succeed.

The world is a spiritual vessel
And cannot be controlled.

Those who control, fail.
Those who grasp, lose.

Some go forth, some are led,
Some weep, some blow flutes,
Some become strong, some superfluous,
Some oppress, some are destroyed.

Therefore the Sage
Casts off extremes,
Casts off excess,
Casts off extravagance.

Lao Tzu

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

"Virtue finds and chooses the mean"
-partial translation of II.1107a4, Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

lets keep this thread rollin':

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
-Abraham Lincoln

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
-Abraham Lincoln

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
-Abraham Lincoln

 

[Borachio]

The softest thing in the world
Rides roughshod over the strongest.

No-thing enters no-space.

This teaches me the benefit of no-action.

Teaching without words,
Benefit without action -

Few in this world can attain this.

Lao Tzu

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Optimism is the secret of self-reliance. Self-relience is the secret of dynamic power. A dynamic power is the secret of an immediate succes.

The difference between an optimist and a pessimist is this: an optimist sees the sun behind the blackest clouds; a pessimist sees the brightest noon as midnight.

- Sri Chinmoy

 

[Borachio]

Without going out the door,
Know the world.
Without peeping through the window,
See heaven's TAO.

The further you travel,
The less you know.

This is why the Sage
Knows without budging,
Identifies without looking,
Does without trying.

Lao Tzu

 

[madviking]

"This marks the beginning of that very happy time when politics will recede into the background, when politics will be discussed less often and at shorter length, and engineers and agronomists will do most of the talking."

- Lenin

 

[ParkCungHee]

Relevant because I was just reading this:

The expressions “learned socialist,” “scientific socialism,” etc., which continuously appear in the speeches and writings of the followers of Lassalle and Marx, prove that the pseudo-People’s State will be nothing but a despotic control of the populace by a new and not at all numerous aristocracy of real and pseudo-scientists. The “uneducated” people will be totally relieved of the cares of administration, and will be treated as a regimented herd. A beautiful liberation, indeed!...Mr. Marx and his friends – who will then liberate them in their own way. They will concentrate all administrative power in their own strong hands, because the ignorant people are in need of a strong guardianship; and they will create a central state bank, which will also control all the commerce, industry, agriculture, and even science. The mass of the people will be divided into two armies, the agricultural and the industrial, under the direct command of the state engineers, who will constitute the new privileged political-scientific class.