Great Quotes II: Source and Context are Key

[Traitorfish]

Well, what group of nations purports to be the defenders of Peace, Justice and Democracy™?

Almost much all of 'em, far as I can tell. The only real exceptions are the cheerfully unrepentant monarchies like Saudi Arabia, and there's only a handful of them.

 

[Borachio]

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.

Leo Tolstoy

 

[Traitorfish]

Reminds me of Marx's famous quip, "the rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs". Funny how often those guys parallel each other, given that they're coming from such different starting-points.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

"The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living."

- Wendell Phillips

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”
― Mark Twain
“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
― G.K. Chesterton
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde
An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong.
Russell Baker
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Albert Einstein
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
Robert Frost

 

[Traitorfish]

And if there's anyone who's in a position to tell us how unnecessary formal education is, it's middle-class white men.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

And if there's anyone who's in a position to tell us how unnecessary formal education is, it's middle-class white men.

or woman:
“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

 

[Borachio]

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.

- Marx

Spoiler :

Groucho Marx

 

[KaiserElectric]

Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothing yet!

-First spoken line in The Jazz Singer

 

[Borachio]

Truly, sir, [I am] the better for my foes, and the worse for my friends.

[My friends] praise me - and make an ass of me. Now my foes tell me plainly, I am an ass; so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused.

- Shakespeare (12th Night)

 

[Borachio]

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

France Is Bacon.

 

[Gucumatz]

One of my favorite personal quotes that I feel fits most of us here at civ fanatics [Even if we aren't Historians]:

"Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them."

- Tolstoy

 

[bhsup]

"Milk drinker." - Unknown

 

[Dachs]

One of my favorite personal quotes that I feel fits most of us here at civ fanatics [Even if we aren't Historians]:

"Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them."

- Tolstoy

An interesting sentiment to be had from the man who tried to take humanity out of history.

 

[Borachio]

Curious.

I'd have said, taking the quote at face value, that Tolstoy was being decidedly negative about historians.

While "an interesting sentiment to be had from the man who tried to take humanity out of history" might be taken as observing some discrepancy between the quote and Tolstoy's general (negative) attitude.

But, maybe I make too much of this.

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The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

William James

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

"The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry."
-p. 10, Of Molecules and Men, Francis Crick

 

[Dachs]

Curious.

I'd have said, taking the quote at face value, that Tolstoy was being decidedly negative about historians.

While "an interesting sentiment to be had from the man who tried to take humanity out of history" might be taken as observing some discrepancy between the quote and Tolstoy's general (negative) attitude.

But, maybe I make too much of this.

In War and Peace, Tolstoy rather famously depicted history as a series of broad sweeps and long durations, in which individuals are caught up: they cannot dictate events, not from the lowliest private soldier up to Napoleon himself. Humanity at the mercy of impersonal historical forces, as it were. This has perhaps been over-systematized as the so-called Tolstovian view of history.

 

[classical_hero]

"The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry."
-p. 10, Of Molecules and Men, Francis Crick

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.
— Francis Crick
What Mad Pursuit (1990), 138.

 

[Borachio]

In War and Peace, Tolstoy rather famously depicted history as a series of broad sweeps and long durations, in which individuals are caught up: they cannot dictate events, not from the lowliest private soldier up to Napoleon himself. Humanity at the mercy of impersonal historical forces, as it were. This has perhaps been over-systematized as the so-called Tolstovian view of history.

It's an interesting point of view.

Certainly, the lowliest soldier doesn't dictate anything - though, collectively, soldiers do.

On the other hand, Napoleon's decisions certainly made a difference - except that without the lowliest soldiers his decisions would have been irrelevant.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

"Let me tastefish, while the safe is blowing!"
-James Bond, on cracking safes

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

In War and Peace, Tolstoy rather famously depicted history as a series of broad sweeps and long durations, in which individuals are caught up: they cannot dictate events, not from the lowliest private soldier up to Napoleon himself. Humanity at the mercy of impersonal historical forces, as it were. This has perhaps been over-systematized as the so-called Tolstovian view of history.

Interesting, since that is basically the point of Dr. Zhivago as well. And here I thought it was a unique Pasternak perspective.