Great Quotes II: Source and Context are Key

[Optical]

The best quote of the Tintin movie:

"Failed. There are plenty of others willing to call you a failure. A fool. A loser. A hopeless souse. Don't you ever say it of yourself. You send out the wrong signal, that is what people pick up. Don't you understand? You care about something, you fight for it. You hit a wall, you push through it. There's something you need to know about failure, Tintin. You can never let it defeat you."
-Captain Haddock

This bit of dialogue is also pretty good:

Tintin: We've got bad news. We've only got one bullet.
Captain Haddock: What's the good news?
Tintin: We've got ONE bullet

 

[Josu]

The best contribution I can do is keep quiet

Mariano Rajoy, Spanish Prime minister while he was candidate

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

"If"
Some Spartan

Spoiler :

As a response to Philip II of Macedon's threat: ""You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army on your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people and raze your city."

 

[Dachs]

"If"
Some Spartan

Spoiler :

As a response to Philip II of Macedon's threat: ""You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army on your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people and raze your city."

The part of the story that they never tell is that when Alexander was off wiping the crap out of the Iranians, the Spartans went to war with Antipatros, his viceroy, and about as mediocre a Makedonian as you could get at leading armies back then. (And definitely not the equal of Philippos II.)

And Antipatros wiped them the hell out.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Well, they may have been a bunch of wusses, but they did excel in snarky rebuttals.

 

[Dachs]

I believe the term is "laconic"

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

That's it! I couldn't produce it when I needed it

 

[Flying Pig]

The part of the story that they never tell is that when Alexander was off wiping the crap out of the Iranians, the Spartans went to war with Antipatros, his viceroy, and about as mediocre a Makedonian as you could get at leading armies back then. (And definitely not the equal of Philippos II.)

And Antipatros wiped them the hell out.

As I recall at that time the population of 'proper' Spartans under arms was only a few thousand, so I think they're excused.

 

[madviking]

On a similar vane...

"Keep out of my light."

Spoiler :

 

[Civciv5]

"Peace as a goal is an ideal which will not be contested by any government or nation, not even the most belligerent. "-Aung San Suu Kyi
"Power without a nation's confidence is nothing"-Catherine II
"If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all"-Elizabeth I
"If I ever become a Saint — I surely be one of "darkness". I will continually be absent from Heaven — to light the light of those in darkness on earth."-Mother Teresa
"Only justice brings peace"-Avatar Kyoshi
"To achieve greatness,everything is expendable"-Wu Zetian

 

[Dachs]

As I recall at that time the population of 'proper' Spartans under arms was only a few thousand, so I think they're excused.

That's all it ever was. The restriction was their own damn fault, too.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Indeed. Very few abortion debates amongst Spartans.

 

[Oruc]

"You cannot turn the clock back!’ is the commonest taunt of our day. It always emerges as the clinching argument that any modernist offers any traditionalist when the question is: ‘What shall we do now?’ But it is not really an argument. It is a taunt intended to discredit the traditionalist by stigmatizing him a traitor to an idea of progress that is assumed as utterly valid and generally accepted. The aim is, furthermore, to poison the traditionalist’s own mind and disturb his self-confidence by the insinuation that he is a laggard in the world’s great procession. His faith in an established good is made to seem nostalgic devotion to a mere phantom of the buried past. His opposition to the new—no matter how ill-advised, inartistic, destructive, or immoral that new may be—is defined as a quixotic defiance of the Inevitable. To use a term invented by Arnold J. Toynbee, he is an Archaist. By definition, he is therefore doomed."

"...He wishes to imply that his design, and his only, is perfectly in step with some scientific master cloak of cause and effect that determines the progress of human events. This implication has no basis in reality, since the Futurist actually means to break off all connection with the historical process of cause and effect and to substitute for it an imagined, ideal process of quasi-scientific future development which is nothing more than a sociological version of Darwinism.”

Some guy in the 1920s

 

[Dachs]

Pretty sure that's a '50s quote from Donald Davidson.

 

[Oruc]

Nope!

 

[Ajidica]

I don't know, I got it from someone else in quote thread on an image board he was adamant it was the 20's

 

[Oruc]

Nope!

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

"And out of Zion shall come forth the law, and the Word of the LORD in Jerusalem: Nation shall not raise sword against nation, and they shall not learn war anymore, for the Mouth of the LORD hath spoken."

-- David 2:2

​

 

[Dachs]

I don't know, I got it from someone else in quote thread on an image board he was adamant it was the 20's

Well, it looks pretty much exactly like what Davidson's main beef with Toynbee was, and Davidson was born in 1917. I suppose it's not totally out of the question that he articulated that quote when he was ten-odd years old, but it does seem rather unlikely, no?

This page here seems to indicate that it is a '50s quote.

 

[classical_hero]

Indeed. Very few abortion debates amongst Spartans.

Nor infanticide, either.