Great Quotes II: Source and Context are Key

[Borachio]

A difficult read. But worth the effort, imo.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

the infinite defines itself in the finite, the finite conceives itself in the infinite. Each is necessary to the other's complete joy of being.

All this is infinity grasped by the finite and the finite lived by the infinite.

The infinite pauses always in the finite; the finite arrives always in the infinite. This is the wheel that circles forever through time and eternity.

- s.a.-

 

[Borachio]

“If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!”

― Idries Shah

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

"枪杆子里面出政权"
("Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.")
-Chapter 5, Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong

 

[Traitorfish]

"A king should be tried not for the crimes of his administration, but for that of having been king, for nothing in the world can legitimize this usurpation, and whatever illusion, whatever conventions royalty surrounds itself in, it is an eternal crime against which every man has the right to rise up and arm himself. It is one of those criminal acts which even the blindness of an entire people cannot justify. One cannot reign innocently: the madness of this is too obvious. Every king is a rebel and a usurper."

-Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

"A king should be tried not for the crimes of his administration, but for that of having been king, for nothing in the world can legitimize this usurpation, and whatever illusion, whatever conventions royalty surrounds itself in, it is an eternal crime against which every man has the right to rise up and arm himself. It is one of those criminal acts which even the blindness of an entire people cannot justify. One cannot reign innocently: the madness of this is too obvious. Every king is a rebel and a usurper."

-Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

Been reading about the French Revolution recently? A lot of your recent contributions have been FR figures.

 

[Traitorfish]

Not the French Revolution particularly, no, but some stuff about early 19th century British radicalism, which these guys tend to figure into. (Been looking at some E.P.Thompson essays I got hold of a while back and am finally getting round to.)

 

[AdamCrock]

"If anything can go wrong, it will" Edwards Air Force Base 1949 A.D - Where the Murphy's Laws were born - and they are damn accurate ^^

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

"How then is the housing question to be solved? In present-day society, it is solved as every other social question is solved: by the gradual economic equalisation of supply and demand, a solution which ever anew begets the very same question, and is consequently no solution at all. How a social revolution would solve this question depends not only on the circumstances then existing, but is also connected with much more ar-reachgin questions, one of the most important of which is the abolution of the antagonism between town and country. s it is not our business to make any utopian systems for the organization of the society of the future, it would be more than idle to go into this. But this much at least is certain, that in the large towns there are already enough dwelling houses, if these were made rational use of, to immediately relieve any real "housing shortage." This, of course, can only be done by the expropriation of the present owners and by quartering in their houses workers who are homeless or are excessively overcrowded in their present quarters; and as soon as the proletariat has conquered political power, such a measure, demanded in the interests of public welfare, would be as easy to carry through as other exproprations and quarterings by the state of today." - Friedrich Engels, The Housing Question

 

[Borachio]

"A king should be tried not for the crimes of his administration, but for that of having been king, for nothing in the world can legitimize this usurpation, and whatever illusion, whatever conventions royalty surrounds itself in, it is an eternal crime against which every man has the right to rise up and arm himself. It is one of those criminal acts which even the blindness of an entire people cannot justify. One cannot reign innocently: the madness of this is too obvious. Every king is a rebel and a usurper."

-Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

Ah, yes. But the place is full of kings. It's kings all the way down, imo.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Ah, yes. But the place is full of kings. It's kings all the way down, imo.

His point being: people should refuse to be kings.

You could say that we are potential murderers all the way down, too, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a very strong social deterrent for becoming a murderer. Likewise for people who fill their potential to become a king, and the wrong against society which that act itself commits as well.

 

[Dachs]

"Well, Grant, we've had the Devil's own day, haven't we?"
"Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."
-BG William T. Sherman and MG Ulysses S. Grant, midnight, 06APR1862 (end of the first day of the Battle of Shiloh)

 

[Borachio]

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Mark Twain

 

[bhsup]

"Then, sir, we will give them the bayonet!" - Stonewall Jackson, Battle of Manassas

 

[Dachs]

"It's a lie! Pour it into them, boys!"
-MAJ John D. Barry (CS), 18th North Carolina Infantry Regiment, upon being informed that approaching horsemen were part of LTG Thomas J. Jackson's staff; approx. 2130 hours, 02MAY1863, near Dowdall's Tavern, VA

N.B.: It wasn't a lie.

 

[Borachio]

Lord Uxbridge: "By God, sir, I've lost my leg!"

Duke of Wellington: "By God, sir, so you have!"

Waterloo. 18th June

After receiving his wound, Lord Uxbridge was taken to his headquarters in the village of Waterloo, a house owned by a certain M. Hyacinthe Joseph-Marie Paris, who was still in residence at 214, Chaussée de Bruxelles.[7] There, the remains of his leg were removed by surgeons, principally James Powell of the Ordnance Medical Department, and James Callander of the 7th Hussars, without antiseptic or anaesthetics. The Prince Regent created him Marquess of Anglesey and made him a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath five days after the battle.

Lord Uxbridge, true to his nature, remained stoical and composed. According to his aide-de-camp, Thomas Wildman, during the amputation Paget smiled and said, "I have had a pretty long run. I have been a beau these forty-seven years, and it would not be fair to cut the young men out any longer." According to another anecdote his only comment through the dreadful procedure was, "The knives appear somewhat blunt."

According to the account of Sir Hussey Vivian recorded by Henry Curling in 1847:
Just after the Surgeon had taken off the Marquis of Anglesey's leg, Sir Hussey Vivian came into the cottage where the operation was performed. "Ah, Vivian!" said the wounded noble, "I want you to do me a favour. Some of my friends here seem to think I might have kept that leg on. Just go and cast your eye upon it, and tell me what you think." "I went, accordingly", said Sir Hussey, "and, taking up the lacerated limb, carefully examined it, and so far as I could tell, it was completely spoiled for work. A rusty grape-shot had gone through and shattered the bones all to pieces. I therefore returned to the Marquis and told him he could set his mind quite at rest, as his leg, in my opinion, was better off than on."[1]

A further anecdote reports him saying "Who would not lose a leg for such a victory?"[8] The saw used to amputate his leg is held by the National Army Museum.[9] Uxbridge was offered an annual pension of £1,200 in compensation for the loss of his leg, but refused.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation. To the pragmatical intellect which takes its stand upon the ever-changing present, ideals are not truths, not realities, they are at most potentialities of future truth and only become real when they are visible in the external fact as work of force accomplished. But to the mind which is able to draw back from the flux of force in the material universe, to the consciousness which is not imprisoned in its own workings or carried along in their flood but is able to envelop, hold and comprehend them, to the soul that is not merely the subject and instrument of the world-force but can reflect something of that Master-Consciousness which controls and uses it, the ideal present to its inner vision is a greater reality than the changing fact obvious to its outer senses. The Idea is not a reflection of the external fact which it so much exceeds; rather the fact is only a partial reflection of the Idea which has created it.​

Sri Aurobindo

 

[Flying Pig]

"If anything can go wrong, it will" Edwards Air Force Base 1949 A.D - Where the Murphy's Laws were born - and they are damn accurate ^^

Further:

2) That which cannot go wrong, will still go wrong
3) That which can be broken, will be broken
4) That which cannot be broken, will be misplaced

 

[Traitorfish]

“Obscene is not the picture of a naked woman who exposes her pubic hair but that of a fully clad general who exposes his medals rewarded in a war of aggression; obscene is not the ritual of the Hippies but the declaration of a high dignitary of the Church that war is necessary for peace.”

-Herbert Marcuse

 

[Borachio]

5) That which can be lost....

...now where's it gone? I had it a minute ago. I'm sure I put it safely over there. Have you had it? Tsk. Can't put anything down round here without it getting nicked!