Great Quotes II: Source and Context are Key

[Perfection]

“I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.”

- Yohji Yamamoto

Yohji is just jelly

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

That might be from the Onion or something. Right?

I said, "This sounds like a satire", and sure enough...

 

[Traitorfish]

Pop-punk is for pudgy self-haters. Hardcore sucks worse than it did 10 years ago, which seemed impossible at the time. Punk is now Green Day. Indie rock is the new Ke$ha. Chillwave is for former swoop-hair kids who’ve aged out of their scene. Shoegaze is the new jazz music, meaning people only pretend to like it. Bands with earnest, gruff vocals are the new swoop-hairbands. Everything you like really truly sucks.

Do you know what all the sentences above have in common? Besides the fact that they’re true, I mean. Can’t guess? OK, here’s what links those ideas:

You shouldn’t care. You shouldn’t validate them by arguing. You should ignore them completely.

There’s only one thing worse in this whole world than a misguided nerd, and that’s an apologetic one. You like what you like. You should always be looking to expand your palate but, at the end of the day, you can’t force it.

If you’re into Saves The Day, you’re into it. There’s no need to put on airs or dress it up. And if you like ignorant mosh music, it’s just part of your DNA. You’ll probably always like it. Don’t hide your Hatebreed lyric tattoos. Maybe you still dye your hair colors not found in nature. Don’t hide your Mindless Self Indulgence tattoo. Or that ICP hatchetman logo on your ankle.

Here’s the thing. As lame as everything I listed at the beginning of this essay is, the stuff people believe to be cool is just as corny. Hardcore kids want to be indie rockers; indie rockers want to be house DJs. Someone put it in their heads that they should always be chasing cool. It’s all a crock. There is no “cool.” It just doesn’t exist. Chasing it makes you uncomfortable in your own skin and paints you as an insecure clown to the rest of the world.

I’m confident everything you like sucks. I know it. But there is not a reason in the world you should care about my opinion. There’s no reason you should value ANY person’s opinion over what your ears tell you. Never change for the guy at the record store, the geek in a popular band, or some faceless blog. Don’t bother defending your position. Just like what you like.

— Patrick Kindlon, Alternative Press

 

[Borachio]

^I like that.

And it doesn't just apply to taste in music either.

(If someone tells me once more that wearing socks and sandals is a fashion faux pas punishable by... I don't know what...I'll...I don't know what.)

(Not that I do wear socks and sandals, though. But if I wanted to, I would.)

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I'm reading the Eric Hobsbawm speech "Historian and Economists I," to the Cambridge Economics faculty, and it has some great burns on economists in it.

"I am neither a mathematician nor a philosopher, two occupations in which economists sometimes seek refuge when too hard pressed by the real world."

"Economists need to reintegrate history, and this cannot be done simply by transforming it into retrospective econometrics. Economists need this reintegration more than historians, because economics is an applied social science, as medicine is an applied natural science. Biologists who do not see curing illness as their main job are not doctors, even when associated with medical schools. Economists who are not primarily concerned, directly, or indirectly, with the operations of real economies which they transform, improve, or protect against deterioration, are better classed as a sub-species of philosophers or mathematicians, unless they choose to occupy the space left vacant in our secular society by the decline of theology."

 

[Hygro]

Both awesome quotes, neither burn economists at all if you read them as I do

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Both awesome quotes, neither burn economists at all if you read them as I do

Well they are burns, because he's saying them in person to economics professors at Cambridge. He's attacking their ignoring the political half of political economy, basically saying that they're either mathematicians (dealing with statistics or models) or philosophers (dealing with theory) and not economists if they ignore reality (the political implications of real-world applications of economics).

 

[Hygro]

Well they are burns, because he's saying them in person to economics professors at Cambridge. He's attacking their ignoring the political half of political economy, basically saying that they're either mathematicians (dealing with statistics or models) or philosophers (dealing with theory) and not economists if they ignore reality (the political implications of real-world applications of economics).

Perhaps the pain of knowing you are in the dismal science is not so strong- the idea that you aren't already a failed mathematician and pseudo philosopher when you're doing it right is quite heartening. I.E. that being a good economist is actually a thing, a discipline to be proud member of in of itself.

It would be easy to write off nearly the entire subject as many others have. Including that my "introductory modern theories of political economy" professor had.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

It would be difficult of him to do so and still be the Marxist that he was.

 

[Gucumatz]

A random childhood quote from my family:

"Wann schreit mals ins wald, manchmal schreit es/etwas zuruck"

Which roughly translates to:

"When you scream into the woods, sometimes it/something screams back"

I remember both the es/etwas, so included that there.

 

[Dachs]

A random childhood quote from my family:

"Wann schreit mals ins wald, manchmal schreit es/etwas zuruck"

Which roughly translates to:

"When you scream into the woods, sometimes it/something screams back"

I remember both the es/etwas, so included that there.

"[...] Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein."

 

[ReindeerThistle]

"[...] Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein."

"...And (to complete the "circle") when you look into the Abyss, the Abyss looks into you..."

 

[Borachio]

When I look into the abyss, I think "Oh my...that's a big abyss...heeeeeelllllllp!"

 

[ReindeerThistle]

When I look into the abyss, I think "Oh my...that's a big abyss...heeeeeelllllllp!"

"He jests at scars that never felt a wound." -- Mel Gibson Hamlet.

 

[Borachio]

Well, quite. But I have actually looked, you know.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

Wilfred Owen

 

[madviking]

"It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn't the only person in the world who though and felt such strange and awful things."

John Green

 

[Phrossack]

"Dear Sir, I am glad to hear that your studio audience disapproves of the last skit as strongly as I. As a naval officer I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism. It is well known that we now have the problem relatively under control, and that it is the RAF who now suffer the largest casualties in this area. And what do you think the Argylls ate in Aden. Arabs? Yours etc. Captain B.J. Smethwick in a white wine sauce with shallots, mushrooms and garlic."

-Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Lifeboat Sketch"

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

 

[ReindeerThistle]

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

I totally agree with that....

 

[Borachio]

I do not know whether there are gods; but there ought to be.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

Diogenes