Great Quotes II: Source and Context are Key

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Please don't make communism the new Poland/Ron Paul/Greece/American Civil War.

Anyway...

"The police are anxious to speak to anyone who saw the crime, ladies with large breasts, or just anyone who likes policemen."

-Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Red Indian in Theatre"

Reminds me of this:


Link to video.

 

[Princeps]

"An army of deer led by a lion is more fearsome than an army of lions led by a deer."

eh, I don't know.

 

[Dachs]

eh, I don't know.

I don't much like it, either. It's one of those truisms that has an unfortunate tendency to be neither right nor wrong, just a red herring.

Anyway, a quote.

"The city of Dalinghe, its communications cut off, is sorely beset. There is no way we cannot take it by force, no way that we cannot occupy it forever. Yet in uttering these words we realize that the wise and brave warriors of all the area east of Shanhaiguan are gathered together within these walls. Heaven will thus protect you so that all the generals assembled there can help us. For, if we were to kill you, what benefit would there be for us? How could that compare with our joining together with the generals assembled there to plan collectively the great enterprise [da shi]? That is why we again and again use persuasion to win you over, hoping to influence you who are not yet willing to serve together with us. That is why we utter these reassuring words."
-Hung Taiji, han of the Later Jin, excerpt from letter to Zu Dashou, commander of Ming forces in Dalinghe, 31 October 1631

"No terms except immediate and unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately on your works."
-BG Ulysses S. Grant to CS BG Simon Bolivar Buckner, siege of Fort Donelson, 16 February 1862

 

[Phrossack]

"A sagittis Hungarorum, libera nos Domine!"

-"God save us from the arrows of the Hungarians!", a 10th-century prayer

 

[danjuno]

“Our freedom must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not help us they must fall; we will free ourselves by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community - the men of no property.” - Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1798

 

[ReindeerThistle]

"The world belongs to the energetic."
-- RW Emerson, as quoted in The Marine Corps NCO Manual

btw, Dachs and Princeps have obviously never been lions in command of a deer army.

I see a Disney movie in the Works...

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

“Our freedom must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not help us they must fall; we will free ourselves by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community - the men of no property.” - Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1798

Great man! His quote sounds like a counterpart to this one, from Citizen Kane:

The trouble is, you don't realize you're talking to two people. As Charles Foster Kane, who has 82,364 shares of Public Transit Preferred. You see, I do have a general idea of my holdings. I sympathize with you. Charles Foster Kane is a scoundrel. His paper should be run out of town. A committee should be formed to boycott him. You may, if you can form such a committee, put me down for a contribution of $1,000 dollars. On the other hand, I am the publisher of the Inquirer! As such, it's my duty - and I'll let you in on a little secret, it's also my pleasure - to see to it that decent, hard-working people in this community aren't robbed blind by a pack of money-mad pirates just because - they haven't anybody to look after their interests. I'll let you in on another little secret, Mr. Thatcher: I think I'm the man to do it. I have money and property, if I don't look after the interests of the underprivileged, then maybe somebody else will, maybe somebody without any money or property, and that would be too bad!

 

[Borachio]

Holly: Have you ever seen any of your victims?
Harry: You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. [gestures to people far below] Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays.

The Third Man

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Great quote -- followed by the "****oo clock" quote. If you know that on, please post.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

LIME: You're just a little mixed up about things. In general. Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't; why should we? They talk about the 'people', and the 'Proletariat', I talk about the suckers and the mugs; it's the same thing. They have their five-year plan, and so have I.

MARTINS: You used to believe in God.

LIME: I still do believe in God, old man; I believe in God and Mercy and all that... The dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here... poor devils.
...
LIME: Don't be so gloomy. After all, it's not that awful. Remember what the fellow said: in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed; but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The ****oo clock. So long, Holly.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Thanks, Thorvald!

 

[danjuno]

Great man! His quote sounds like a counterpart to this one, from Citizen Kane:

Irish Republicanism has certainly produced some larger-than-life characters. I took an interest in Irish history over the last year. I have a book of Irish political history called "For The Cause of Liberty" by Terry Golway. It goes all the way from Brian Boru to the Good Friday Agreement. It does talk about life as English/Ulster Scots Protestants as well as the Catholic Irish, which makes for a more open-minded view of Republicanism. To know that two of the greatest Republican leaders were Protestants should be a great surprise to most people nowadays.

"Let us drop talking and get on with our work." -Michael Collins

 

[Phrossack]

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."

-Matt Groening, "Life in Hell"

 

[ReindeerThistle]

"I've had more women by accident than he's had on purpose." LBJ on JFK.

 

[Borachio]

JFK had some chronic bone disease, didn't he? I should imagine it cramped his style a bit. Though I hear he managed well enough.

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.

Stalin

 

[Phrossack]

That Stalin quote reminds me of a joke about a certain medieval political system. I will refrain from repeating it for fear of being brutally murdered by WHers.

“Be as decent as you can. Don't believe without evidence. Treat things divine with marked respect — don't have anything to do with them. Do not trust humanity without collateral security; it will play you some scurvy trick. Remember that it hurts no one to be treated as an enemy entitled to respect until he shall prove himself a friend worthy of affection. Cultivate a taste for distasteful truths. And, finally, most important of all, endeavor to see things as they are, not as they ought to be.”

-Ambrose Bierce

 

[danjuno]

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

[Borachio]

To read too many books is harmful.

Mao Zedong

 

[Mouthwash]

Wow, you like this thread, don't you?

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Where there is no delight, latent or developed, there can be no existence; where there is no awareness self-absorbed or manifest, there can be no existence. Follow existence into utter & blind inertia, consciousness sits secret in that night; follow consciousness into the abyss of desolation, joy sits self-stunned in the mask of that misery.

.....