Great Quotes III: Source and Context are Key

[Borachio]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union

Marxist–Leninist atheism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and elimination of religion. Within about a year of the revolution, the state expropriated all church property, including the churches themselves, and in the period from 1922 to 1926, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were killed. Many more were persecuted.

n 1929, with the onset of the Cultural Revolution in the Soviet Union and an upsurge of radical militancy in the Party and Komsomol, a powerful "hard line" in favor of mass closing of churches and arrests of priests became dominant and evidently won Stalin's approval. Secret "hard line" instructions were issued to local party organizations, but not published. When the anti-religious drive inflamed the anger of the rural population, not to mention that of the Pope and other Western church spokesmen, the regime was able to back off from a policy that it had never publicly endorsed anyway.

I wouldn't say the anti-religious movement was a total success; it plainly wasn't. But the sentiment was obvious.

 

[Traitorfish]

Marxist–Leninist atheism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and elimination of religion.

That's an interesting construction. Atheism, the lack of belief in god, advocating public policy. Amazing place, this Russia, where abstract concepts can achieve sentience and start telling people what to do!

 

[gay_Aleks]

In Soviet Russia...

 

[bhsup]

... atheism converts YOU!

 

[ReindeerThistle]

In Soviet Russia...

... atheism converts YOU!

FTW!

 

[Borachio]

That's an interesting construction. Atheism, the lack of belief in god, advocating public policy. Amazing place, this Russia, where abstract concepts can achieve sentience and start telling people what to do!

There's a word missing, I think. Marxist-Leninist atheism [theorists], maybe?

I expect you knew this.

Ellipsis is a recognized [thing].

 

[Traitorfish]

There's nothing in the text to suggest it.

 

[Borachio]

Nothing apart from the fact that abstractions clearly don't advocate public policy. At least, I've never heard of them doing so.

You're picking on a text that might well have been better written and trying to make something of it, I think.

 

[Kyriakos]

"Kilpatrick was murdered inside a theatre. The British police never managed to find the killer, but historians argued that this might not have to be taken as some tarnish on its reputation, given that it may have been the British police that killed him" J.L. Borges, "Theme of the Hero and the Traitor"

 

[gay_Aleks]

I lived, I saw, I got murdered by a stupid British Policeman? Doesn't sound very inspiring.

 

[Borachio]

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. "What! No soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

Samuel Foote

 

[gay_Aleks]

How did he figure that the bear was a she?

 

[cardgame]

.wat.

 

[Borachio]

How did he figure that the bear was a she?

Don't know for sure, but using the standard method, I suppose. How hard can it be?

It is very much a "wat?" quote, altogether. I like it.

 

[Kyriakos]

I thought it would have been by Ionesco.

 

[Borachio]

In case you thought Foote had lost his senses completely:

At one particular lecture, Foote extemporized a piece of nonsense prose [the bit including the she-bear] to test Macklin's assertion that he could memorise any text at a single reading.

 

[Lohrenswald]

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. "What! No soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

Who's "he"? Before "he" dies, there's only a woman and a she-bear presented in the story.

 

[Borachio]

It's a piece of nonsense, designed, extemporaneously, to be hard to memorize.

Nevertheless, the first mention of "she" must refer to a character not previously referenced (in the back story somewhere?), so why couldn't the first mention of "he" do likewise?

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Blood thought he knew the native mind;
He said you must be firm, but kind.
A mutiny resulted.
I shall never forget the way
That Blood stood upon this awful day
Preserved us all from death.
He stood upon a little mound
Cast his lethargic eyes around,
And said beneath his breath:
'Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.'

- Hilaire Belloc, "The Modern Traveller", 1898

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

No, China's not the party to laugh at here. They're not the ones trading nuclear material and advanced technology for animals too lazy to even reproduce successfully.
"So there's your next plot for a Bond film: sinister Chinese zoologists pimping bears for nukes."
-Alexander Pan, The 6 Most Amazing Things Ever Traded For Pointless Crap