Great Quotes III: Source and Context are Key

Status
Not open for further replies.
"It would be comforting to believe that those arguments, which once helped lead to tragedy, are returning merely as farce. But they’re not. Withdrawing from the nuclear deal could easily put the United States or Israel, or both, on the path to war with Iran. As long as John Bolton and Benjamin Netanyahu retain their current influence, another Middle Eastern war is entirely possible. Where it might lead is anyone’s guess. The greatest current threat to American national security is not Iran, North Korea, or ISIS. It’s amnesia. And Americans need a strategy to fight it."
— Peter Beinart, "Iran Hawks Are the New Iraq Hawks"
 
William Blake said:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

A Robin Redbreast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.
A Dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus’d upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fiber from the Brain does tear.

He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar.
The Beggar’s Dog and Widow’s Cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.
The Gnat that sings his Summer song
Poison gets from Slander’s tongue.
The poison of the Snake and Newt
Is the sweat of Envy’s Foot.

A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for Joy and Woe;
And when this we rightly know
Thro’ the World we safely go.

Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are Born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight.
Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.

Some english poems, despite the faults of the language, have such great power. This one, and also the lone and level sands one, and that other one about the vast image out of Spiritus Mundi :)

"
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fiber from the Brain does tear.
"
Very moving.
 
"Death is coming for me as surely as the Chudley Cannons will finish bottom of this year's Quidditch League."

-Albus Dumbledore
 
"By the way, I am actually a socialist. Just not the kind that shifts resources from most productive to least productive, pretending to do good, while actually causing harm. True socialism seeks greatest good for all."

-Elon Musk, Twitter, 16.06.2018

"Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech. Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism. It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class."

- Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848.
 
"The heroic Captain Müller [master of the raiding cruiser SMS Emden] was praised to the skies. When he came to London [...] he would be the most celebrated of men. Why? Because he had performed heroic deeds out of loyalty and a sense of duty to the Kaiser? Oh, no! Because he had outstanding sporting achievements to his name! Perhaps nowhere has the complete commercialization of war appeared as clearly as in this unconscious conflation of war and sport. For sport was born from the innermost soul of the merchant, who can never ever see the point of war."

-Werner Sombart, Händler und Helden: Patriotische Besinnungen (Merchants and Heroes: Patriotic Reflections), 1915
Appearing in Jörn Leonhard, Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box), 2018, tr. Patrick Camiller

---

Not a great quote in the sense of revealing something about the English national character, if such a thing ever existed (although I believe that if it does, it has something to do with "top lads" and "absolute units"), but a great quote in revealing some other things.
 
I don't even understand this but hot damn is he quotable.

"If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed."

- Nietzsche
 
I don't even understand this but hot damn is he quotable.

His writing style is referred to as "aphoristic" in the translation of Genealogy of Morality that I have, so it's intentional!

BTW, that quote is basically just a long-winded way of saying "live in the moment, don't be trippin"
 
Re this specific quote, Nietzsche seems to be saying that if you actually identify anything at all (eg a sense, or a thought etc) as real/important/having other similar positive meaning given to it, then it should follow that the prospect of finding (more/elaborated) meaning is real, because there cannot be just one instance of meaning isolated and all would actually be the foundation of that one idenified meaningful experience.

Which is a long-winded way of saying something along the lines of "if you have found some meaning, you have more than enough to dig into".

Nietzsche was never deep philosophy; he was locked in a fight against german religiousness, germans, and religiousness. He is mostly a writer of sociology, and literary critique theory. Important and intelligent, but not deep philosophy.

Eg, for a philosophical reply to that quote: there isn't anything to tell one that any identified such meaning is to be identified due to the object the meaning is attributed to, or due to the rest of the tied objects (as in the quote), instead of due to the human thinker having to identify meaning in set conditions, much like in parallel one would identify a triangle if set conditions are met. Only that in the case of the triangle those conditions are largely conscious (and fully conscious if just the general description) while in the case of a sense of meaning they are neither conscious nor potentially to be made significantly conscious past some degree.
 
Last edited:
there isn't anything to tell one that any identified such meaning is not identified not due to the object the meaning is attributed to, nor the rest of the tied objects (as in the quote), but because the human thinker identifies meaning in set conditions, much like in parallel one would identify a triangle if set conditions are met. Only that in the case of the triangle those conditions are largely conscious (and fully conscious if just the general description) while in the case of a sense of meaning they are neither conscious nor potentially to be made significantly conscious past some degree.

...that clears everything up. Thanks Kyr. :twitch:
 
"I am convinced that the camps - all of them - are a negative school; you can’t even spend an hour in one without being depraved. The camps never gave, and never could give, anyone anything positive. The camps act by depraving everyone, prisoners and free-contract workers alike."

- Varlam Shalamov, on the gulag
 
"He serves his party best who serves his country best" - Rutherford B. Hayes.

I miss when Republican leadership was more concerned about doing what was right for the country than what was best for them personally. Not that there weren't corrupt Republicans then, of course - much of Hayes' presidency was battling the spoils system championed by the then-still-powerful Republican Conkling - but at least the guy at the top was a force for good.
 
"He serves his party best who serves his country best" - Rutherford B. Hayes.

I miss when Republican leadership was more concerned about doing what was right for the country than what was best for them personally. Not that there weren't corrupt Republicans then, of course - much of Hayes' presidency was battling the spoils system championed by the then-still-powerful Republican Conkling - but at least the guy at the top was a force for good.
I mean, Hayes' presidency began with one of the most morally despicable cross-party bargains in American history, but at least it was a bipartisan bargain?
 
"I am convinced that the camps - all of them - are a negative school; you can’t even spend an hour in one without being depraved. The camps never gave, and never could give, anyone anything positive. The camps act by depraving everyone, prisoners and free-contract workers alike."

- Varlam Shalamov, on the gulag

...er... how could anyone think that internment camps are a great idea?

(so I also fail to see how this is a great quote. I mean... duh.)
 
...er... how could anyone think that internment camps are a great idea?

(so I also fail to see how this is a great quote. I mean... duh.)

Re-education through labor.
Maybe we should give it a try again without camps and make Jeff Bezos work in a warehouse for a couple of years.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom