Great Quotes III: Source and Context are Key

[Terxpahseyton]

"The legitimate criticism of the political actions of a government - be it ours or of the state of Israel - is fine. But if it is only used as a cloak for one's hatred against other people, hatred for Jewish people, then it is a misuse of our basic rights of freedom of opinion and assembly." - Angela Merkel

That is very true. And wise. And important.

And terribly obvious. Which is pretty much all Merkel ever said to anyone holding a microphone. To see her quoted in a quote thread is the most absurd thing that has happened to me since a while.
(I hope you don't take this personally - oh no, not you, you take it hard and personally Mrs. Merkel)

 

[cardgame]

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

-CS Lewis

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Mother issues?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

-CS Lewis

"Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

That is very true. And wise. And important.

And terribly obvious. Which is pretty much all Merkel ever said to anyone holding a microphone. To see her quoted in a quote thread is the most absurd thing that has happened to me since a while.
(I hope you don't take this personally - oh no, not you, you take it hard and personally Mrs. Merkel)

My frustration stems from those political pundits that deliberately conflate a) with b) to shut out serious discourse.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

If you must be frustrated I think you should be frustrated about those pundits being relevant to anyone other than the guy who has to explain to them that they are sadly too dumb to be put in a position where people can hear them who are not in shouting distance and that they hence will never appear on a program ever again unless they do something worthy of being televised which does not involve the movement of their lips.

 

[Paul in Saudi]

Maybe this goes here. From the Philadelphia paper today is this lead sentence;

Less than a week after being hit in the face by a fastball, Giancarlo Stanton looks like he was hit in the face by a baseball.

-=Linky=-

 

[SeekTruthFromFacts]

"In spite of all this, the English middle class, especially the manufacturing class, which is enriched by the poverty of the workers, persists in ignoring this poverty. This class, feeling itself the mighty representative class of the nation, is ashamed to lay the sore spot of England bare before the eyes of the world; will not confess, even to itself, that the workers are in distress, because it, the property-holding, manufacturing class, must bear the moral responsibility for this distress. ...."

- Friedrich Engels, from the introduction to "The Conditions of the Working Class in England

Presumably Mr Engels felt able to write this because he was an upper class manufacturer, and could look down on the middle class with contempt.

It's an unfortunate sentence in a basically good book.

 

[bhsup]

"History began on July 4th, 1776. Everything before that was a mistake." - Ron Swanson, man hero.

 

[Arakhor]

"History began on July 4th, 1776. Everything before that was a mistake." - Ron Swanson, man hero.

One imagines that should go in the Dumb Quotes thread instead.

 

[Hygro]

Nope. Great quotes

 

[bhsup]

One imagines that should go in the Dumb Quotes thread instead.

I can understand how someone with your 20 may feel that way, but...

Nope. Great quotes

Hygro recognizes a great American when he sees one. One man's dumb quoter is another man's freedom fighter.

But hey, okay, if you want a more traditional "great quote" from an American, I'll humoUr you. "The trite saying that honesty is the best policy has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy. The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy." - Robert E. Lee

 

[Arakhor]

My 20? I'm assuming that's an aphorism with which I'm not familiar.

 

[bhsup]

I guess you never had any use for a CB radio in your vehicle.

"10-20" (more often simply "20")
Denotes location, as in identifying one's location ("My 20 is on Main Street and First"), asking the receiver what their current location is ("What's your 20?"), or inquiring about the location of a third person ("Ok, people, I need a 20 on Little Timmy and fast").

 

[Arakhor]

Never having driven myself before, I most certainly have had no use for anything in my vehicle.

 

[Borachio]

I guess you never had any use for a CB radio in your vehicle.

'Grief!

Does CB radio still exist? I rather thought that mobile phones did for it permanently.

I never liked the thing, anyway. But I remember listening in to people's private conversations when I was a truck driver (on other people's sets - well I wasn't going to splash any of my own cash out on such a thing, was I?). Apparently you can tell when someone's listening; and after a bit of shouting at me, they'd switch channels.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Presumably Mr Engels felt able to write this because he was an upper class manufacturer, and could look down on the middle class with contempt.

It's an unfortunate sentence in a basically good book.

"Middle class" in Engels' 1844 usage refers to the capitalist manufacturing class, not to white-collar bureaucrats and the like. The "upper class" in their perspective was still the land-owning gentry. Only after the 1850s can one begin to speak of a capitalist "upper class" but then only in measured words.

 

[Oruc]

"Listen to Germans and Spaniards explaining themselves: they will make the same old story resound in your ears: tragic, tragedy... It's their way to make us understand their calamities and triumphs."

"For three centuries, Spain zealously kept the secret of inefficacy; without having stolen it, discovering it by their own means, thorugh introspection, that secret is now known by all of the West."

"One after another, I've adored and loathed many peoples, but I never came to reject the Spaniard I wanted to be."

"A civilization, at the end of its road, starts shrivelling, gets together with mediocre nations, wallowing in failure, making of fate its only problem. Spain is the perfect model of this obsession."

–Emil M. Cioran, Syllogismes de l'amertume 1952

 

[Lohrenswald]

I found this quote by Pascal somewhat "poetic", though I don't like this english translation too much

"The human being is only a reed, the most feeble in nature; but this is a thinking reed. It isn't necessary for the entire universe to arm itself in order to crush him; a whiff of vapor, a taste of water, suffices to kill him. But when the universe crushes him, the human being becomes still more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and the advantage that the universe has over him. The universe, it does not have a clue."

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Why is it noble to know that one is being killed? I find it mostly just terrifying. If there was a button in my head which would make me forget that I die while keeping all my other mental capacities intact - like as soon as my thoughts try to wander there they are just randomly redirected or something - than I would press it right now.