Great Quotes III: Source and Context are Key

[Mouthwash]

"The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses."

--Edward Abbey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

 

[Phrossack]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

 

[gay_Aleks]

finally, OT has moved past the point where words are necessary, thus limiting all communication to .gifs!

 

[Kozmos]

“It was astonishing how loudly one laughed at tales of gruesome things, of war’s brutality-I with the rest of them. I think at the bottom of it was a sense of the ironical contrast between the normal ways of civilian life and this hark-back to the caveman code. It made all our old philosophy of life monstrously ridiculous. It played the “hat trick” with the gentility of modern manners. Men who had been brought up to Christian virtues, who had prattled their little prayers at mothers’ knees, who had grown up to a love of poetry, painting, music, the gentle arts, over-sensitized to the subtleties of half-tones, delicate scales of emotion, fastidious in their choice of words, in their sense of beauty, found themselves compelled to live and act like ape-men; and it was abominably funny. They laughed at the most frightful episodes, which revealed this contrast between civilized ethics and the old beast law. The more revolting it was the more, sometimes, they shouted with laughter, especially in reminiscence, when the tale was told in the gilded salon of a French chateau, or at a mess-table.

It was, I think, the laughter of mortals at the trick which had been played on them by an ironical fate. They had been taught to believe that the whole object of life was to reach out to beauty and love, and that mankind, in its progress to perfection, had killed the beast instinct, cruelty, blood-lust, the primitive, savage law of survival by tooth and claw and club and ax. All poetry, all art, all religion had preached this gospel and this promise.

Now that ideal had broken like a china vase dashed to hard ground. The contrast between That and This was devastating. It was, in an enormous world-shaking way, like a highly dignified man in a silk hat, morning coat, creased trousers, spats, and patent boots suddenly slipping on a piece of orange-peel and sitting, all of a heap, with silk hat flying, in a filthy gutter. The war-time humor of the soul roared with mirth at the sight of all that dignity and elegance despoiled.

So we laughed merrily, I remember, when a military chaplain (Eton, Christ Church, and Christian service) described how an English sergeant stood round the traverse of a German trench, in a night raid, and as the Germans came his way, thinking to escape, he cleft one skull after another with a steel-studded bludgeon a weapon which he had made with loving craftsmanship on the model of Blunderbore’s club in the pictures of a fairy-tale.

So we laughed at the adventures of a young barrister (a brilliant fellow in the Oxford “Union”) whose pleasure it was to creep out o’ nights into No Man’s Land and lie doggo in a shell-hole close to the enemy’s barbed wire, until presently, after an hour’s waiting or two, a German soldier would crawl out to fetch in a corpse. The English barrister lay with his rifle ready. Where there had been one corpse there were two. Each night he made a notch on his rifle three notches one night to check the number of his victims. Then he came back to breakfast in his dugout with a hearty appetite.”

Can't remember if I posted this one, but here it is anyway.

 

[Phrossack]

Can't remember if I posted this one, but here it is anyway.

That's a very good one.

On a lighter note:

"Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges of it. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there."

--pilot's advice

 

[Traitorfish]

"Local pilot moon-lights as sarcastic AI in Iain Banks novel"?

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Israel to France: "Step up senpai"
"That the attack occurred at a mass gathering for Bastille Day, France’s national holiday, had Israelis shaking their heads. Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said that to secure a major event like Independence Day celebrations, when tens of thousands of people gather along the Tel Aviv seafront to watch an air and naval display, officers gather intelligence for weeks beforehand, and erect a 360-degree enclosure of the area, with layers of security around the perimeter.

Main roads are typically blocked off with rows of buses, and smaller side streets with patrol cars. In addition to a large uniformed and undercover police presence, counterterrorism teams are strategically placed to provide a rapid response if needed."
-Isabel Kershner and James Glanz, "To France From Israel: Lessons on Living With Terror", New York Times

 

[Kyriakos]

"Ερμή τετρακάρηνε, καλόν Τελεσαρχίδου έργον, πανθ' οράας"
(Four-headed Hermes, good work of Telesarchides, you see all)

*Telesarchides was a famous sculptor in classical Athens, this is about an impressive statue of his in the middle of the athenian agora (it is long gone by now).

Source was either the Souida lexicon, or the Encyclopedia of patriarch Photios, ie one of those two major 8th-9th century AD byzantine works.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

"If you feel accused for some reason by imagery that implies divisive hatred is bad, perhaps you should reevaluate your beliefs rather than leap straight to making justifications. It could be your conscience talking."

—User TheFounderUtopia, in response to a comment on this comic.

 

[gay_Aleks]

mfw you see an IOTer on OT

 

[Mouthwash]

"If you feel accused for some reason by imagery that implies divisive hatred is bad, perhaps you should reevaluate your beliefs rather than leap straight to making justifications. It could be your conscience talking."

—User TheFounderUtopia, in response to a comment on this comic.

The preceding pages establish the Right as lizard-minded illiterates. I think it's fair to question if the comic genuinely advocates reconciliation.

 

[Arakhor]

I'm not seeing "lizard-minded" at all, but yeah, divisive hatred is still bad, even if you identify with the righties.

 

[classical_hero]

“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.” ― C.S. Lewis

 

[Arakhor]

Well, you can go and live under a robber baron, if you really want. There are plenty left in the world.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Couple ones from Victor Hugo

My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic.

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.


When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.


Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.

 

[Dachs]

"I am very proud of the troops of this [Third] Army for getting across the goddamn [Moselle] River. [...] I hope to go through the Siegfried Line like **** through a goose."
-MG George Patton, CG US Third Army, press conference 7 September 1944

NB: His troops were not really across the Moselle River (a few lodgments had been established on the far side but they were vulnerable and unsupported) and his troops would not reach the Siegfried Line for several months.

 

[jackelgull]

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will." - Martin Luther King Jr.

Basically my feelings on threads about Islam

 

[Mouthwash]

"When judging a philosophical theory, I imagine how embarrassing it would be to explain to an advanced alien race that humanity believed it." -Corey Mohler

 

[W|M]

What if said philosophical theory involves not caring about the opinions of aliens?

 

[Mouthwash]

I'm not sure. Go ask him.