Historical Quotes

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

A bump for a cool thread...




"If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve."

-William Tecumseh Sherman declining Republican Presidential Nomination(1884)

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Hmm, for some reason I always thought it was LBJ who said that, in 1968.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

Hmm, for some reason I always thought it was LBJ who said that, in 1968.

He probably said something like that but Sherman was the first.

 

[Imrahil91]

"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
-Albert Einstein

EDIT: Check http://wikiquote.org for a huge collection of good quotes

 

[Lotus49]

So, how far back does the saying, "the ones who cast the votes decide nothing, but the ones who count the votes decide everything" go?

Of course I know it's a Stalin quote, but I was just watching the Scorsese movie Gangs of New York a few days ago, and it was used (though not verbatim) in the movie during a local election time. So I was wondering, it can't really be a 'Stalin quote', can it? It probably goes back as far as when voting ever began.

 

[intj_rational]

"Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it."
- Publius Syrus

"The hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain."
- Napoleon Bonaparte

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."
- Bertrand Russell

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."
- Albert Einstein

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
- Mao Ze Dong

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."

"There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance."
- Ali ibn Abi-Talib

"Any society that will give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
- Benjamin Franklin

 

[Tee Kay]

"It [the United Nations] couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel"
- Lyndon Baines Johnson

"Would this sort of war or savage bombing which has taken place in Vietnam have been tolerated for so long had the people been European?"
- Indira Gandhi

"As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for socialism is its adherents"
- George Orwell

"If Noah had been truly wise, he would have swatted those two flies."
- Helen Castle

"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac"
- Henry Kissenger

"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie…but the myth."
- John F. Kennedy

"It’s not that I don’t have opinions rather that I’m paid not to think aloud"
- Yitzhak Navon

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
- Douglas Adams

"The worst atrocities are probably committed by those who are most afraid"
- Lord d’Abernon

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education"
Mark Twain

 

[hossam]

"I don't have an attitude problem: you have a perception problem!"
-anonymous

ive been waiting for an excuse to use that one in rl.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

Left, right, left, right,
why did I join the army?
Oh why did I ever join Kitchener's mob?
Lor lummy
I must av been barmy.

-British march, WWI

 

[Trafalgar]

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

Sir Winston Churchill

 

[manlyboy]

"Do you believe that so many nations accustomed to the name and rule of another , united with us neither by religion, nor community or language, have been subdued in the same battle in which they were overcome? It is by your arms alone that they are restrained, not by their dispositions, and those who fear us when we are present, in our absence will be enemies. We are dealing with savage beasts, which lapse of time only can tame, when they are caught and caged, because their own nature cannot tame them...Accordingly, we must either give up what we have taken, or we must seize what we do not yet hold."

--Alexander, addressing his troops on the approach to Afghanistan

Quintus Curtius, History of Alexander

 

[Arwon]

"I am my ancestors' science fiction." - Ursula Le Guin

"Sometimes you accidentally input an extra digit into the year: i.e, 19993 and you add 18,000 years on to *now*, and you realize that the year 19993 will one day exist and that time is a scary thing, indeed."
- Douglas Coupland

"A day in which nothing bad happens is a miracle, a day in which all the things that could have gone wrong didn't. The dull day is a triumph of the human spirit, and boredom is a luxury unprecedented in the history of our species."
-Douglas Coupland

"What's clarity like? Try to remember that funny feeling inside your head when you had math problems too difficult to solve: the faint buzzing noise in your ears, a heaviness on both sides of your skull, and the sensation that your brain is twitching inside your cranium like a fish on the beach. This is the opposite sensation of clarity. Yet for many people of my era, as they aged, this sensation became the dominant sensation of their lives. It was as though day-to-day twentieth century living had become an unsolvable algebraic equation."
-Douglas Coupland

"I thought about how odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people. The only activities I could think of that humans do that have no animal equivalent were smoking, body-building and writing. That's not much, considering how special we seem to think we are."
-Douglas Coupland

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

I would sincerely regret, and which never shall happen whilst I am in office, a military guard around the President.
-Andrew Jackson

 

[Tee Kay]

Cool thread

"We have not, and cannot have, any such war aims as the seizure of foreign territories and the subjugation of foreign peoples -- whether it be the peoples and territories of Europe or the peoples and territories of Asia including Iran. Our First aim is to liberate our territories and our peoples from the German fascist yoke."

"We have not, and cannot have, any such war aims as that of imposing our will and our regime upon the Slavonic or other enslaved nations of Europe, who are expecting our help. Our aim is to help these nations in the struggle for liberation they are waging against Hitler's tyranny and then to leave it to them quite freely to arrange their lives on their lands as they think fit. There must be no interference whatever in the internal affairs of other nations!"

Can you guess who said these words?

P.S. Adler got it.

 

[Adler17]

Stalin.

Adler

 

[FriendlyFire]

heres a few for today:

"Winning victory is easy, preserving it difficult"

"One should not take the first step without considering the last"

 

[aronnax]

I might have had trouble saving France in 1946 - I didn't have television then.
- De Gaulle

I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married.
- Elizabeth I

If you can't think because you are not chewing, try a banana
- Lee Kuan Yew after being questioned that banning chewing gum may restrict creative thinking

I hate women because they always know where things are.
- Voltaire

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.
- Mao Zedong

For what can war, but endless war, still breed?
- John Milton

How very assuring
- Elizabeth II after a clerk told her she looked awfully liked the Queen

 

[cybrxkhan]

I would rather betray the world than let the world betray me.
- Cao Cao, Three Kingdoms Warlord

Idiots! Idiots!
- Last Words of some Japanese admiral I forgot his name

 

[Adler17]

"Don't disturb my circles!"

Last words of Archimedes

"Please tell them I said something good. Don't tell them it ended so!"

Last words of Zapata.

Adler

 

[6underground]

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for" - Epicurus 341BC - 270BC

very poignant.