Dave's Favorite Quotes

These are a bunch of quotes and other thoughts I've discovered which I found were rather interesting. Either because they expressed feelings I've had, were diametrically opposed to feelings I've had, because they were just really funny, or some combination of these - sometimes all three. Which are which is left as an exercise to the reader.  So here they are in no particular order.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Ben Franklin

 

A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies.

- Oscar Wilde

 

The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on Earth.

- Charles Kingsley

 

Give me where to stand and I shall move the world.

- Archimedes

 

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.

- Thucydides

 

Justice without power is inefficient; power without justice is tyranny. Justice without power is opposed, because there are always wicked men. Power without justice is soon questioned. Justice and power must therefore be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

- Pascal

 

Three may keep a secret, if two are dead.

- Benjamin Franklin

 

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

- William Shakespeare

 

Being a hero is about the shortest lived profession on Earth.

- Will Rogers

 

All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things.

- Yoda (The Empire Strikes Back)

 

If a man insisted on always being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.

- Herodotus

 

I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving; To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

...for every human being there is a diversity of existances...the single existance is itself an illusion...

- Saul Bellow

 

We may live without poetry, music and art;
  We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends, we may live without books;
  But civilized man cannot live without cooks.

- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Earl of Lytton

 

A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.

- King James I, on smoking (from A Counterblaste to Tobacco)

 

Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death, and some that have died deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Don't be too eager to deal out death and judgement. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.

- Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

 

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

- John Maynard Keynes

 

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Winston Churchill

 

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those I had to kill because they pissed me off.

 

Stress: That conflict which arises when the brain overrides the body's basic desire to choke the living shit out of some asshole who desperately needs it.