Quote of the day

General chit-chat

Moderators: AMod, iMod

User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Søren Kierkegaard from Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.


Well, not counting all the times you don't regret either.

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant…my melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.

Can you say that?

What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.

What is a philosopher?

Idleness, we are accustomed to say, is the root of all evil. To prevent this evil, work is recommended.... Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary, it is truly a divine life, if one is not bored....

In fact, I shall now idly post this.

Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubled himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?

Yeah, what about that?

If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or do not marry, you will regret both; Laugh at the world’s follies, you will regret it, weep over them, you will also regret that; laugh at the world’s follies or weep over them, you will regret both; whether you laugh at the world’s follies or weep over them, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it, believe her not, you will also regret that; believe a woman or believe her not, you will regret both; whether you believe a woman or believe her not, you will regret both. Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will also regret that; hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the sum and substance of all philosophy.

In other words, to post or not to post this.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

The Onion

Panhandler Really Appreciates It When People Make A Big Show Out Of Patting All Their Pockets


I'd be rather disdainful myself.

Man Buys Sword In Case He Ever Needs A Sword

Not much that isn't true of.

Woman Relieved To Hear Husband In Bed With Nude Stranger Can Explain Everything

How would you explain it?

Dentist Thought Teeth In Movie Were Really Accurate

Next up: gynecologist.

Subway CEO Just Assumed Cold Cut Combo Started Covid

Of course now we know it was a Big Mac.

New NCAA Streaming Service Lets Fans Watch 4 Capital One Commercials At Same Time

On the other hand, fuck all celebrity shills.
promethean75
Posts: 4931
Joined: Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:29 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by promethean75 »

"Why does voting matter when both Politicians are owned by the same Owner?
All you have is an illusion of choice called "Our Democracy". You cannot actually vote your way out of this."

ah but see an individual's vote wouldn't matter in a perfectly functioning democracy, either. the chances of your vote making a difference are about as good as your chances of winning a lottery. think about it. only if u were the one who's vote tipped the scale between two candidates, would your vote have anything to do with the victory of one candidate over the other.

say Bob has thirty percent of the votes and Bill has sixty-nine percent of the vote. regardless of who u vote for, your vote has no real effect becuz the gap is further than a single vote.

on the other hand, if Bob had forty-nine votes and Bill had fifty, your vote would absolutely make a difference. and how often does that happen? how often have u been the guy who's vote mattered?

like why would u even vote man? I've never voted in my life. this is basic math bruh.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Don DeLillo from White Noise

This sentiment was expressed not so much in words and actions as in terrible and articulate sounds.


Or today emojis.

The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser our structure may seem to become.

Here? Way, way up in the intellectual clouds: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39804/ 8)

That's what it all comes down to in the end. A person spends his life saying good-bye to other people. How does he say good-bye to himself?

Well, what can he afford?

When times are bad, people feel compelled to overeat.

You know, if they can afford to.

In the middle of it all is Hitler, of course.
He was on again last night.
He's always on. We couldn't have television without him.


The Smithsonian Channel for example.

He liked to mingle with shopping mall crowds. I’m counting on you to tell me, Jack.
Tell you what?
You’re the only person I know that’s educated enough to give me the answer.
The answer to what?
Were people this dumb before television?


Yes, but it's always the same people.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Joseph Heller from Catch--22

I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.


Of course, it's not like anyone actually can.

Hasn't it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?
Yes, sir, it has.
Then why do you do it?
To assuage my fears of sexual impotence.


Hey, if the shoe fits...

Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

Next up: Death to all nouns and verbs.
You first.


I'll tell you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning.

Pass this on, of course.

I’m cold, Snowden said softly, I’m cold.
You’re going to be all right, kid, Yossarian reassured him with a grin. You’re going to be all right.
I’m cold, Snowden said again in a frail, childlike voice. I’m cold.
There, there, Yossarian said, because he did not know what else to say. There, there.
I’m cold, Snowden whimpered. I’m cold.
There, there. There, there.


What, you've never been in a combat zone?

Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.

Let's decide then: which is worse?
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Doris Lessing from The Golden Notebook

We all of us seem to have this belief that things are going to get better. Why should they? Sometimes I think we're moving into a new ice age of tyranny and terror, why not? Who's to stop it—us?


The new icemen cometh: Donald Trump! Vladimir Putin! Xi Jinping!
And who's to stop it—us?


I don't think I really saw people except as appendages to my needs. It's only now, looking back, that I understand, but at the time I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a description of being young.

Or, for some, sure, a description of capitalism.

...she could not see what good it would do anyone to read a novel of this kind. Yet she was writing it.

Or, of course, here: ...he could not see what good it would do anyone to read a post of this kind. Yet he was posting it.
And, no, not just him.


'Do you really think it's right for a socialist to get what he wants by making a fool of an old woman? 'I'm earning her a lot of money.' 'I was talking about sex,' said Paul, and Willi said: 'I don't know what you mean.' He didn't. Men are far more unconscious than women about using their sex this way; far less honest.

Okay, let's resolve this once and for all.

You talk as if—a person is a person. A man is what he is. He can’t be anything else. You can’t change that.
Well then, I think that’s the real difference between us. Because I believe you can change it.
Then I don’t follow you. And I don’t want to. Bad enough to cope with what one is, instead of complicating things even more.


Okay, let's resolve this once and for all.

The point is, it seems to me that my mind is a mass of totally contradictory attitudes about everything.
Everyone’s mind is a mass of contradictory attitudes. Why should it matter?
It should matter to us, surely?


Ask me about that.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. from Slaughterhouse-Five

Everything is nothing, with a twist.


Or God with a twist?

There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life...it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore.

Me? That's not even in the top ten.

It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?”

Well, Ginsburg don't call them Birdbrains for nothing. I'm sure that included massacres.

There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

Actually, war made me one. I'm just not one anymore.

It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.

Supannika!!

Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

Amber and time. The rest is history.

No art is possible without a dance with death, he wrote.

Though a lot of philosophy is. Up in the clouds, for example.
Gary Childress
Posts: 8117
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:08 pm
Location: Retirement Home for foolosophers

Re: Quote of the day

Post by Gary Childress »

A mind is a terrible thing to waste unless it's done for ethical reasons.

If God were benevolent, then he never would have given humans the ability to destroy ourselves unless he knows we won't do it.

Maybe this world is nothing more than a hill of beings. --Humphrey Bogart

In war, truth is the first casualty. --Aeschylus

What if wisdom precluded knowing truth?

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. -- Socrates

Who in their right mind should want to be a philosopher?
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Jennifer Egan from A Visit from the Goon Squad

What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it.


I'll settle for just one who did.

Now that Scotty has entered the realm of myth, everyone wants to own him. And maybe they should. Doesn't a myth belong to everyone?

Any myths here? How about legends in their own minds?

I picture it like Judgement Day, he says finally, his eyes on the water. We'll rise up out of our bodies and find each other again in spirit form. We'll meet in that new place, all of us together, and first it'll seem strange, and pretty soon it'll seem strange that you could ever lose someone, or get lost.

Next up: what really happens.

So this is it ⎯ what cost me all that time. A man who turned out to be old, a house that turned out to be empty.

Anyone here still expect it to be different?

She looks like someone I want to know, or maybe even be.

You think it's you, don't you?

It's turning out to be a bad day, a day when the sun feels like teeth.

Fangs even.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Mary McCarthy from The Group

You mustn’t force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex...


How's that working out for you?
No, really.


One of the big features of living alone was that you could talk to yourself all you wanted and address imaginary audiences, running the gamut of emotion.

And all the other gamuts too.

If she had come to prefer the company of odd ducks, it was possibly because they had no conception of oddity, or rather, they thought you were odd if you weren't.

Let's decide: can one ever be too odd?

I understand what you are feeling, he said. As Socrates showed, love cannot be anything else but the love of the good. But to find the good is very rare. That is why love is rare, in spite of what people think. It happens to one in a thousand, and to that one it is a revelation. No wonder he cannot communicate with the other nine hundred and ninety-nine.

Love of the good. Or else, right?

Elinor was always firmly convinced of other people’s hypocrisy since she could not believe that they noticed less than she did.

You tell me.

But this poor chap is a dangerous neurotic.
Polly laughed. So you saw that, Father. I never could. He always seemed so normal.
It’s the same thing, said her father, putting the groceries away. All neurotics are petty bourgeois. And vice versa. Madness is too revolutionary for them. They can’t go the whole hog. We madmen are the aristocrats of mental illness.


Spot me in there yet?
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

The Onion

ChatGPT Starting To Think Journalist Could One Day Be Capable Of Independent Thought


Well, that was inevitable.

New Report Finds Adult Film Star May Have Paid Over $130,000 To Cover Up Sexual Encounter With Trump

Well, that was inevitable.

HR Director Reminds Employees That Any Crying Done At Office Must Be Work-Related

That's only fair, right?

Study Finds Early Humans Domesticated Wolves After Failed Attempts At Domesticating Crocodiles

Next up: attempts to domesticate mosquitos.

HBO Max Announces Plans To Destroy All Evidence ‘The Sopranos’ Ever Existed

Let's pin down the reason.

Catholic High School Newsletter Has Updates On Which Alumni Are In Hell Now

Further proof that God -- one of them -- exists.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Zadie Smith from White Teeth

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.


Way, way different. But only if you know what I mean.

You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair.

Anyone here ever been there?

If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister.

Anyone here still confuse the two?

You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.

My guess: for better or worse.

Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water.

Probably a Communist.

In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution is not my solution.

Next up: in the beginning.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Cormac McCarthy from No Country for Old Men

I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.


In other words, whatever that means. To, say, Anton Chigurh.

...you fix what you can fix and you let the rest go. If there ain't nothin to be done about it it aint even a problem.

Let's decide: how ridiculous is that?

I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics.

That or fucking.

I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I'd have the same opinion about me that he does.

Sure, I can go along with that.

My daddy always told me to just do the best you knew how and tell the truth. He said there was nothin to set a man’s mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were. And if you done somethin wrong just stand up and say you done it and say you’re sorry and get on with it. Don’t haul stuff around with you.

Back in the days before the way things are now, of course.

He shook his head. You're asking that I make myself vulnerable and that I can never do. I have only one way to live. It doesn't allow for special cases. A coin toss perhaps. In this case to small purpose. Most people don't believe that there can be such a person. You see what a problem that must be for them. How to prevail over that which you refuse to acknowledge the existence of. Do you understand? When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That there could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way. You're asking that I second say the world. Do you see?
Yes, she said sobbing. I do. I truly do.
Good, he said. That's good. Then he shot her.


Okay, Mr. Moral Objectivist, what do you say to him?
You know, in a No God world.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

The Onion

U.S. Announces Plans To Reclassify Everyone’s Race Based On Net Worth


That ought to shake things up a bit.

Congress Rules Food Stamps Can Only Be Used On Rutabagas

Or turnips as some call still them.

Man Has No Idea What To Do With Good Mood

Sell it on ebay?

God Wonders What Happens To Humans After They Die

That can't be good.

Investors Worried AI Could Leave Shred Of Humanity Intact

No, really, what if it does?

Epstein Island Housekeeping Staff Starting To Wonder If Anybody Coming Back

As well they should be.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7208
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Anthony Burgess from A Clockwork Orange

The thrill of theft, of violence, the urge to live easy - is it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes, yes, incontrovertible evidence that Hell exists?


This, perhaps, being Hell itself.

Dim died before he was born.

Got a few Dims here, don't we?

You felt ill this afternoon, he said, because you're getting better. When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all.

I know, I know: what if that were actually true?

The heresy of an age of reason, or some such slovos. I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.

On the other hand, how reasonable is that? Philosophically, for example.

And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries.

You tell me.

You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care.

Been there myself. Though I'm not really sure if I still am.
Post Reply