Favorite quotes thread

[reboot]

I am actively dodging the work I brought home and thought this might be a fun thread. Share your favorite quotes (and the source)

Here are a handful of my (many) favorites

"Fanaticism is a monster that pretends to be the child of religion" - Voltaire

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.” -George Orwell

“Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.” - George Orwell

"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil." - Hannah Arendt

"Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think." - Hannah Arendt

"“Her body lies in the bed like an inanimate object, an emptied bellow or shopping bag. Nothing has changed with her departure from the camp. Her body is still in their power, even more so now. Only now does S. understand that a woman's body never really belongs to the woman. It belongs to others—to the man, the children, the family. And in wartime to soldiers.” - Slavenka Drakulic

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it" - Martin Luther King, Jr

[Guest]

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Without music, life would be a mistake." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Happiness ain't at the end of the road. Happiness is the road." - Steve Hogarth

"The punters know that the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named Self-interest always runs a good race." - Gough Whitlam

“Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselves as others see us.” - Robert Burns

"In my end is my beginning." - Mary, Queen of Scots

"A lie can run around the world before the truth can get it's boots on." - James Watt

[BasedBuzzed]

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”
Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
-C.S. Lewis

If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.
-Nietzsche

Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company.
-some random YCombinator user, not Descartes

Give her the dick.
-actually by Descartes

[Guest]

"Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods" - Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

"Heard joke once: Man goes to Doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says 'Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.' Man bursts into tears. Says 'But Doctor...I am Pagliacci.' Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains." - Alan Moore, Watchmen

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