Conningcris

Just my collection of quotes, because I felt I should put something :)

Random A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation

I contend that we are both atheists. just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~Stephen Roberts

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. ~Friedrich Nietzche

Neither black nor white are true colors.” “And neither is gray” –Christopher Hitchens

Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an oQuotesQuotesptimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose. ~ William Golding

"I see that you have made three spelling mistakes." - Thomas de Mahay (upon reading his death sentence)

“Without the Darkness, We Would Never Be Aware of the Stars.” –Margaret Weis/Tracy Hickman

“People need something to believe in-Even if they know it is false.” –Margaret Weis/Tracy Hickman

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace. -Bismark (?)

“Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.” -François de La Rochefoucauld

Culture is to make a nice drinking bowl from one's enemy's skull. Civilization is to go to prison for that.

Napoleon:

The favorable opportunity must be seized; for fortune is female, and if you balk her today you must not expect to meet her again tomorrow.

The allies we gain by victory will turn against us upon the bare whisper of our defeat.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake

I can no longer obey, I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up

Our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined.

I may have had many projects, but I never was free to carry out any of them. It did me little good to be holding the helm; no matter how strong my hands, the sudden and numerous waves were stronger still, and I was wise enough to yield to them rather than resist them obstinately and make the ship founder. Thus I never was truly my own master but was always ruled by circumstances

Ability is nothing without opportunity.

Men are moved by two levers only— fear and self interest.

We must take things as we find them, and not as we wish them to be

Frederick (the great) II

All Religions are equal and good, if only the people that practice them are honest people

The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices

Sun Tzu

If our soldiers are not overburdened with money, it is not because they have a distaste for riches; if their lives are not unduly long, it is not because they are disinclined to longevity.

The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.

Otto Van Bismark;

A conquering army on the border will not be stopped by eloquence.

With bad laws and good civil servants it's still possible to govern. But with bad civil servants even the best laws can't help.

Politics is the art of the possible

A journalist is a person who has mistaken their calling

What we learn from history is that no one learns from history.

The most noble gentleman works 9 to 5

When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.

Thomas Jefferson:

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

Delay is preferable to error.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education & free discussion are the antidotes of both.

Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: (1) Those that fear and distrust people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. (2) Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist; and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.

Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.

Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effects of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions I. of those who say he was begotten by god, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven: and 2. of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, & was Punished capitally for sedition by being gibbeted according to the Roman law which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile or death in furcâ.

Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing. I may grow rich by art I am compelled to follow, I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment, but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve & abhor.

On matters of style, swim with the current. On matters of principle, stand like a rock

Aristotle:

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite

It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered

The law is reason unaffected by desire

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions

John Adams: Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.

Virtue is not always amiable.

Samuel Johnson I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Round numbers are always false

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

James Oliver Rigley (Robert Jordan): "Sene sovya caba'donde ain dovienya." (Luck is a horse to ride like any other.) -James Oliver Rigney

Tia mi aven Moridin isande vadin. (The grave is no bar to my call.)

Duty Is Heavier Then A Mountain, Death Lighter Then a Feather

Charles Dickens: I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, if there is anything to be got by it.

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.

A man in public life expects to be sneered at—it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

Terry Pratchett:

'Well ... welcome. My house is your house', his brow suddenly furrowed and he looked worried, 'although only in a metaphorical sense, you understand, because I would not, much as I always admired your straightforward approach, and indeed your forthright stance, actually give you my house, it being the only house I have, and therefore the term is being extended in an, as it were, gratuitous fashion --'

Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living.

Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.

Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.

'Yes, but humans are more important than animals,' said Brutha.'This is a point of view often expressed by humans,' said Om.

"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."

When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course, if someone is killed by a freak chain of events — the oil spill just there, the safety fence broken just there — that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.

It is always useful to have an enemy who is prepared to die for his country, this means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.

The reward for toil had been more toil. If you dug the best ditches they gave you a bigger shovel.

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: 'What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!

Terry Goodkind: about: would you rather I hated him for being a moron, or appreciated him for being an amusing moron?

A few million [soldiers] screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the [World] may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right.

No one ever goes into battle thinking God is on the other side

"It does the sheep no good to preach the goodness of a diet of grass, if the wolves are of a different mind."

Jimmy Wales: Simply having rules does not change the things that people want to do. You have to change incentives.

Most people are good. They may not be saints, but they are good.

Stephen Colbert:

I would say laughter is the best medicine. But it’s more than that. It’s an entire regime of antibiotics and steroids. Laughter brings the swelling down on our national psyche, and then applies an antibiotic cream

If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it.

Robin Hobb: However, when all roads lead to death, there is no point in running down any of them.

This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll a dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draught.

Is time the wheel that turns, or the track it leaves behind?

No, no, never mind the mud on your shoes. If enough people track dirt in, someone will start tracking it out.

GRRM: The truth will set us free. But freedom is empty and cold and frightening, and lies can often be warm and beautiful.

Fear cuts deeper than swords

"In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which."

"Winter is coming." (Stark's)

Fire and Blood. (Targaryen's)

Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken. (Martell's)

The sun of winter.  (Karstark's)

First in Battle. (Tarly's)

Machiavelli:

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.

From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word

You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second.

Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.

Voltaire:

Love Truth, but pardon error

Qui plume a, guerre a.-To hold a pen is to be at war

Un bon mot ne prouve rien.-A witty saying proves nothing

Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.-If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him

L'homme est libre au moment qui'il veut l'etre-Man is free at the instant he wants to be.

The Eternal has his designs from all eternity. If prayer is in accord with his immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of him what he has resolved to do. If one prays to him to do the contrary of what he has resolved, it is praying that he be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is believing that he is thus, it is to mock him. Either you ask him a just thing, in which case he must do it, the thing being done without your praying to him for it, and so to entreat him is then to distrust him; or the thing is unjust, and then you insult him. You are worthy or unworthy of the grace you implore: if worthy, he knows it better than you; if unworthy, you commit another crime by requesting what is undeserved. In a word, we only pray to God because we Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.-If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him

J. R. R. Tolkien:

'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' 'So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out

Don't adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.

The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.

I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually — their paths were laid that way, as you put it

Don't the great tales never end?No, they never end as tales,' said Frodo. 'But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended.

"Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!"

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens

I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend

"A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, and in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man's distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And even the man's own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? he had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea."

Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using Escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. just so a Party-spokesman might have labeled departure from the misery of the Fuhrer's or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery .... Not only do they confound the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter; but they would seem to prefer the acquiescence of the "quisling" to the resistance of the patriot.

I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil