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MJBurrage

Joined 21 January 2008

Interesting

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  • “All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.” — Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99BC–55BC) according to Cardiff’s What Great Men Think About Religion (1945)
  • “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” — Seneca the Younger (c. 4BC–65AD) according to Cardiff’s What Great Men Think About Religion (1945)
  • “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it…” — Jonathan Swift (1710 Nov. 9)
  • “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” — Benjamin Franklin (1738, 1759, 1775)
  • “To suppose that God Almighty has confined his goodness to this world, to the exclusion of all others, is much similar to the idle fancies of some individuals in this world, that they, and those of their communion or faith, are the favorites of heaven exclusively; but these are narrow and bigoted conceptions, which are degrading to a rational nature, and utterly unworthy of God, of whom we should form the most exalted ideas.” — Ethan Allen (1785) Reason: the Only Oracle of Man, “Of The Eternity and Infinitude of Divine Providence” (Ch.II, §III)
  • “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” — Thomas Jefferson (1816 Aug. 1) letter to John Adams
  • “The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter … But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.” — Thomas Jefferson (1823 April 11) letter to John Adams
  • “I am not at all concerned about that [if ‘the Lord was on our side.’] for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.” — Abraham Lincoln according to Six Months in the White House with Abraham Lincoln (1867)
  • “The three classes of witnesses—liars, damned liars, and experts.” — Thomas Henry Huxley (1885 Dec. 5) Royal Society minutes
  • “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.” — Louis Brandeis (1916–1939) Supreme Court Justice
  • “Excelsior!” — Stan Lee (1960s—2018)
  • “hier (here) gaan over (ruling over) het tij (the tide), de maan (the moon) de wind (the wind) en wij (and us)” ―Oosterscheldekering (Eastern Schelde barrier) (1986)
  • “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” — James D. Nicoll (1990 May 15)
  • “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.” — Steven Weinberg (1999)
  • “I’m not anti-American, I just want them to learn things.” — Miriam Margolyes (2007 Dec. 20) Graham Norton Series 2, No. 11
  • “This man is more to me than you can dream. He’s the moon when I’m lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold. And his kiss still thrills me, even after a millennia. His heart overflows with the kindness this world is not worthy of. I love this man beyond measure and reason. He’s not my boyfriend. He’s all and he’s more.” —“Joe” Yusuf Al-Kaysani (2020) The Old Guard

Things to look for

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  • “I love cooking with wine—sometimes I even put it in the food.” — attributed without citation to both Julia Child and W. C. Fields
    • “I enjoy cooking with wine, sometimes I even put it in the food I’m cooking.” — attributed without citation to Julia Child
    • “I cook with wine, and sometimes I even add it to the food.” — attributed without citation to W. C. Fields
  • “It is better to be on hand with ten men than absent with ten thousand.” — attributed online to Amir Timur (AKA Tamerlane) and/or Genghis Khan
  • “God gave us two texts, scripture and creation, and if they seem to contradict it’s because we haven’t understood one of them yet.” — St. Augustine according to The Expanse


Yankee breakfast

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“The Chicago Tribune made a study and came up with these facts: Foreigners call all Americans Yankees. Southerners say that Yankees are northerners. Northerners say that Yankees are from the New England states. People in New England say it is the Vermonters who are Yankees. Vermonters reply that a Yankee is just someone who eats pie for breakfast. –Woolery Digest”
“To foreigners, a Yankee is an American. To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner. To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner. To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander. To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter. And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.”
  • 1981 July 13: “To a Vermonter, a Yankee is anyone who eats pie for breakfast.”
    —Time, Vol. 118 No. 2.GB
  • 1980: “Frost quickly demolished the theroy. ‘A Yankee,’ he decreed, ‘is someone who eats pie for breakfast.’”
    —Vermont Life, Vol. 35–36, p. 21.GB
  • 1954: “A VHS member sends us a clipping from a western newspaper which goes thus: ‘Foreigners call all Americans Yankees, Southerners say that Yankees are Northerners, Northerners say Yankees come from the New England states, people there say it’s the Vermonters who are Yankees, and Vermonters say a Yankee is someone who eats pie for breakfast.’ To be a simon-pure Yankee, however, a Vermonter must not only eat pie for breakfast, but eat it with a knife.”
    —News and Notes, Volumes 6–10, p. 39, Vermont Historical Society.GB
  • 1953 Dec. 18: “What Is a Yankee? Foreigners call all Americans Yankees. Southerners say that Yankees are Northerners. Northerners say Yankees are from the New England states. People there say it’s the Vermonters who are Yankees. And Vermonters say a Yankee is just someone who eats pie for breakfast. —Charles O. Poole”
    —Chicago Tribune, p. 20
  • 1916 Aug. 3: “Reference to the Yankee who eats pie for breakfast has been one of the stock laugh-producers for many years.”
    —Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, No. 3178, p. 3 (p. 117 in collected Volume No. 123)GB

Blade Runner

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Roy: [After defeating Deckard, while watching him dangle off the roof’s edge.] “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.”
Roy: [After saving Deckard just as he starts to fall.] “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those… moments will be lost in time, like… tears… in rain. Time to die.”

The Newsroom

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Will: “It’s not the greatest country in the world, professor, that’s my answer.”
Moderator: [pause] “You’re saying…”
Will: “Yes.”
Moderator: “Let’s talk about…”
Will: “Fine. [to the liberal panelist] Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paychecks, but he [gesturing to the conservative panelist] gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn’t cost money, it costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don’t like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fuckin’ smart, how come they lose so goddam always!”
    “And [to the conservative panelist] with a straight face, you’re going to tell students that America’s so starspangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. Two hundred seven sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.”
    “And you—sorority girl—yeah—just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, twenty-second in science, forty-ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies. None of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST-period-generation-period-ever-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about?! Yosemite?!!!”
    “We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn’t belittle it; it didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn’t scare so easy. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one—America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.”
Will: [to moderator] “Enough?”

Contributions

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