Post a Quote

[DavidMcK]

I keep a diary of quotes, and today when I was adding one from Michael I thought I could share some of them in the hopes others would provide some of their own or comment on these. The first one is:

James Whitmore

"I have no regrets, real regrets about any darn thing...I think second-guessing one's self and your life is the most futile thing in the world."

[9thdoctor]

When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.

For once reality and his brain came into contact, and the result was fatal.

Commenting on the death of Samuel Wilberforce from a fall.

Are these supposed to be related to your opening quote?

Edited November 18, 2010 by Ninth Doctor

[BaalChatzaf]

When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.

For once reality and his brain came into contact, and the result was fatal.

Commenting on the death of Samuel Wilberforce from a fall.

That is sooo choice. T.H. Huxley was marvelously clever AND unkind. My kind of a guy.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[9thdoctor]

That is sooo choice. T.H. Huxley was marvelously clever AND unkind. My kind of a guy.

Just as good was Christopher Hitchens on the death of Jerry Falwell:

If they gave Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.

It’s at the very very end. Presumably it was improvised.

I suspect David had inspiring quotes in mind when he started the thread, but I find his offering to be one of those that’s easily reversible, and also lacking in epigrammatic punch. You could just as rightly say: "Don’t fail to contemplate your regrets, those were your hardest won lessons", for example.

Umberto Eco has a good essay on Oscar Wilde where he reverses many of Wilde’s epigrams, you’ll find it here in it’s entirety:

http://books.google.com/books?id=2FrLBSX3o18C&printsec=frontcover&dq=umberto+eco+on+literature&hl=en&ei=JIjkTLOHI8GAlAeaq-zqDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

It starts on page 62.

[9thdoctor]

Looking at the Eco piece again made me think of Karl Kraus, who was truly an equal to Wilde and Mencken. I don't think he's so well known, though, so if you like these then look him up, there's plenty more.

Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.

I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.

Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work.

[Rich Engle]

I collect quotes as well--fun little sideline. Here's a longish one I came upon recently while looking over some Hunter Thompson, writing about Nixon. I like the imagery.

". . .and it is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie doll President, with his Barbie doll wife and his box-full of Barbie doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts, on nights when the moon comes too close. . .

At the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and a head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps fifty feet down to the lawn. . . pauses briefly to strangle the Chow watchdog, then races off into the darkness . . .towards the Watergate, snarling with lust, loping through the alleys behind Pennsylvania Avenue, and trying desperately to remember which one of those four hundred identical balconies is the one outside Martha Mitchell's apartment. . . ."

Edited November 18, 2010 by Rich Engle

[Kimmler]

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

Karl Marx

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Karl Marx

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

Karl Marx

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

Karl Marx

The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.

Karl Marx

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

Karl Marx

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.

Karl Marx

The product of mental labor - science - always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

Karl Marx

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

Karl Marx

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

Karl Marx

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

Karl Marx

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

Karl Marx

The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite.

Karl Marx

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

Karl Marx

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

Karl Marx

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

Karl Marx

We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass.

Karl Marx

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

Karl Marx

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

Karl Marx

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Karl Marx

...and there's more...

Jimmy Cricket

[DavidMcK]

Ninth Doctor, I meant any kind of interesting quote, as yours were. The Marx wasn't as interesting to me since I had heard or read most of them, not to mention the content of those quotes. Here's another, more humorous, but still serious:

In the Korean War, after U.N. forces under American command were attacked by Chinese forces in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, U.S. commander Chesty Puller made the remark, "We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things."[34] He also reportedly said, "All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time", and "Great. Now we can shoot at those bastards from every direction." In the same battle, Major General Oliver P. Smith was widely quoted as saying, "Retreat? Hell, we're attacking in a different direction!", but that is apparently an abbreviation of his actual explanation.

(from laconic phrases in wikipedia)

[Selene]

Brevity...

"NUTS!"

[Rich Engle]

...and there's more...

Jimmy Cricket

"Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals with no cure except as a guillotine might be called a cure for dandruff."

--Clare Boothe Luce

Edited November 18, 2010 by Rich Engle

[BaalChatzaf]

Brevity...

"NUTS!"

General McAuliffe. One of the Greats!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[bmacwilliam]

"Ayn Rand was a great author...of children's books...just not on purpose."

- BobMac ("borrowing" a little from Steven Wright)

[Brant Gaede]

Brevity...

"NUTS!"

General McAuliffe. One of the Greats!

Ba'al Chatzaf

I've heard that that's not what he really said. It had to be sanitized. Other than that, I have no info.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Kimmler,

I think of Marx as a person who has made an enormous mis-identification: seeing the human race only as oppressed or oppressors. The independent individual does not fit his thinking.

Well, I just read through those Marxist quotes in this frame of mind.

I want to thank you for posting them. I hadn't realized what an evil fuck Marx was until now.

(Please excuse the vulgarity, but not the emotion behind it.)

Michael

[George H. Smith]

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

-Thomas de Quincey, "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts"

As an effort was being made to expel the libertarian John Wilkes from the House of Commons in 1764 -- the charge was that he had published Essay on Woman, an obscene parody of Pope's Essay on Man --the following exchange occurred between the Earl of Sandwich and Wilkes.

You, sir, will die on the gallows or of the pox.

That depends, my lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Some good quotations from W.C. Fields.

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Ghs

[DavidMcK]

Certainly all the Marx quotes show where Objectivism comes from....if you just reverse each quote (except one or two) you have Ayn Rand's philosophy...particularly with respect to denying an inherent conflict of interest between individuals or 'classes' (whatever a 'class' is).

Edited November 19, 2010 by DavidMcK

[Selene]

Certainly all the Marx quotes show where Objectivism comes from....if you just reverse each quote (except one or two) you have Ayn Rand's philosophy...particularly with respect to denying an inherent conflict of interest between individuals or 'classes' (whatever a 'class' is).

Really...

How about this one..."Paying alimony is like feeding hay to a dead horse."

Or,..."I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go into the library and read a good book."

[Reidy]

Let's start with a few examples. Which of the quotes above, when negated, say (or entail) that

- Rationality is the primary virtue;

- Knowledge and value are objective, not subjective or intrinsic;

- A work of art expresses the artist's sense of life and the viewer's response, the viewer's.

?

[9thdoctor]

If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny; if there were two, they would cut each other's throats; but there are thirty, and they live happily together in peace.

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.

Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.

No ideas and the ability to express them - that's a journalist.

[Selene]

Brevity...

"NUTS!"

General McAuliffe. One of the Greats!

Ba'al Chatzaf

I've heard that that's not what he really said. It had to be sanitized. Other than that, I have no info.

--Brant

Brant, I never thought about it being sanitized, but it does make sense.

"It seems to have died out, but at one time 'NUTS!' meant something like, 'Go NFBSK yourself!'"

This was posted on a military forum about that McAuliffe quote.

Adam

[DavidMcK]

Let's start with a few examples. Which of the quotes above, when negated, say (or entail) that

- Rationality is the primary virtue;

- Knowledge and value are objective, not subjective or intrinsic;

- A work of art expresses the artist's sense of life and the viewer's response, the viewer's.

?

Some seem so obvious to anyone that knows Objectivism I wasn't really in the mood to point them out. I didn't say that the exact quotes provided were the exact antipode to Objectivism, but the more you read Marx the more sure you are that Objectivism was the answer to Socialist theory. As for the quotes above:

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

Karl Marx

I can't find the exact quote since I don't have all my books with me but in 'For the New Intellectual' the history of all previous (Western) societies is portrayed as a philosophical struggle...the rational vs. the irrational. I'm not saying that I don't think that some of Objectivism is one-sided...simply an observation about the Objectivism (see 'Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical' by Chris Sciabarra for details.

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

Karl Marx

In Objectivism, the iniatiation of force is a sin, and socialism is based on force, thus the meaning of peace is capitalism (and voluntary exchange).

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

Karl Marx

In Objectivism, the production of too many useless things results in too many useless people.

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

Karl Marx

Objectivism's political theory can be summed up in one sentence, the state doesn't own any property.

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

Karl Marx

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do workers.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It occurs to me that it might be a good idea to check the quotes Kimmler gave from Marx.

He might be goofing on the forum posters by posting false quotes, then snickering.

I'll look into this later today.

Michael

[Rich Engle]

It occurs to me that it might be a good idea to check the quotes Kimmler gave from Marx.

He might be goofing on the forum posters by posting false quotes, then snickering.

I'll look into this later today.

Michael

When this thread was created, wasn't it so predictable that he would put up Marx quotes?

What on earth is his agenda, coming on an O-based site with all this whatever-you-call-what-he-does? Outside of possibly masochism, that is. Has he ever truly explained his position? Imagine an O-type hanging out on a Communist/Socialist site--not so much, right?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Rich,

It's a living, I suppose...

I checked a few of the quotes so far and they seem to be legitimate. Tracking them down on the web is difficult, though, because there are a lot of quote sites that list quotes without providing the sources (they make revenue off of ads). It seems like Kimmler simply copy-pasted from one of these sites.

Interestingly, I found a lot of variations in wording due to different translations.

Michael