Quotations: Volume One
Robin | January 15, 2009
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
~Esther de Waal
“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
~Kurt Vonnegut
“During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.”
~Kurt Vonnegut
“1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.”
~Kurt Vonnegut
“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
~Kurt Vonnegut
“The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.”
~Robert F. Kennedy
“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
~Chinese Proverb
“Our role in life is that the blessed of us, help the rest of us, until the rest of us, become the blessed of us.”
~Anonymous
“Corporations have been enthroned … An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people … until wealth is aggregated in a few hands…and the Republic is destroyed.”
~Abraham Lincoln, 1865
“Just look at us. Everything is backwards. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, schools destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the mainstream media destroys information, and religions destroy spirituality.”
~Anonymous
“The citizen who sees his society’s democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry out is not a patriot but a traitor.”
~Mark Twain
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”
~Voltaire
“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.”
~Voltaire
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
~Voltaire
“How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky? Yes, n how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry? Yes, n how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?”
~Bob Dylan
“If the evens of September 11, 2001, have proven anything, it’s that the terrorists can attack us, but they can’t take away what makes us American – our freedom, our liberty, our civil rights. No, only Attorney General John Ashcroft can do that.”
~Jon Stewart
“In Iraq, the U.S. military’s whack-a-mole approach to killing Saddam Hussein may have finally paid off. The bombs destroyed the area and left behind a 60-foot crater, or as coalition forces prefer to call it: a freedom hole.”
~Jon Stewart
“We have it. The smoking gun. The evidence. The potential weapon of mass destruction we have been looking for as our pretext of invading Iraq. There’s just one problem – it’s in North Korea.”
~Jon Stewart
“In times of change, the Patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot.”
~Mark Twain
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
~Martin Luther King Jr.
“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
~Martin Luther King Jr.
“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence… I cannot remain silent.”
~Martin Luther King Jr.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
~Theodore Roosevelt
“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
~Benjamin Franklin
“The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity.”
~Dr. Robert Anthony
“Love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?”
~Pablo Casals
“If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar”
~John iv. 20
“Above all, love each other deeply…”
~1 Peter 4:8
“Life for you, has been less than kind,
So take a number, stand in line,
We’ve all been sorry, we’ve all been hurt,
But how we survive, is what makes us who we are.”
~Rise Against
“Imagine your pain as a white ball of healing light. That’s right, it’s your pain, the pain itself is a ball of healing light.”
~The Movie “Fight Club”
“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”
~The Movie “Fight Club”
“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you are free to do anything.”
~The Movie “Fight Club”
“You are not your job.
You are not your bank account.
You are not the clothes you wear.
You are not the contents of your wallet.
You are not your bowel cancer.
You are not your grand latte!
You are not the car you drive.
You are not your fucking khakis!”
~The Movie “Fight Club”
“The things you own end up owning you.”
~The Movie “Fight Club”
“You have to realize that someday you will die, until you know that, you are useless.”
~The Movie “Fight Club”
“I say let me be never complete
I say may I never be content
I say deliver me from Swedish furniture
I say deliver me from clever art
I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth
I say you have to give up
I say evolve and let the chips fall where they may.”
~The Movie “Fight Club”
“No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.”
~The Movie “Fight Club”
“I see the strongest and the smartest men who have ever lived… and these men are pumping gas and waiting tables.”
~The Movie “Fight Club”
“I’ve met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, “Why?” Why did I cause so much pain? Didn’t I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can’t I see how we’re all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God’s got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, “No, that’s not right.” Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can’t teach God anything.”
~The Book “Fight Club”
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”
~The Movie “Fight Club”
“We’re the middle children of history… no purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.”
~The Movie “Fight Club”
“Imagine,” Tyler said, “stalking elk past department store windows and stinking racks of beautiful rotting dresses and tuxedos on hangers; you’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life, and you’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. Jack and the beanstalk, you’ll climb up through the dripping forest canopy and the air will be so clean you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison to dry in the empty car pool lane of an abandoned superhighway stretching eight-lanes-wide and August-hot for a thousand miles.”
~The Book “Fight Club”
