Favorite Quotes

General
1

Here’s a thread that never got brought to the new Forum. Favorite quotes!

I’ve got two to post right now.

“There’s a new culture shaping up, and while it’s certainly an improvement on the repressive society now nervously aging, there is a strong element of sickness in our new, amorphous institutions. The cure bears viruses of its own.”

Bangs, Lester. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (p.32)

and one with a less detailed citation because I’m not copying it from Kindle:

“For some reason on that particular day, you had some moment of pure experience that revealed to you what it meant to be alive.” – Bruce Springsteen, on memories.

2

To use an analogy from the Roman republic, the aristocrats have arrogated to themselves so much power that the only meaningful check against them is a strong emperor.

3

While I was rewatching the Hagler-Hearns fight, I remembered something I heard on the PTI podcast a while back.

The guys were talking about boxing. Tony Kornheiser said something like, “What’s the line from Patton? ‘God help me, I love it so.’”

I don’t necessarily feel that way about boxing, but what a good line.

4

“I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.” – William Lloyd Garrison, 1831, first issue of The Liberator

“Alexander III of Macedonia was born in 356 B.C., on the sixth day of the month of Lous. He is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time.” – Will Cuppy, Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

5

The purpose of a system is what it does

By Stafford Beer (excellent name)

Useful for thinking about Google, or policing in the US, or the healthcare system in the US, or…

6

Cool to know that there’s a STEM equivalent of Dead Author. I’ll have to remember that.

7

We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.

  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
8

It turns out that if you give everyone access to the Library of Congress, what they do is watch videos on TikTok.