Favourite quotations

"The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending - and to have the two as close together as possible."
George Burns

“The fundamental cause of trouble in the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Bertrand Russell

"Money can't buy you happiness... but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery."
Spike Milligan

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Richard Dawkins

"Civil disobedience is not our problem, our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war and millions have been killed because of this obedience...Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves while the grand thieves are running the world. That’s our problem."
Howard Zinn

“There is in every village a torch - the teacher: and an extinguisher - the clergyman.”
Victor Hugo

Capitalism is the perfect example of Man exploiting Man.
Whereas Communism is exactly the reverse.

J K Galbraith

Bigamy is having one wife too many.

Monogamy is the same thing...


( I hear the sound of feet approaching...)

Benjamin Franklin once said: “People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.” In the present case, you have to insert the word “economic” in front of security, but the lesson still holds. If you lose the right to choose who governs you – or allow some greater authority to determine the limits of their power – what recourse do you have when the promises are broken and “security” becomes a prison?

In the words of Cicero Marcus Tullius, born on 3 January, 106 BC and murdered on 7 December, 43 BC:

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”

Phoenix One UK wrote:In the words of Cicero Marcus Tullius, born on 3 January, 106 BC and murdered on 7 December, 43 BC:

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”

Favourite quotations

If the cap fits, wear it.
anon

"If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire."
George Monbiot

"Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived."
Oscar Wilde

"Facts are stubborn things."
Ronald Reagan

"The Green Belt was a Labour achievement - and we intend to build on it."
John Prescott

"All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays."
Cathy Ladman

'I wish I loved the human race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
And when I'm introduced to one,
I wish I thought, "What jolly fun!"'

Walter Raleigh, I think, but not the original one.

I like my women with real breasts and fake orgasms.

It was by that prolific writer, Anon.

Beam me up, Scotty

'To God th'embattled nations sing and shout,
"Gott straffe England!" and 'God save the King!".
God this, God that, and God the other thing:
"Good God", says God, "I'll have my work cut out!"'

"Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened."
Terry Pratchett

Youth is completely wasted on The Young.

George Bernard Shaw

"I think it would be a good idea"

Gandhi, after been asked by an American journalist what he thought of western civilisation.

"London Olympics 2012 will be guarded by 13,500 soldiers"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16195861

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
Douglas Adams

"It is said that this equality is a chimera of speculation which cannot exist in practical affairs. But if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that it is unnecessary even to regulate it? It is precisely because the force of circumstances is ever tending to destroy equality that the force of legislation should always tend to maintain it."
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"A phone-call is a lazy man's visit and a miser's letter."
-T'ang Hsiao-fu (fictional character) in Qián Zhōngshū's Fortress Besieged

"Tell me, Dennis, what would you do if you discovered you only had thirty minutes to live?"
"I'd make love to the first thing that moved."
"And what would you do, Jeff?"
"I wouldn't move for half an hour!"
-Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, interviewed on Australian television

”He that buys land buys many stones. He that buys flesh buys many bones. He that buys eggs buys many shells. He that buys good ale buys nothing else.”
-John Ray, naturalist

Okay, they're probably not all amongst my favourites, per se, but they came to mind, so there you are.

Edit: Oh, wait, one more!

"What is your profession?"
"Servant of God."
"Where does your master live?"
"Everywhere."
"Take this down: X, describing himself servant of one called God, a vagrant."
-Raoul Rigault questioning a Jesuit Priest for the Committee of Public Safety during the Paris Commune

No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
Aneurin Bevan



“Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.”
Abraham J Heschel

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
Oscar Wilde

Favourite Quotations

" Your cheque is in the post today, Mr Hornby"
A.Client

Adele Carlyon wrote:....

[i]“Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.”
Abraham J Heschel

So what is the reason for National Newspapers playing the Race Card now, April 2012?

There's an anti-immigrant subtext evident in more than one story this week. Has the "Respect" Party success in a by-election rung a bell somewhere?

oftenwrong wrote:
So what is the reason for National Newspapers playing the Race Card now, April 2012?

There's an anti-immigrant subtext evident in more than one story this week. Has the "Respect" Party success in a by-election rung a bell somewhere?

Sales?

Lowest common denominator... maximum results, minimum reason.

Depressingly simple, I think.

I'll go with lowest common denominator too...it panders to people who haven't enough brain power to blow their nose. All those dirty immigrants, stealing our women and soon they'll be eating all our baked beans too! Rascism, still alive and kicking and helping to sell papers that I wouldn't wipe me bum on!

"If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down."
Ray Bradbury

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
Edward R. Murrow

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

That may provide an accurate forecast of Conservative prospects at the next Election.

'Think it possible that you may be mistaken'

"I am a Socialist. I don't think this world was made for a small minority to dance on the faces of everyone else."

HG Wells

Money can't buy you happiness, but its really nice to be able to choose where to be miserable.
Bobbby/Me.

The mornings here and and I am ris, I don't know where my soxes is.

Bobby. Mine may be crap, but they are orriginal.

“God, grant me the patience to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the sense to know the difference.”

“I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s government, was there to break the fall.

I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug.”

J. K. Rowling

We need to clone that woman

It reinforces the argument that a Government of Eton & Oxford Toffs can have little concept of what deprivation actually means.

Ivan wrote:J. K. Rowling

I might have to rethink my policy of never reading her books!

JKR certainly sounds like someone who has experience of trying to live on £53 a week, unlike someone like IDS.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/388448/I-can-live-on-53-a-week-says-IDS

“Thatcher’s refusal to stand against apartheid, her civil war against the unions, her aggression towards our neighbours in Ireland and a taxation system that was devised in the dark ages, the bombing of a retreating ship – it's just not British.”

Russell Brand

To have been born English is to have won First Prize in the race of Life, My Boy!

Cecil Rhodes

"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today."

Vice Admiral David Beatty, RN