Favourite quotations

First topic message reminder :

"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

"I'm £50 away from getting free shipping which is worth £5, and what I want is £12, so I need to spend £38 more to save money."

It's probably reasonable to assume that Shakespeare encountered people like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.....


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An even earlier version:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

1 Corinthians 13:1

"Politics is something we have done to us - like having a tooth out."
Guardian

Said about an earlier incarnation: "She has the eyes of Caligula but the mouth of Marilyn Monroe." French President Francois Mitterrand

(Half-applies)

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Taken from:-
http://www.newstatesman.com/2017/07/take-back-power

nice to see Naomi Klein being interviewed on TV - a voice of sanity and somehow it seems to have slightly more weight when someone from outside says these things

"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of."
Confucius

very wise saying there by Confucius - hadn't come across that one

Nye Bevan habitually referred to members of the Tory Party as "vermin".
Like vintage wine, some quotations improve with time.