Author Topic: APS favorite quotes  (Read 17214 times)

WLJ

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #50 on: April 10, 2020, 11:09:52 AM »
Same for this one

Incompetence is often mistaken for conspiracy
« Last Edit: April 10, 2020, 12:03:04 PM by WLJ »
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us".
- Calvin and Hobbes

WLJ

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #51 on: April 10, 2020, 11:26:02 AM »
“We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.”

Source disputed
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us".
- Calvin and Hobbes

RoadKingLarry

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #52 on: April 10, 2020, 01:16:38 PM »
Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention.

Life is tough, it's tougher when you're stupid.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Samuel Adams

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #53 on: April 10, 2020, 04:10:38 PM »
Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure. -Edward Thorndike

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #54 on: April 10, 2020, 04:13:14 PM »
The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.  -William Wordsworth

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #55 on: April 10, 2020, 04:17:10 PM »
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight; nothing he cares for more than his own personal safety; is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.   -John Stuart Mill

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #56 on: April 10, 2020, 04:18:51 PM »
Tact is the ability to tell a man he's open minded when he has a hole in his head.  -F.M. Kernan

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #57 on: April 10, 2020, 04:21:40 PM »
The pleasures of the world are deceitful; they promise more than they give, they trouble us in seeking them, they do not satisfy us when possessing them, and they make us despair in losing them. - Madame de Lambert

grampster

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #58 on: April 10, 2020, 04:32:41 PM »
"Do not wrestle with a pig.  You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."  G.B. Shaw.
"Never wrestle with a pig.  You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."  G.B. Shaw

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #59 on: April 10, 2020, 04:34:23 PM »
It is a false idea of utility to sacrifice a thousand real advantages for the sake of one disadvantage which is either imaginary or of little consequence; this would take fire away from men because it burns, and water because it drowns people; this is to have no remedy for evils except destruction.

Laws forbidding people to bear arms are of this nature; they only disarm those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.  On the other hand, how can someone who has the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity and the most important ones in the statute books be expected to respect the most trifling and purely arbitrary regulations that can be broken with ease and impunity and that were they enforced, would put an end to personal liberty- so dear to each man, so dear to the enlightened legislator- and subject the innocent to all the vexations that the guilty deserve?

Such laws place the assaulted at a disadvantage and the assailant at an advantage, and they multiply rather than decrease the number of murders since and unarmed person may be attacked with greater confidence than someone who is armed.  These laws should not be deemed preventive, but rather inspired by a fear of crime.  They originate with the tumultuous impact of a few isolated facts, not with a rational consideration of the drawbacks and the advantages of a universal decree.

Cesare Beccaria "An Essay on Crimes and Punishments" 1764

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #60 on: April 10, 2020, 04:39:19 PM »
My favorite ironic quote:

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.  -Lyndon B Johnson

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #61 on: April 10, 2020, 04:42:53 PM »
Rather fail by honor than succeed by fraud. -Sophocles

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #62 on: April 10, 2020, 04:43:23 PM »
Well done is better than well said.  -Benjamin Franklin

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #63 on: April 10, 2020, 04:48:44 PM »
From Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love":

Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool)

Don't try to have the last word. You might get it.

An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.

Natural laws have no pity.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

You live and learn, or you don't live long.

Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen.  Homo Sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #64 on: April 10, 2020, 04:50:00 PM »
Let no one be discouraged by the belief that there is nothing one person can do against the enormous array of the world's ills, misery, ignorance, and violence.  Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events.  And in the total of all those acts will be written the history of a generation.

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope.  Crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples can build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance  -Robert Kennedy
« Last Edit: April 10, 2020, 05:17:41 PM by JN01 »

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #65 on: April 10, 2020, 04:53:41 PM »
Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier.

The way is actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

-Margaret Young

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #66 on: April 10, 2020, 04:54:44 PM »
He who goes unarmed in paradise had better be sure that that is where he is.  -James Thurber

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #67 on: April 10, 2020, 04:56:56 PM »
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that this is true.  -James Branch Cabell

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #68 on: April 10, 2020, 05:00:18 PM »
However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.  -John Stuart Mill

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #69 on: April 10, 2020, 05:01:52 PM »
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence- it is force.  -George Washington

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #70 on: April 10, 2020, 05:02:42 PM »
A right is not what someone gives you.  It is what no one can take away from you. -Ramsey Clark

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #71 on: April 10, 2020, 05:07:20 PM »
The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.  -Lin Yutang

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #72 on: April 10, 2020, 05:09:01 PM »
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.  Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.

JN01

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #73 on: April 10, 2020, 05:10:04 PM »
A man may conduct himself well in both adversity and good fortune, but if you want to test his character, give him power.  -Abraham Lincoln

zxcvbob

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Re: APS favorite quotes
« Reply #74 on: April 10, 2020, 05:16:29 PM »
"Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie; I put that envelope under that garbage."  :)
"It's good, though..."