What is your favourite quote?
What is the quote that changed the way you think? The one that touched you? Why did this make a difference to you? Who said it?
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39 Answers
Don’t you ever, don’t you ever, stop being dandy, showing me your handsome.
“Either we’re all God’s children, or none of us are.” – my AA sponsor.
Mr. Braddock: Ben, this whole idea sounds pretty half-baked.
Benjamin: Oh, it’s not. It’s completely baked.
The first one reminds me that no one is better than anyone else, that God is within all of us, and the everyone is deserving of love and respect.
The second one is a reminder to me to follow my heart whenever I can.
Be here now, the philosophy and book with that name by Richard Alpert/Baba Ram Dass (see). Learning that I had a center and how to recognize when I have lost touch with it shaped, and still shapes my understanding of reality (or whatever passes for it within my mental universe).
“Don’t talk like one of them, you’re not. Even if you’d like to be. To them, you’re a freak. Like me. They just need you right now. But as soon as they don’t they’ll cast you out. Like a leper. Their morals, their code; it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. You’ll see- I’ll show you. When the chips are down these, uh, civilized people? They’ll eat each other. See I’m not a monster, I’m just ahead of the curve.” – Crusty, the Clown.
I’ve a few:
The gods are dead, but in their name
Humanity is sold to shame,
While (then as now!) the tinsel’d Priest
Sitteth with robbers at the feast,
Blesses the laden blood-stain’d board,
Weaves garlands round the butcher’s sword,
And poureth freely (now as then)
The sacramental blood of Men!
- Robert Williams Buchanan, “The New Rome”
(I have others for when I feel more optimistic and light-hearted.)
“If living means bowing down to the likes of you bastards, I’d rather die on my feet with my head held high.”
-Mugen
“You live and you learn.”
At this stage of my life I’m still figuring out how living works, so I make some mistakes. This quote reminds me that instead of kicking myself for making mistakes, I can learn from them. I’ve made a few, but they’ve given me experience instead of distress.
Also, it reminds me of Alanis Morissette.
@ragingloli You misattribution should be Krusty, not Crusty. Anyway, it’s really the Joker.
“Be kind, for everyone you know is fighting a great battle.” Attributed to Pliny
I am finding this out more and more.
Life is a bitch, and then you die. T-shirts and bumper stickers everywhere.
If people complain until stuff is sweet, they will never stop, because after the bitch part, is death.
”My mother was Korean, and my father was Black American. She gave me this picture when she was real sick. I was only nine years old.” – Miami Connection
“Those with 3rd world skills will earn 3rd world wages” – Lester C. Thurow. Gave me motivation to get edumacated.
” You know what, it’s not your life. It’s life. Life is bigger than you. If you can imagine that. Life isn’t something that you possess; it’s something that you take part in, and you witness.” Louis C.K.
My favorite for the longest time was the one @janbb shared.
One of my favorite quotes is from Tree’s Lounge, an otherwise unremarkable film (sorry Steve). Tommy (Steve Buscemi) is sitting at the bar with his friends trying to be philosophical about the unhappiness around him:
“Hey, everybody’s fucked up, but nobody wants anybody else to think they are, but everybody knows they are anyway. Sheesh.”
I love that old “Shit Happens” T-shirt:
Taoism: Shit happens
Hinduism: This shit happened before
Buddhism: It is only the illusion of shit happening
Zen: What is the sound of shit happening?
Islam: If shit happens, it is the will of Allah
Jehovah’s Witness: Knock, knock, shit happens
Atheism: There is no such thing as shit
Agnosticism: Maybe shit happens, maybe it doesn’t
Protestantism: shit won’t happen if I work harder
Catholicism: If shit happens, I deserve it
Judaism: Why does shit always happen to me?
Televangelism: Send money or shit will happen to you
Rastafarianism: Smoke that shit
Unitarianism: Who gives a shit?
I bought like nine of those twenty years ago.
On a serious note, this quote has the stark white light of truth in it:
”Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” ~Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi
That one has been my gut check for many years now..
Silk or leather, or a feather, respect yourself & all of those around you.
Progress was once a fine thing but it has gone on far too long. Samuel Clemens aka: Mark Twain
Author James Collins asked Stockdale how he survived for so long. This is an excerpt of his article:
“I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.
However, later on Collins asked about those who didn’t make it–those who died in captivity. Stockdale replied,
Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.
This creates a seeming paradox, as most people think that optimism and faith are identical. To this, Stockdale replied,
This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
http://treeofmamre.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/the-vanity-of-optimism-and-the-power-of-faith/
Don’t you ever think that all the lists in the world are ridiculous? Lists of bestselling novels, lists of the best restaurants, lists of the best students… All the lists are made just to sastify the need to judge. If judging a person is so wrong, why judge so many things like that? Why people are still crying in the happiest country? Why are you still smiling in this place, the saddest city? Stop looking at the lists. You need the lists because you are just too uncertain of youself, of your choice, of this world. Decide for yourself what is good for you. Don’t let anyone choose for you. – Translated from Facebook.
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. -Arthur Ashe
You can do anything, but not everything. – David Allen
Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. – Calvin Coolidge
Promise me you will not spend so much time treading water and trying to keep your head above the waves that you forget, truly forget, how much you have always loved to swim. – Tyler Knott Gregson
The wound is the place where Light enters you. – Rumi
Life is a tragedy when seen up close. But a comedy in long-shot. – Charlie Chaplin
Prince Charming, Prince Charming, ridicule is nothing to be scared of.
“A human being is never what he is but the self he seeks.”
― Octavio Paz
Spoiler Alert
These are the closing lines from Tennyson’s Ulysses:
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—-
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
“The less you respond to rude, critical, argumentative people, the more peaceful your life will become.”
Re-repeating myself:
“Breathe with unconditioned breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens.”
Wendell Berry
“Thanks for this day, for all the birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.”
Barbara Kingsolver
“When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.” H.G. Wells
“Does it really matter what…..affectionate people do—so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses?” Mrs. Patrick Campbell
“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.”.
Henry David Thoreau
“The deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-lounge.”
Mrs. Patrick Campbell, when asked to comment on her recent marriage.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver, from her poem, “The Summer Day.”
Robert A. Heinlein once said something that I liked a lot when I was younger and it made sense – because it seemed like the world itself made more sense then:
An armed society is a polite society.
That should be amended to:
An armed rational society is a polite society, rationality being in such short supply these days.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. —Philip K Dick
Last year I read an ancient novel by Joseph Conrad, Victory, published in 1915, which was not the best book of his that I’ve read, but did have some elegant wit:
From the first page, setting the scene for the novel:
The Tropical Belt Coal Company went into liquidation. The world of finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation. First the capital evaporates, and then the company goes into liquidation.
From page 70
The Zangicomo band was not making music; it was simply murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy.
From page 87
The young man learned to reflect, which is a destructive process, a reckoning of the cost. It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog, which the pitiless cold blasts of the father’s analysis had blown away from the son.
Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.
Bill Cosby
Till the bridge you will need be formed
Till the ductile anchor hold
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere,
O my soul.
Walt Whitman
“When questioning death, it’s important to note that you, at one point, have not been alive.”
-Me =]
@CWOTUS
I like a lot of Robert Heinlein quotes. Even the ones I don’t necessarily agree with, still have a nice ring to em.
I.e. – “Life doesn’t pay off on a good try.”
And I still think his description of love is the most succinct comprehensive explanation of experience to date.
“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
My Dad’s favorite quote, and I feel confident speaking for him, even though he is no longer her to give his approval, was “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bulls**t.” I’m not sure where it came from. Sounds kind of Roosevelt to me.
^ Actually this is one of the most wise things I heared today @Jonesn4burgers!
Great quotes people! I think this is my favourite question (from the questions I have asked) on Fluther because each one of the answers stimulates my brain and makes me wonder!
We were just talking yesterday about a quotation that we frequently see on construction sites from coast to coast (at least in the USA; maybe they word it differently overseas):
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
That we can now do anything
With nothing.
- Anonymous
“We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.” – Anonymous
“Why buy a cow when milk is cheap.”
-Robert Heinlein
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