Here are a few nice ones, I can't really pick:
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” - John Maynard Keynes
(You can also apply this one to proprietary software vs. Free software (don't say open source in my presence))
“The tyrants are only great because we are on our knees.” - Étienne de La Boétie
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” - Rosa Luxemburg
"I'd love to agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong."
“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, direct, easy to understand and wrong.“
- Paraphrased H.L Mencken“To study religion is merely to know the mind of man, but if one truely wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.”
- Iain Banks“I believe that children are our future. Unless we stop them now.”
- Homer Simpson“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” ― Steven Weinberg
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy.
- Abraham Lincoln
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
- Douglas Adams
I don't want to believe, I want to know - Carl Sagan
"Not everything's a lesson Ryan. Sometimes you just fail."
- Dwight Schrute :D
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)
Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. - Mark Twain
Good people do good things and bad people do evil things but for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life. -Jean-Luc Picard - Star Trek - The Next Generation
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.
- Unknown soldier
"The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few."
Not growing up with TOS, I always thought this quote was super old, like Greek philosopher stuff. Nope. It was friggin Spock! I gotta believe that the sentiment had to have existed long before Star Trek though. If it wasn't, then... That sucks.
Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
- E.V. Debs
"Oh no, not again." -Bowl of Petunias
“Be excellent to each other”
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
-G.K. Chesterton
your future hasn't been written yet. No one's has. Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one.
From Back to the Future.
I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.
Kurt Vonnegut
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
“You build bridges your entire life and no one calls you a bridge builder, however you suck one dick and all of a sudden you’re a cock sucker.”
- Someone
The world needs fewer cynics and more skeptics.
There are tons of quotes I like. Below are some of my favorites.
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. - The Brothers Karamazov (book) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I don't want to live someone else's idea of how to live. Don't ask me to do that. I don't want to find out one day that I'm at the end of someone else's life. - Out of Africa (movie) by Sydney Pollack
Someone once told me the definition of hell; on your last day on earth, the person you could have become will meet the person you became. - Anonymous
"I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee...",
Unknown Soldier - Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
"If you're not falling, you're not learning". No idea who said it but it was about skateboarding at the time. It works for everything though.
"You gotta learn to live between the lines". From Big Deal by the Dead Milkmen.
There are only two things that are infinite. The universe and the stupidity of man. I’m not sure about the universe, though.
- Albert Einstein
"And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.’"
~ Kurt Vonnegut
"If soulmates exist, they're not found, they're made"
Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
-Samuel Beckett
"No matter where you go, there you are"
– Dr. Buckaroo Banzai"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, and loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."
Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.
Woody Allen
You fucked up. You trusted us.
From Animal House
You make choices, but in the end, choices really make you.
Life is too short to please everybody.
“The American public knows what it wants, and it deserves to get it… good and hard.” - H.L. Mencken
“Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul and set you free from all your sins. Sometimes a woman is a heroin addiction - you are a junkie, you are my best friend. Let her go.” - The Bad Examples
Security is mostly an illusion; it does not exist in nature. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
- Hellen Keller
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Alan Kay
“Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.”
― Vladimir Lenin
I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot.
Ramón Maria Narváez (1800-68). Said on his deathbed, when asked by a priest if he forgave his enemies.
Not that I’m in favor if shooting people :) It’s just so deliciously unapologetic and I love the setting in which it is said.
Chocolate does not ask. Chocolate understands.
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." GRRM
I can't pick just one.
Now the world has gone to bed
Darkness won't engulf my head
I can see by infra-red
How I hate the night
-- Douglas Adams, hgttg, Page 444.
When you see yourself doing something badly, and no one's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.
-- Randy Pausch, the last lecture
Just go YouTube The Last Lecture. It takes an hour but you will come away different.
"...because if just one of those things gets down here, then all of this... bullshit, that you think is so important, well, you can kiss all that goodbye."
- Ellen Ripley
"Be careful what you wish for"
--Aesop--
george lucas' greatest accomplishment is that he created an alien that accurately represented seven racial stereotypes
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
Who wants to be consistent? The dullard and the doctrinaire, the tedious people who carry out their principles to the bitter end of action, to the reductio ad absurdum of practice. Not I. Like Emerson, I write over the door of my library the word ‘Whim.’
From Intentions, by Oscar Wilde. It's one of my favorite books, all of the essays there are amazing, I definitely recommend anyone giving it a read.
"Time is weird. Space too. I hope ours match up again some day."
If we could understand but a single flower it could change our lives.
No clear attribution I could find.
The world belongs to the intelligent, the universe belongs to the wise.
~ Matshona Dhliwayo
"Cause nothin' moves faster than the hands of time"
"Man was born free, but everywhere is in chains." -Rousseau
“Can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re kidding.” TMBG
“Everything is a dildo if you’re brave enough.” Abe Lincoln
“Someone told me once that there’s a right and wrong, and that punishment would come to those who dare to cross the line. But it must not be true for jerk-offs like you. Maybe it takes longer to catch a total asshole. But I’m tired of waiting. Maybe it’s just bullshit and I should play God, and shoot you myself.”
Maynard
Yeah, I always wanted to be a well known idiot. - Niko Bellic, after not wanting to appear on camera associated with a street justice man
Drink 'N Thrive... /s
You’ll never get the hang of our game if you keep thinking in flat-earth imagery of right and left, good and evil, up and down. If you need a group label for us, we’re political non-Euclideans. But even that’s not true. Sink me, nobody of this tub agrees with anybody else about anything, except maybe what the fellow with the horns told the old man in the clouds: Non serviam.” Hagbard Celine
Even snakes are afraid of snakes
- Steven Wright
"Without challenge there is nothing, and in nothing there is only gloom. In such a state, the difference between absolute power and absolute powerlessness is undetectable."
"Two tears in a bucket, motherfuck it"
The Lady Chablis
Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.
-Billy Shakes
When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out. - Bác Hồ
All power to all people
