User:Dr Archeville
Collected Quotin's
"A man may build himself a throne of bayonets but cannot sit on it." -- Unknown
"Astronomy is second order crack pot, grand theories based on miniscule evidence and no way to run controlled experiments." -- Unknown
"Love of creation is the element of perfection. Patience and love of creation are the permanence of perfection." -- Unknown
"Modesty is the art of drawing attention to whatever it is you are being humble about." -- Unknown
"Never witness a tear with apathy or indifference. Words, looks, actions -- all may be artificial; but a tear is unequivocal; it comes direct from the heart, and speaks at once the language of truth, nature, and sincerity!" -- Unknown
"I have no parents. I make the heavens and earth my parents. I have no home. I make awareness my home. I have no life or death. I make the tides of breathing my life and death. I have no divine power. I make honesty my divine power. I have no means. I make understanding my means. I have no magic secrets. I make character my magic secret. I have no body. I make endurance my body. I have no eyes. I make the flash of lightning my eyes. I have no ears. I make sensibility my ears. I have no limbs. I make promptness my limbs. I have no strategy. I make "unshadowed by thought" my strategy. I have no designs. I make "seizing opportunity by the forelock" my design. I have no miracles. I make right-action my miracles. I have no principles. I make adaptability to all circumstances my principles. I have no tactics. I make emptiness and fullness my tactics. I have no talents. I make ready wit my talent. I have no friends. I make my mind my friend. I have no enemy. I make carelessness my enemy. I have no armor. I make benevolence and righteousness my armor. I have no castle. I make immovable-mind my castle. I have no sword. I make absence of self my sword." -- Anonymous 14th Century Samurai's Creed
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." -- Lord Acton
"All sunshine makes a desert." -- Arabian proverb
"Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all. " -- Isaac Asimov
"It is one thing to learn about the past; it is another to wallow in it." -- Kenneth Auchinclous
"The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing." -- Babylonian proverb
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he is content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties." -- Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning
"A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green." -- Francis Bacon, On Revenge
"Lift up the self by the Self And don't let the self droop down, For the Self is the self's only friend And the self is the Self's only foe." -- Bhagavad Gita; Ch. 6, verse 5
"There is never a better measure of what a person is then what he does when he's absolutely free to choose." -- William M. Bulger
"Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures." -- H. Jackson Brown
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to ever be a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?" -- Cicero
"The Empires of the future are the Empires of the Mind." -- Winston Churchill
"This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied dead. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now. At missile two-five-MM in silo six-three in Death Valley, California, and missile two-seven-MM in silo eight-seven in the Ukraine, so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos. Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease. The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple." -- Colossus from Colossus: The Forbin Project
"Fear accompanies the possibility of death. Calm shephered its' certainty." -- Dargo, Farscape
"Parting is all we know of Heaven, and all we need of Hell." -- Emily Dickinson
"Within your heart keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go." -- Louise Driscoll
"My mind to me a kingdom is; Such present joys therein I find That it excels all other bliss The earth affords or grows by kind." -- Sir Edward Dyer
"In youth we learn; in age we understand." -- Vor Ebner-Eschenbach
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” “The important thing is to never stop questioning.” -- Albert Einstein
"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few engage in it." --Henry Ford
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” -- Galileo Galilei
"It is said that the future is always born in pain. The history of war is the history of pain. If we are wise, what is born of that pain matures into the promise of a better world, because we learn that we can no longer afford the mistakes of the past." -- G'Kar in Babylon 5: "In the Beginning"
"There are things in the Universe billions of years older than either of our races. They are vast, timeless, and if they are aware of us at all, it is as little more than ants and we have as much chance of communicating with them as an ant has with us. We know. We've tried and we've learned that we can either stay out from underfoot or be stepped on. They are a mystery and I am both terrified and reassured to know that there are still wonders in the Universe. That we have not yet explained everything. Whatever they are, Miss Sakai, they walk near Sigma 957 and they must walk there... alone." -- G'Kar to Sakai in Babylon 5: "Mind War"
"The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest." -- G'Kar to Garibaldi in Babylon 5: "Survivors"
"The universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice. The language is not narn or human or centauri or gaim or minbari. It speaks in the language of hope." "It speaks in the language of trust. It speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion. It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul. But always it is the same voice. It is the voice of our ancestors speaking through us and the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born. The small, still voice that says: 'We are one. No matter the blood, no matter the skin, no matter the world, no matter the star. .. We are one. No matter the pain, no matter the darkness, no matter the loss, no matter the fear. .. We are one.' Here, gathered together in common cause, we begin to realize this singular truth and this singular rule that we must be kind to one another. Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us and each voice lost diminishes us. We are the voice of the universe, the soul of creation, the fire that will light our way to a better future. We are one." "We are one." -- Sheridan / G'Kar in Babylon 5: "The Paragon of Animals"
"Breen. You've managed to import breen from homeworld. How?" "It... isn't actually breen." "But the smell, the taste..." "It's an Earth food. They are called Swedish meatballs. It's a strange thing, but every sentient race has its own version of these Swedish meatballs. I suspect it's one of those great universal mysteries which will either never get explained or which will drive you mad if you ever learned the truth." -- Na'kal and G'Kar in Babylon 5: "Walkabout"
"G'Quan wrote: 'There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.'" -- G'Kar in Babylon 5: "Z'ha'dum"
“Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.” — Thomas Hardy
"There is little room left for wisdom when one is full of judgement." -- Malcolm Hein
"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries." -- Anne Herbert
"Books may be the only true magic." -- Alice Hoffman
"Never explain -- your friends don't need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway." -- Elbert Hubbard
"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." -- William James
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none." -- Thomas Jefferson
“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.” — Thomas Jefferson
"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children" (1952)
"The sciences... will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad... or flee from the deadly light into... a new dark age."
"What is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange eons even death may die."
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn! In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming! -- H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
“If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.” — Thurgood Marshall
"Immortality it not a gift, immortality is an achievement; and only those who strive mightily shall possess it." -- Edgar Lee Masters
"The great man is he who has no lost his child-heart." -- Mencius
"A strong will can fuel a frail physique." -- Napoleon
"We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others, by their actions." -- Harold Nicolson
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Ash nazg dubatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. -- Engraving on the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings trilogy
"Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago." -Ozymandias, in Watchmen
"Laurels don't make much of a cushion." -- Doroth Rabinowitz
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president... is morally treasonable to the American public.” — Theodore Roosevelt
"The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn." -- David Russell
"Just one question. Why?" "Why not?" "It's not an answer." "Oh, yes it is. It's simply not an answer you like or the answer you expect. There's a difference." -- Sakai and G'Kar in Babylon 5: "Mind War"
"Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." -Morpheus, The Sandman
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana
"Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent." -- Marilyn vos Savant
"Come not between the dragon and his wrath." -- Shakespeare, King Lear
"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, Int he cauldron boil and bake. Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, For a charm that's pow'rful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble." -- Shakespeare, MacBeth
"Maybe it's just me... but I'm not crazy about superhero stories where everything's so dark and moody. I like the ones where the good guys fight giant apes on the moon and stuff. Remember those? I do. That was back when superhero worlds were places you wanted to escape to... not from." -Squirrel Girl, GLA Misassembled, ish 2 (by Dan Slott)
"Knowledge precedes victory. Ignorance precedes defeat." -- Sun-Tzu
"These so called 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of Jet-Powered Apes and Time Travel." - Superman, JUSTICE LEAGUE CLASSIFIED #3 (March 2005)
"Knowledge of our Past secures the foundation of our Future." -- Thandaza, Doom 2099
"What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient." -- Bodie Thoene, Warsaw Requiem