quote of the week: No. 91

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it. (Katharine Whitehorn)

When life gives you questions, Google has answers. (AJ Carpio)

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. (Ernest Hemingway)

I’m Generation Ex-istential / They tell me I look good in bleak (Roy Zimmerman, “Let’s Get Branded”)

Space or time, mass or energy. Pick a side, we’re at war. (Stephen Colbert, on the theory of relativity)

I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets. (Napoleon)

Every man has the religion which he deserves. A sensuous man has a sensuous religion, a spiritual man a spiritual religion. Be sure that if you meet a man who believes in a hell that is actually burning with brimstone in which the souls are roasted as ore is roasted in the kiln, he needs that kind of sensual conception in order to keep in check the savage impulses of his nature. (Paul Carus, in God, 1908)

I don’t really consider this a political issue. I consider it to be a moral issue. (Al Gore, on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth)

No one changes the world who isn't obsessed. (Billie Jean King)

Fear of destitution is not a motive out of which a free creative life can grow, yet it is the chief motive which inspires the daily work of most wage-earners. (Bertrand Russell, 1917)

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward. (Kurt Vonnegut)

The Rebel Alliance is too well equipped -- they're more dangerous than you realize. (General Tagge, Star Wars)

An era can be said to end when its illusions are exhausted. (Arthur Miller)

The spy was a member of a select and immaculate priesthood, vocationally devoted, sublimely disinterested. Hardly a description of that sexual acrobat who leaves a trail of beautiful dead women like blown roses behind him. (James Bond, Casino Royale [1967])

Time spent with cats is never wasted. (Colette)

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Arthur C. Clarke) and its corollary: Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. (Lex Luthor, the Time Lord known as the Doctor, Terry Pratchett, etc.)

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? (Douglas Adams, in Last Chance to See)

If at first you don't succeed, call it version 1.0. (anon.)

I would just venture a guess and say our generation has a predisposition to understanding that we’re on the fucking verge of something, and yet that something seems a little nebulous and remote because it hasn’t happened. And some people say the writing’s on the wall, and I say, “I don't know. Who put it there?” (Robert Downey Jr., in an interview with The Onion AV Club, July 2006)

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. (Neil Armstrong's first words on the moon -- now confirmed to have been spoken as planned... with the "a")

Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. (Samuel Butler)

If you don't have the right equipment for the job, you just have to make it yourself. (MacGyver)

You! What planet is this? (Bones McCoy, to a local 1930s Chicagoan, “City on the Edge of Forever,” Star Trek: The Original Series)

It is not the job of truth to make us feel good. It is the job of truth to be true, and it is our job to deal with it. (William Deresiewicz)

New Orleans, though beautiful and desperately alive, was desperately fragile. There was something forever savage and primitive there, something that threatened the exotic and sophisticated life both from within and without. Not an inch of those wooden streets nor a brick of the crowded Spanish houses had not been brought from the fierce wilderness that forever surrounded the city, ready to engulf it. Hurricanes, floods, fevers, the plague -- and the damp of the Louisiana climate itself worked tirelessly on every hewn plank or stone facade, so that New Orleans seemed at all times like a dream in the imagination of her striving populace, a dream held intact at every second by a tenacious, though unconscious, collective will. (Louis de Pointe du Lac in Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice)

I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm just "Crewman Number Six." I'm expendable! I'm the guy in the episode who dies to prove how serious the situation is! I've gotta get outta here! (Guy Fleegman, Galaxy Quest)

When the true individuality of Leo holds sway, these people have a noble ideal, with a loyal love, confident, pure, and abundant. Having minds of the practical, philosophical, and spiritual combined -- a triunity -- they radiate a luminous substance, which makes them a most powerful person for good, with a marked ability to inspire others. (from the 1894 book The Influence of the Zodiac Upon Human Life by Eleanor Kirk) [Astrology is bulldinky, of course, except, clearly, this description of mighty Leos, which is stunningly accurate. Yes, it's my birthday this week...]

Good people don’t rip other people’s arms off. (Spongebob Squarepants)

It's not the heat, it's the stupidity. (unknown)

Only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things. (Anton Chekhov)

If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard, learning things and weren't so lazy. (Terry Pratchett)

You watch television to turn your brain off and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on. (Steve Jobs, in Macworld, 2004)

Superheroes are finished. These days, it’s all pirates. (Watchmen, by Alan Moore)

As with many lonely children, his problem was not solitude itself but that he was never left free to enjoy it. (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon)

Every man on horseback is an arrogant man, however gentle he may be on foot. The man in the automobile is one thousand times as dangerous. I tell you, it will engender absolute selfishness in mankind if the driving of automobiles becomes common. It will breed violence on a scale never seen before. It will mark the end of the family as we know it, the three or four generations living happily in one home. It will destroy the sense of neighborhood and the true sense of Nation. It will create giantized cankers of cities, false opulence of suburbs, ruinized countryside, and unhealthy conglomerations of specialized farming and manufacturing. It will make every man a tyrant. (R.A. Lafferty, written in the late 1800s, as quoted in Adbusters, Spring 1996)

I hope you like Guinness, sir. It's a perfect substitute for food. (Jack O'Neill to General Hammond, Stargate SG-1)

Sisyphus would have loved running a Web site. (MaryAnn Johanson, welcoming a friend to the neverending hell of being a webmaster)

Have you ever tried not being a mutant? (Bobby Drake's horrified mom, X-Men)

I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin. (Leonard Cohen, in the Daily Telegraph, 1993)

For the early Church, mankind’s use of sex to commune directly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base. It left the Church out of the loop, undermining their self-proclaimed status as the sole conduit to God. For obvious reasons, they worked hard to demonize sex and recast it as a disgusting and sinful act. (The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown)

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. (Albert Einstein) [quote contributed by reader Lindsay]

Spelling bees are serious shit. (spelling bee contestant, Akeelah and the Bee)

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. (Steve Biko)

Everything sucks. Might as well find something to smile about. (Gregory House, House)

Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change. (unknown)

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. (Susan B. Anthony)

It was a dark and stormy nightmare... (Dream, Sandman #2: Imperfect Hosts, by Neil Gaiman)

The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. (Morpheus, The Matrix)

Did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. (V, V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd)

I never met a chocolate I didn't like. (Deanna Troi, Star Trek: The Next Generation)

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. (H.L. Mencken)

I'm not really here. I'm one of the top ten imaginary friends kids have. Just behind John Travolta, Reggie Jackson, and Farrah Fawcett-Majors. (imaginary William Shatner, Free Enterprise)

I was too smart for my own good. I could always argue myself into doing the sexy, futuristic thing instead of being a nice, mundane, nonaffiliated individual. Too smart to settle down, take a job and watch TV after work, spend two weeks a year at the cottage and go online to find movie listings. Too smart is too restless and no happiness, ever... (Art, Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow)

Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my base
Are belong to you
        (someone at slashdot)

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. (Mohandas Gandhi)

If you would not be forgotten, As soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write things worthy of reading, Or do things worth the writing. (Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1738)

Help! Help! I'm being repressed! (Dennis the Peasant, Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Always winter and never Christmas; think of that! (Mr. Tumnus in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

Follow your weird, ladies and gentlemen. Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace your nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredible obscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred years, "woo the muse of the odd." (Bruce Sterling)

I've always had a thing for Santa Claus. (Sue, Bad Santa)

Beware the beast man, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, for he is the harbinger of death. (Cornelius, reading from the sacred scrolls of the apes, Planet of the Apes)

Look at 'em, ordinary fucking people, I hate 'em. (Bud, Repo Man)

When things turn weird, the weird turn pro. (Hunter S. Thompson)

I went down to buy a turkey tree and all they have are things for Christmas. (Sally Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving)

When you're born in the world you're given a ticket to the freak show. (George Carlin, in Time Out: New York, 11.3-9.05)

And in the general hardening of outlook that set in... practices which had been long abandoned... -- imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations -- not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive. (George Orwell, 1984)

It's such a fine line between stupid and clever. (Davis St. Hubbins, This Is Spinal Tap)

It’s not that I’m lazy -- it’s that I just don’t care. (Peter Gibbons, Office Space)

Game over, man! Game over! (Pvt. Hudson, Aliens)

C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me. (Cookie Monster, Sesame Street)

Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation. (Edward R. Murrow)

Half of writing history is hiding the truth. (Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity)

They sicken of the calm that know the storm. (Dorothy Parker)

Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. (Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride)

He who cannot remain in a state of irony flies for refuge to cynicism. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him "WILD THING!" and Max said "I’LL EAT YOU UP!" so he was sent to bed without eating anything. (Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are)

Oh no! Aliens! Bio-duplication! Nude conspiracies! Oh my God! Lyndon LaRouche was right! (Homer Simpson, The Simpsons)

This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields, to shake the towers and counsels of the Great. Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it? (Elrond, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. (Han Solo, Star Wars)

I'm an Air Force officer just like you are, Colonel. And just because my reproductive organs are on the inside instead of the outside doesn't mean I can't handle whatever you can handle. (Samantha Carter, Stargate SG1)

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that. (Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything...)

I want to put a ding in the universe. (Steve Jobs)

Invention, my dear friends, is 93 percent perspiration, 6 percent electricity, 4 percent evaporation, and 2 percent butterscotch ripple. (Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

Welcome to Zork. West of House. You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door. (Zork)

[A]cross the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. (H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds)

I asked for a car, I got a computer. How’s that for being born under a bad sign? (Ferris Bueller, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so. (Ford Prefect, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

I've been ionized, but I'm okay now. (Buckaroo Banzai, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension)

Demented and sad, but social. (The Breakfast Club)