Favourite quotes thread

The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

Quellcrist Falconer
Things I Should Have Learned by Now, Volume II

Richard K. Morgan

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The wise person learns from everything and everyone, the average person from their own experiences, and the fool knows everything better.

Sokrates

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Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.

(Allegedly) Naomi Shulman

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Jackson Lamb (s5 e6 of Slow Horses)

It’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing that it’s the hope that kills you, that kills you.

(Yes, I’ve just binged the first five seasons ahead of season six).

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You’re not wrong if you’re right.

We mustn’t forget the corollary: “You’re not even wrong.” Referring to an argument that can neither be proved or disproved.

A favorite quote of mine is: “Don’t try to reason someone out of something they weren’t reasoned into in the first place.”

Another one: “If you took the idiots out of the legislature, it would no longer be a representative body.”

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„Embarassment is the entry fee to competence“

Ed Latimore

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« L’ouverture d’esprit n’est pas une fracture du crâne » - Pierre Desproges (1939 - 1988)

You might literally translate into : “Open-mindedness is not a skull fracture”
A humorous and clever way to say that tolerance or understanding other people view is not bad thing.

Pierre Desproges was an important french humorist that loved to point out stupidity and, by extension, all the ideologies that form fascism.

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This one really struck me.
Less funny, but quite realistic :

" Optimism is just a lack of information. "

Heiner Müller

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Not to dispute it, to add balance and the flip side…
Pessimism is too much (mis) information.

Me

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“Magic Claw has no children. His days are free and easy”
Bandit Healer

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“I think we’ve all had too much to drink”

“The richest people in the world aren’t the ones with the most, it’s the people who are happy with what they have. ”

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“The one who goes to sleep with an itching ass wakes up with smelly fingers.”

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The most poetic. A classic.

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“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Carl Jung

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Aldous Huxley in Crome Yellow: ‘The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour “righteous indignation” – this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.’

“I am the walrus” - V.I. Lenin

‘Hey, nice marmot’
The dude

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“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet”

– Abraham Lincoln

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The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting.

The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory.

The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control.

The world is rudderless.

Alan Moore

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“Tubby’s, right”, recalls Lee. “With all the bass and drum ting now, dem ting just start by accident, a man sing off key, an’ when you a reach a dat you drop out everyting an’ leave the drum, an’ lick in the bass, an’ cause a confusion an’ people like it …
Sometime me an’ ’im talk an’ me say, ‘Drop out now, Tubby!’ An’ ’im get confuse an’ me jus’ draw down the whole a the lever … you hear ‘Pluck’ an’ jus’ start play pure distortion. Me say, ‘Yes Tubbs, madness, the people dem like it!’ an’ just push it right back up …
An’ then Lee Perry do fe ’im share a dub too, ca’ ’im an’ Tubby’s do a whole heap a ting … ’im an’ Niney [producer nine finger Niney ‘the Observer’] an’ musician jus’ play, an’ ’im jus’ [makes discordant noises and laughs]. ’im drunk, drunk yunno – the engineer a go stop ’im an’ [he] say, ‘You no hear a vibes? Mad sound dat man.’ An’ when ’im come the people dem like it.”

Bunny Lee on King Tubby and the invention of dub. Been thinking about this over the last few months.

1 Like