'Look at what happens to fighter - even the best of them. Joe Louis ended up a doorman at Caesars Palace. He was in a wheelchair at the end. Sonny Liston died in this town, a drunk and a junkie with no money. Even Ali, look at Ali. I love Ali but when they introduce him at my fights I look away. Sure, they cheer him, but where's his beauty now, his speed, away, his talent? It's gone, it's gone. You ask any boxer, whether he's Muhammad Ali or me, whether he's from Brooklyn or Britain. In the ring you're in the hurt business.
Getting hurt, giving hurt - like always, dreaming of getting out to a better place, but you know you're never gonna stay there long. So l got no illusions about boxing, none. This is a brutal business. It's the hurt business. But I'm a fighter - that's all I can do. It's my destiny!'
- Mike Tyson
"I don't know how you perceive my mission as a writer, but for me it is not a responsibility to reaffirm your concretized myths and provincial prejudices. It is not my job to lull you with a false sense of the rightness of the universe. This wonderful and terrible occupation of recreating the world in a different way, each time fresh and strange, is an act of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. I stir the soup. I inconvenience you. I make your nose run and your eyes water." -- Harlan Ellison
Sean Ono Lennon
People often ask me to tell them what my father would think if he were alive today. (I try not to play this game because it is rather pointless).
But the one thing I am certain of is that he would NOT think exactly the same way he did then. The most consistent thing about him was that his thinking evolved. He was always growing as a person and was committed to expanding his consciousness and updating his world view.
So whatever he would think, it would not be the same thing he thought before. He was too smart to stay stuck in the past.
When asked how fascism starts, Bertrand Russell replied: "First, they fascinate the fools. Then they muzzle the intelligent."
From Classic TV Series on Facebook:
Frank Burns
1: “There’s your lounge lizard at war!”
2. “It’s nice to be nice to the nice.”
3. “Oh nerts to you!”
4. Attempting to wax philosophic: “Funny thing, war: never have so many suffered so much so so few could be so happy.”
5. “Nosey Nate!”
6. “That’s not my department. Intelligence is something I try to avoid.”
7. Frank: “Well I happen to think stealing is worse than lying.”
Margaret: “And you did both.”
Frank: “So I ought to know!”
8. “Courage is something you just can’t be afraid to have.”
-Nonsensical Gibberish, but also wise in its own way. Only from Frank.
9. Anytime Frank starts babbling because he is delirious. My favorites of these quotes: When he gets Hemorrhagic fever from “Solder of the Month”. Frank makes his will with Father Mulcahy and leaves all his clothes to Margaret: “Margaret, if I should go (die) before you, I’ll be waiting for you on the other side.”
Margaret: “Oh Frank, darling “
Frank: “But if my wife is there, pretend you don’t know me.”
And
Making his will with Father Mulcahy:
Mulcahy (to Margaret): “He does have the fever and a person is supposed to be of sound mind.”
Frank: “That’s ok Father, I don’t think my mind was any sounder when I was well.”
10. This isn’t a quote, but I love Frank’s sniveling, duplicitous, conniving laugh. Probably The Simpsons Mr Burns and Frank have the two best evil laughs in all TV.
@edgarblythe,
You never know, the worth of the well, until the day it runs dry.
A Timeless Note from Mark Twain About the Jewish People, published in the year 1899:
“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?” - Mark Twain
Charles Bukowski
“Great writers are indecent people
they live unfairly
saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world
so that bastards like me can keep
creating art,
become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead
it means I made it.”
“I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, ‘The Beatles did.’” - Kurt Vonnegut
It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen.
—Philip K. Dick
"I think it's a deep consolation to know that spiders dream, that monkeys tease predators, that dolphins have accents, that lions can be scared silly by a lone mongoose, that otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead. That there isn't their life and our life. Nor your life and my life.
That it's just one teetering and endless thread and all of us, all of us, are entangled with it as deep as entanglement goes."
~Kate Forster
“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
"In book 8 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that people are not naturally led to self-governance but rather seek a strong leader to follow. Democracy, by permitting freedom of speech, opens the door for a demagogue to exploit the people’s need for a strongman; the strongman will use this freedom to prey on the people’s resentments and fears. Once the strongman seizes power, he will end democracy, replacing it with tyranny. In short, book 8 of The Republic argues that democracy is a self-undermining system whose very ideals lead to its own demise. Fascists have always been well acquainted with this recipe for using democracy’s liberties against itself; Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels once declared, “This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.” Today is no different from the past. Again, we find the enemies of liberal democracy employing this strategy, pushing the freedom of speech to its limits and ultimately using it to subvert others’ speech."
--Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them
I'm not sure of the source, but mostly I like this:
Advice from An Old Farmer
Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
Keep skunks and bankers at a distance.
Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
Words that soak into your ears are whispered… not yelled.
Meanness don’t jes’ happen overnight.
Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.
Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
It don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.
You cannot unsay a cruel word.
Every path has a few puddles.
When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
The best sermons are lived, not preached.
Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t never gonna happen anyway.
Don’t judge folks by their relatives.
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
Live a good, honorable life… Then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time.
Don ‘t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t bothering you none.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a Rain dance.
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.
Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin’.
Always drink upstream from the herd.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin’ it back in.
If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around..
Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.
Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.
Most times, it just gets down to common sense.
