Your Quote of the Day

H.G. Wells, "The World Set Free," 1914

“No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.”
J. Robert Oppenheimer

“you walk on corpses, Beauty, undismayed,”
― Charles Baudelaire


“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“The only unbearble thing is that nothing is unbearable.”
― Arthur Rimbaud

Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.
~ Mark Twain

You certainly hollered loud enough Olga when a little dent was made in your reef and when an Australian citizen got what he had been asking for and can hardly claim to be a victim of inhumanity compared to the large number who have a far greater claim to your compassion than Assange does.

Well that's an entirely new definition of "patriot", spendius .....
Concern about the great barrier reef (the survival of which is under threat. Google it & educate yourself.) from an oil spillage which could have been avoided, if that ship you insist on defending had not taken the "short cut" route.
As for Julian Assange .... I've said plenty on the Wikileaks thread, which you also frequent.

Do us all a favour & direct your inevitable follow-up posts on these subjects to the appropriate threads. I would be happy to debate these issues with you on those threads, as you well know. That is, if you actually have some real arguments to make, not just cheap shots like these.


Apologies, edgar.
Back to quotes now, I hope!

“A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside

It's obvious I have some real arguments to make from the way you slip-slide your way around them.

I didn't defend the coal ship. I just said that if you voted for such things as Chinese coal ships plying your waters one of them was going to hit the reef at some point. If the GBR is under threat it is not from the occasional coal ship with a beam of maybe 200 feet hitting a 1000 mile long reef.

Follow those arguments up on the appropriate threads, spendius.
Doing it here is a cop-out.

The world has no room for cowards.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A Kite is a Victim

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you've written
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.

Leonard Cohen

Schoolmarm off Olga.

“Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.”
― Yukio Mishima, After the Banquet

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
~ Erma Bombeck

"We are born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Everything in-between is a gift. ”
― Yul Brynner

“Don't ask me when I first mastered the obvious.”
― Bangkok 8, by John Burdett

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
~ Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

"That guitar is okay but you'll never make a living with it"

-John's Aunt Mimi



"What does it mean when a person is such a pacifist that they get shot? I can never understand that."

- John Lennon



"We thought that if we lasted for two to three years that would be fantastic."

-Ringo Starr



"When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,' you just scream."

-John Lennon, 1970



"I am alive and well and unconcerned about the rumors of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know."

-Paul McCartney, 1969



"I'm a tidy sort of bloke. I don't like chaos. I kept records in the record rack, tea in the tea caddy, and pot in the pot box."

-George Harrison, 1969

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
~ Umberto Eco