Finding Solace in Favourite Quotes: Escaping Despair with Words of Wisdom

[Lisa!]

"A successfull man is one who builds solid foundations with the rocks that others throw at him"

 

[ranger]

"Whoever says money can't buy you happiness, has never been poor" ~ me

"Fear crushes greed" ~ me

"you guys are so young and naive. you think qualifications are on paper." ~ mathwonk

 

[Vagrant]

Because of its heavy body and tiny wings a bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly.But a bumblebee doesn't know this so it flies anyway.

 

[Astronuc]

Aristotle, Metaphysics II (trans. W. D. Ross) -

"The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of things, and while individually they contribute little of nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed."

I wish I had been exposed to classic Greek way back in my early years.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A Springfield man pleaded innocent Tuesday to charges that he deliberately ran over a wild turkey in September on his way to anger management class...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1739843/posts

 

[Ivan Seeking]

In Washington [D.C.], people lie while on the record, and tell the truth while off the record. In the Middle East, people tell the truth while on the record, and lie while off the record. - Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times

 

[Astronuc]

Husband (to wife) - Please don't yell so loudly.

Wife (to husband) - If it wasn't loud, I wouldn't be yelling.

 

[ranger]

Comedian Bill Burr on marriage:

Is this the line to loose half my sh*t? Awesome!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- After 10 years of research on a project that was supposed to take only five years, a Canadian industrial psychologist found in a giant study that not only is procrastination on the rise...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/01/11/procrastination.nation.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

 

[Ivan Seeking]

In an effort to save the American farmer, Bio-Willie - aka country singing legend Willie Nelson - is one of the leaders in promoting and producing biodiesel made from domestically grown seed stocks. He also drives a Mercedes that runs on locally produced biodiesel. Proudly displayed in the window is a sticker that reads: No war required.

 

[Reshma]

When you hate someone, you hate something in him that is already a part of you. What isn't a part of you should not affect you.

Herman Hesse

 

[siddharth]

"I am your king!"
"Well, I didn't vote for you"

"Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."

Yes, I watched it once again today

 

[fourier jr]

Dedekind expressed the opinion about the concept of a set. He imagined a set as a closed sack containing definite objects which are not seen, and of which nothing is known except that they are existing and are definite. Some time later Cantor made known his idea of a set. He raised his colossal figure, with lifted arm he made an imposing gesture, and with a glance in an indefinite direction he said, "I imagine a set to be like an abyss."
Emmy Noether

 

[lunarmansion]

Dedekind expressed the opinion about the concept of a set. He imagined a set as a closed sack containing definite objects which are not seen, and of which nothing is known except that they are existing and are definite. Some time later Cantor made known his idea of a set. He raised his colossal figure, with lifted arm he made an imposing gesture, and with a glance in an indefinite direction he said, "I imagine a set to be like an abyss."
Emmy Noether

Emmy Noether- interesting life of a female mathematician:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Why do real estate agents get head shots?

- comedian on Letterman whose name I didn't get.

Of course that opens the whole can of worms; for example:
Why do we park on driveways and drive on parkways?

 

[fourier jr]

I have nothing, I owe a great deal, and the rest I leave to the poor.
Francois Rabelais' will

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.
David Hilbert

Those who say they never have time do the least.
Georg Lichtenberg

Logic, it appears to me, teaches us to test the conclusiveness of an argument already discovered, but I do not believe that it teaches us to discover correct arguments and demonstrations.
Galileo

The great also make mistakes, and some of them make so many you are almost tempted to think they weren't great at all.
Georg Lichtenberg

 

[mace2]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Clarke

"Yippie ka yay m*****-******!" -McClane

 

[Astronuc]

"If you fall, you're fired before you hit the ground"

words of encouragement from a construction formean as we prepared to walk high iron. I guess you have to walk the iron to appreciate the humor.

 

[GregA]

You're just jealous because all the voices are talking to me

I remember Seeing this on a t-shirt and thought it was brilliant

 

[ranger]

"You believe I'm the devil, maybe its because I've lived in hell and I am trying to get out"

~Blood Diamond Movie (if I recall correctly)

 

[radou]

" I'm Winston Wolfe. I solve problems. "

~Pulp Fiction

 

[J77]

Education, education, education.

Tony Blair 1996.

Cracks me up every time

 

[fourier jr]

You're just jealous because all the voices are talking to me

I remember Seeing this on a t-shirt and thought it was brilliant

a guy i work with has a shirt that says '"i'm not a doctor but i'll take a look anyway"
it would be a good one to wear to a bar

 

[ranger]

"If you can't beat them or join them, then do something weird."

~author unknown

The capacity to learn is a gift;
The ability to learn is a skill;
The willingness to learn is a choice.

~Dune: House Harknonnen, p. 437

 

[BobG]

Warrenton, West Virginia newspaper:

IMPORTANT NOTICE:
If you are one of the hundreds of parachuting enthusiasts who bought our "Easy Sky Diving" book, please make the following correction: on page 8, line7, the words "state zip code" should have read "pull rip cord".

 

[ranger]

"I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I only lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three."
~Elayne Boosler

 

[Ivan Seeking]

"President Bush claims that he has prayed every day since taking office.

HE'S NOT THE ONLY ONE!" - Jay Leno

 

[3trQN]

"The educated person must be taught that it is not a disgrace to fail,
and that he must analyse for every failure to find its cause.
He must learn to fail intelligently,
for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world." C.F.Kettering

Oh and Spike Milligan's Epitaph:

"I told you I was ill"

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/George_Bernard_Shaw/

Every single one of them are a gem.

But here's my favourites.

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

I'm an atheist and I thank God for it. (he was agnostic)

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children

George Bernard Shaw.

And more of an anecdote from Bertrand Russel I rather liked.

Bertrand Russell was a well known British philosopher of the 20th century. He was arrested during World War I for anti-war activities, and filled out a form at the jail. The officer, noting that Russell had defined his religious affiliation as "Agnostic" commented: "Ah yes; we all worship Him in our own way, don't we." This comment allegedly "kept him smiling through his first few days of incarceration."

 

[Evo]

Help me find this quote!

It's something similar to

"one would be surprised at how little is actually said about them in their absence"

"one would be disappointed to find out how little is said about them behind their backs"

What is this quote? I thought I had either posted it in this thread or someone else did. I can't find it now.

 

[Astronuc]

Help me find this quote!

It's something similar to

"one would be surprised at how little is actually said about them in their absence"

"one would be disappointed to find out how little is said about them behind their backs"

What is this quote? I thought I had either posted it in this thread or someone else did. I can't find it now.

That would seem to belong in a thread on 'ego'.

I heard an interview with Norman Mailer the other day where he said something to the effect that he loves to give grief to those who are 'overly happy with themselves.'

 

[ranger]

Schrodinger's Dog, that's a strong collection of quotes dude!

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Schrodinger's Dog, that's a strong collection of quotes dude!

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich--something for nothing.

George Bernard Shaw

https://www.physicsforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=9074&stc=1&d=1170624845

I forgot one, I'm a big admirer of his work: a philosopher,author and fighter for human rights by profession, obscenely rich off his literary works, Nobel prize winner and general all round philanthropist, raised under order of his parents to be an agnostic and uncompromisingly vegetarian. In a world full of hypocrites, I think GBS was one of the truly great minds of the 20th century.

Author of works such as Pygmalian(on the stage as:My Fair Lady)St Joan, Man And Superman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw

Shaw's career started with frustration and near poverty. Neither music criticism (written under the name of a family friend) nor a telephone company job lasted very long, and only two of the five novels Shaw wrote between 1879 and 1883 found publishers: Cashel Byron’s Profession (1882), a novel about prizefighting as an occupation that anticipates the theme of prostitution as an antisocial profession in the play Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1893), and An Unsocial Socialist (1883). By the mid-1880s Shaw discovered the writings of Karl Marx and turned to socialist polemics and critical journalism. He also became a firm (and lifelong) believer in vegetarianism, a spellbinding orator, and tentatively, a playwright. He was the force behind the newly founded (1884) Fabian Society, a middle-class socialist group that aimed at the transformation of English government and society. In 1887, Shaw spoke and marched in the Bloody Sunday demonstrations that ended up as a riot in Trafalgar Square. Through the Fabian Society’s founders, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Shaw met the Irish heiress Charlotte Payne-Townshend, whom he married in 1898, soon after his earnings as a writer made him financially self-sufficient.

Shaw’s early journalism ranged from book reviews and art criticism to music columns (many of them championing the controversial work of the German composer Richard Wagner) from 1888 to 1890 under the signature “Corno di Bassetto” (basset horn), later under his own initials. Shifting to the Saturday Review as drama critic, a post he held from 1895 to 1898, Shaw became the champion of the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, about whom he had already written his influential The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891).

Playwriting

Shaw was a novelist, critic, pamphleteer, essayist, inveterate letter writer, politician and public speaker, but he is by far best known today as a playwright. He did not finish his first play, however, until in his mid-30s. Shaw was born at 33 Synge Street in Dublin, Ireland to rather poor Church of Ireland parents, George Carr Shaw (1814-1885) and Lucinda Elizabeth (Gurly) (1830-1913). Shaw had two sisters, Lucinda Frances (1853-1920), a singer of musical comedy and light opera, and Elinor Agnes (1854-1876); both died of tuberculosis.

Shaw was educated at Wesley College, Dublin and moved to London during the 1870s to embark on his literary career. He wrote five novels, none of which was published, before finding his first success in the late 1880s as a music critic on the Star newspaper, under the pseudonym "Corno di Bassetto". From 1895 to 1898, Shaw was the drama critic on Frank Harris's Saturday Review.

During this time, Shaw became a socialist and joined the Fabian Society. He was heavily involved in politics and even held office as a borough councilor in the St. Pancras district of London from 1897 to 1903. While Shaw's political beliefs inform his plays, they do not generally overwhelm them.

Shaw started working on his first play, Widower's Houses, in 1885, in collaboration with critic William Archer. Archer, who came up with the structure, felt Shaw was no playwright (an opinion he apparently never changed), and the project was abandoned. Years later, Shaw gave it another shot and, in 1892, completed his first play—alone.

Widower's Houses debuted at London's Royalty Theatre on December 9, 1892. Shaw would later call it one of his worst works, but he had found his medium. He would go on to write over 50 plays, most of them full-length.

Many of his earliest pieces had to wait years to receive major productions in London, but they are still being performed today. Among them are Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893), Arms and the Man (1894), Candida (1894) and You Never Can Tell (1895).

His first financial success as a playwright came from Richard Mansfield's American production of The Devil's Disciple (1897). Shaw, in fact, would often see his plays succeed in America (and Germany) before they did in London.

The ideas in his earliest theatrical work were unconventional, and his wit unmatched by contemporaries (save Oscar Wilde), but his plays were still designed for the theatre of his time. Once he became more experienced, and more popular, his plays tended to be less compact and talkier, though no less successful. These works from what might be called the beginning of his "middle" period include Caesar and Cleopatra (1898), Man and Superman (1903), Major Barbara (1905) and The Doctor's Dilemma (1906).

From 1904 to 1907, several of his plays had their London premieres in notable productions at the Court Theatre, managed by Harley Granville-Barker and J.E. Vedrenne.

His first original play performed at the Court, John Bull's Other Island (1904), though not one of his more popular plays today, made his reputation in London when, during a command performance for King Edward VII, the King laughed so hard he broke his chair.

By the 1910s, Shaw was a well-established playwright. New works such as Fanny's First Play (1911) and Pygmalion (1912)—on which My Fair Lady was based—had long runs in front of large London audiences. (Even though Oscar Straus's The Chocolate Soldier (1908)--an adaptation of Arms And The Man--was very popular, Shaw detested it and for the rest of his life forbade any musicalization of his work, including a potential Franz Lehar operetta based on Pygmalion. Only after Shaw's death did My Fair Lady become possible.)

Many feel Shaw's outlook was changed by World War I, a war he—quite unpopularly—opposed. His first full-length piece presented after the War, written mostly during it, was Heartbreak House (1919). This seemed to be a new Shaw; the wit was still there, but the action and theme were darker, almost despairing at times.

In 1921, Shaw completed Back to Methuselah, his "Metabiological Pentateuch." The massive, five-play work starts in the Garden of Eden and ends thousands of years in the future. Shaw claimed it was a masterpiece, but many critics did not share that opinion.

His next original play, however, is generally conceded to be one of his best, Saint Joan (1923). Shaw had long thought of writing about Joan of Arc, and her recent canonization spurred him on. It was an international success, and is believed to have led to his Nobel Prize in Literature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:George_Bernard_Shaw_1934-12-06.jpg

He continued writing plays for the rest of his life, but very few of them are as notable—or as often revived—as his earlier work. The Apple Cart (1929) was probably his most popular work of this era. Later full-length plays like Too True to Be Good (1931)[1], On the Rocks (1933)[2], The Millionairess (1935), and Geneva (1938) have been seen as marking a decline. His last significant play, In Good King Charles Golden Days[3] has, according to St. John Ervine, passages that are equal to Shaw's major works. His last full-length work was Buoyant Billions (1946–48)[4], written when he was in his nineties.

Many of Shaw's published plays come with lengthy prefaces. These tend to be essays more about Shaw's opinions on the issues dealt with in the plays than about the plays themselves. Some prefaces are much longer than the actual play. For example, the Penguin Books edition of his one-act The Shewing-up Of Blanco Posnet (1909)[5] has a 67-page preface for the 29-page piece.

One of the world's most notable theatrical voices was silenced when Shaw died in 1950 at the age of 94 due to a fall from a ladder.[2]

 

[fourier jr]

"The educated person must be taught that it is not a disgrace to fail,
and that he must analyse for every failure to find its cause.
He must learn to fail intelligently,
for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world." C.F.Kettering

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.
Salvador Dali

The great also make mistakes, and some of them make so many you are almost tempted to think they weren't great at all.
Georg Lichtenberg

some other person (bertrand russell maybe) said something like "people who lack any vices are very likely lacking in virtues also", that's another good one.

 

[ranger]

I'm not aware of any such Bertrand Russell quote. If you ever do find the exact quote, let me know and I'll add it to my list of favorite Russell quotes.