Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[poohbear_nc]

Science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. It is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good.

Terry Pratchett, The Science of Discworld

[WT Sharpe]

Nice one, Pooh!

[poohbear_nc]

Nobody can say it like Sir Terry!

[Angst]

I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

[maianhvk]

"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."

-- Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, speech to the House of Commons (1 March 1848), Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates. 3rd series, vol. 97, col. 122.

[poohbear_nc]

I've been having problems with migraines this week, so I naturally thought of Arthur Dent's anguished outcry when he thought he was about to die:

"I don't want to die now! I've still got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it."
Douglas Adams, H2G2

[WT Sharpe]

.....History is the torch that is meant to illuminate the past, to guard us against the repetition of our mistakes of other days. We cannot join in the rewriting of history to make it conform to our comfort and convenience.
..........— Claude G. Bowers (1878-1958), American writer, historian, politician, and ambassador. From his Introduction to F. Jay Taylor's The U.S. and the Spanish Civil War (1956).

[WT Sharpe]

.....We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
..........— Robert Wilensky (1951 - ), American academic. In the "Quotes of the Week" section of Mail, Sunday, February 16, 1997. Quoted from The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations by Elizabeth Knowles.

[BenG]

He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safe for children to grow up in.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971)

[Rainmaker]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

I've been having problems with migraines this week, so I naturally thought of Arthur Dent's anguished outcry when he thought he was about to die:

"I don't want to die now! I've still got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it."
Douglas Adams, H2G2

I thinks its between the first 2 paragraphs of Hitchhiker's Guide, there is a "Whale monologue", whats makes you get an idea of what the book is going to be like.
There is, also, a Pratchett quote about "half full vs half empty" that it is marvelous!

I have to say, Adams and Pratchett are the funniest mates i've ever read.

[dreams]

"Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self."

— Writer Cyril Connolly

Spoiler:

From Wikipedia
Cyril Vernon Connolly (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon (1940–1949) and wrote Enemies of Promise (1938), which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of fiction that he had aspired to be in his youth.

[alansplace]

tanstaafl - translation: there ain't no such thing as a free lunch - robert a. heinlein

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by dreams

"Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self."

— Writer Cyril Connolly

Spoiler:

From Wikipedia
Cyril Vernon Connolly (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon (1940–1949) and wrote Enemies of Promise (1938), which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of fiction that he had aspired to be in his youth.

Wonderful! That could apply equally to areas outside of writing. Wikiquote gives the source as the February 25, 1933 issue of The New Statesman.

[WT Sharpe]

.....Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
..........— Gore Vidal (1925 - ), American novelist and gadfly. Quoted in the Sunday Times Magazine on September 16, 1973.

[astrangerhere]

"It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It is only necessary to believe that somewhere there is something worthy of belief."

- Alfred Bester in The Stars, My Destination (1956)