Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

"but they [top brass] seem to go on from saying that losses are unavoidable, to thinking that they're necessary, and from that, to thinking that they don't matter."

Frederic Manning, from The Middle Parts of Fortune

Sounds like a quote that would have been right at home in a 1957 Kirk Douglas movie I saw this week: Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory.

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Sounds like a quote that would have been right at home in a 1957 Kirk Douglas movie I saw this week: Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory.

Great movie, but it's been a while. As I recall a French general orders the shelling of his own troops when they refuse the order to 'go over the top' in a impossible charge against German trenches. The soldiers that refused are on trial for cowardice and disobeying commands.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Great movie, but it's been a while. As I recall a French general orders the shelling of his own troops when they refuse the order to 'go over the top' in a impossible charge against German trenches. The soldiers that refused are on trial for cowardice and disobeying commands.

That's the one. After the generals' foolhardy attack plan predictably and spectacularly fails, to save face for the brass three soldiers are picked at random to be tried for cowardice.

[AlexBell]

'The daily life into which people are born, and into which they are absorbed before they
are well aware, forms chains which only one in a hundred has moral strength enough to despise, and to break when the right time comes.'

Elizabeth Gaskell, from Ruth, 1853

[covingtoncat73]

“Times are not good here (in New Orleans). The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.”
~Lafcadio Hearn, 1880s

For some reason this passage from a book I am currently reading really struck me:

I looked out of the window at the cloudy, leaden spring sky. I looked at the robe that Father wore over his civilian uniform, and at the breast of a ruddy young petty officer, which seemed to leap up along his row of gilt buttons. I felt as if I were situated between the two men. Soon, when I reached the proper age, I would be called into the forces. Yet I was not sure that even when I was called up, I would be able to live faithfully by my duty, like that petty officer in front of me. In any case, for the present I was situated squarely between two worlds. Although I was still so young, I was conscious, under my ugly, stubborn forehead, that the world of death which my father ruled and the world of life occupied by young people were being brought together by the mediation of war. I myself would probably become an intermediary. When I was killed in the war, it would be clear that it had not made the slightest difference which path I had chosen of the two that now lay before my eyes.

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima

[kennyc]

"Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there’s a succession of incidence, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch-point in the history. What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidity we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical
civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars."
- Carl Sagan

.....ah, such a dreamer!

[kennyc]

and then the realist:

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
- Stephen King

[kennyc]

and me:

"Given evolution and time, intelligent sentient life is inevitable."
- Kenny A. Chaffin

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by kennyc

"Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there’s a succession of incidence, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch-point in the history. What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidity we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical
civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars."
- Carl Sagan

.....ah, such a dreamer!

Ah, yes. A beautiful dream. People are evil little monkeys, though, and we will, I fear, blow ourselves up or poison ourselves before we make it to the stars. Can we tell ourselves a story that will elevate us or will we descend to the eat or be eaten of the rest of the animal world?

“If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth and claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

and me:

"Given evolution and time, intelligent sentient life is inevitable."
- Kenny A. Chaffin

Would that be cynical optimism?

Helen

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Would that be cynical optimism?

Helen

Well, That's pretty much how I define my philosophy of life so maybe so.

or as I think of the quote....inevitability.

[Lin2412]

I'm reliving my love for Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

[Lin2412]

Mark Watney is hilarious! (I'm putting off to continue reading but I can't help it. I dread getting to the ending though. I don't want want it to end)

LOG ENTRY: SOL 381 I’ve been thinking about laws on Mars. Yeah, I know, it’s a stupid thing to think about, but I have a lot of free time. There’s an international treaty saying no country can lay claim to anything that’s not on Earth. And by another treaty, if you’re not in any country’s territory, maritime law applies. So Mars is “international waters.” NASA is an American nonmilitary organization, and it owns the Hab. So while I’m in the Hab, American law applies. As soon as I step outside, I’m in international waters. Then when I get in the rover, I’m back to American law. Here’s the cool part: I will eventually go to Schiaparelli and commandeer the Ares 4 lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can’t until I’m aboard Ares 4 and operating the comm system. After I board Ares 4, before talking to NASA, I will take control of a craft in international waters without permission. That makes me a pirate! A space pirate!

[kennyc]

I think you mean Andy Weir is hilarious.....