Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[orlok]

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed."
--Mark Twain

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by orlok

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed."
--Mark Twain

Given the sentiment of the quotation, I feel justified in posting a link to the QI website about this quotation.

In brief, it's not Mark Twain, but some random person on Usenet in 2000.

The origin of the phrase in that post is unknown, but Thomas Jefferson actually wrote something along the same lines in an 1807 letter:


"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day

[...]

I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."

[orlok]

Thanks for that. I should have remembered what Abraham Lincoln once said, "don't believe everything you read on the internet."

[AlexBell]

'A philosopher might, perhaps, have been surprized to hear two persons seriously defining the limits of virtue, at the very moment in which they mediated the most atrocious crime; a man of the world would have considered it to be mere hypocrisy; a supposition which might have disclosed his general knowledge of manners, but would certainly have betrayed his ignorance of the human heart.'

from The Italian, by Ann Radcliffe

[BenG]

I like Twitter because it combines my two favorite forms of communication: texting, and throwing a note in a bottle out into the sea.
― Emo Philips

[BenG]

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or seen. Every man’s a child until he’s a father. It’s the way the world’s made.”

― Daniel Abraham, A Betrayal in Winter

[AlexBell]

'In the life of the soul, as in the physical life, there is an inspiration and a respiration; the soul needs to absorb the sentiments of another soul and assimilate them, that it may render them back enriched. Were it not for this glorious human phenomenon, there would be no life for the heart; air would be wanting; it would suffer, and then perish.'

from Eugénie Grandet, by Honoré de Balzac

[AlexBell]

'Tis all a Chequerboard of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays.
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

J.K.M Shizari, from Life of Omar Khayyami

[bfisher]

"Well, I don't know what will happen now; we've got some difficult days ahead. (Amen) But it really doesn't matter to with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. (Yeah) [Applause] And I don't mind. [Applause continues] Like anybody, I would like to live a long life–longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. (Yeah) And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. (Go ahead) And I've looked over (Yes sir), and I've seen the Promised Land. (Go ahead) I may not get there with you. (Go ahead) But I want you to know tonight (Yes), that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land."

The last speech of Martin Luther King Jr (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)
http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu...e_mountaintop/

[Angst]

Originally Posted by bfisher

"Well, I don't know what will happen now; we've got some difficult days ahead. (Amen) But it really doesn't matter to with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. (Yeah) [Applause] And I don't mind. [Applause continues] Like anybody, I would like to live a long life–longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. (Yeah) And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. (Go ahead) And I've looked over (Yes sir), and I've seen the Promised Land. (Go ahead) I may not get there with you. (Go ahead) But I want you to know tonight (Yes), that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land."

The last speech of Martin Luther King Jr (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)
http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu...e_mountaintop/

Still as powerful as ever.

[astrangerhere]

“Fed on a media diet of really bad news, we live in a perpetual state of repressed panic. We are paralyzed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb. Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement. Our collective norm.”

Ruth Ozeki | My Year of Meats

[gmw]

[...] through the act of reading my words, the patterns that form your thoughts become an imitation of the patterns that once formed mine. And in that way I live again, through you.

Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.

Ted Chiang - Exhalation (2008 - short story from the "Eclipse 2" collection edited by Jonathan Strahan).

The short story is (legitimately, as far as I can tell) available to read online on this link).

[orlok]

Originally Posted by gmw

[...] through the act of reading my words, the patterns that form your thoughts become an imitation of the patterns that once formed mine. And in that way I live again, through you.

I really like that quote.

[issybird]

"Mr. Browborough, whose life had not been passed in any strict obedience to the Ten Commandments, and whose religious observances had not hitherto interfered with either the pleasures or the duties of his life, repeated at every meeting which he attended, and almost to every elector whom he canvassed, the great Shibboleth which he had now adopted―'The prosperity of England depends on the Church of her people.'"

―Anthony Trollope, Phineas Redux

[issybird]

"I could write down a number of precious thoughts: but it seems silly to do it because it has just occurred to me that the thoughts that strike you (when you are walking along the street) as something you might conceivably write down (when you get home) are thoughts that you don't really forget, or aren't such good thoughts anyway, or ideas you really had all along."

―Thomas Merton, Run to the Mountain