Sometimes I beleive I am the only one who sees the glory in war.
General George Patton (1885-1945)
It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.
General Robert E. Lee (1807-1870),
remark made at Fredericksburg, VA, 1862
To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving
peace.
General George Washington (1732-1799)
There's many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory,
but, boys, it is all hell.
General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), address, 1880
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only
those who have neither fired a shot, nor heard the shrieks and groans
of the wounded who cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more
desolation. War is hell.
General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)
"Forward" he cried from the rear
And the front rank died.
The general sat, and the lines on the map
Moved from side to side.
Roger Waters, "Us and Them"
Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenso once said about war? He said war
was to important to be left to the Generals. When he said that, fifty
years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to
be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor
the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and
allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, communist
subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and
impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
General Jack Ripper
From Stanley Kubrick's
Dr. Strangelove: or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
Life, as Hobbes said, is nasty, brutish and short. War, on the other
hand, has an unfortunate tendency to be nasty, brutish and long...This
is difficult for the countries of the West. The loss of lives, whether
combatant or civilian, the humanitarian tragedies, the confusion, the
uncomfortable moral choices, and the sheer relentless hell of it all
makes conflict a very difficult thing for a modern democracy. The
simple truth is that late-20th century Western society is not very well
adjusted to the prospect of fighting. After all, it involves risk to
people's lives, when we have happily got used to the idea of people not
having to die for their beliefs...It also involves killing and being
killed, when our television screens have educated us to view warfare as
a kind of grown-up arcade game...Perhaps most difficult of all for the
West, it involves fighting by the Queensberry Rules when, by the very
nature of the conflict we are likely to be involved in, we will be
fighting against thugs who know little and care less about civilised
behaviour.
General Sir Charles Guthrie,
Chief of the Defence Staff, _Evening Standard_,
London, April 1 1999
When does a person decide to become an engineer?
When he realizes he doesn't have the charisma to be an undertaker.
How can you tell an extroverted engineer?
When he talks to you, he looks at your shoes instead of his own.
How do you drive an engineer completely insane?
Tie him to a chair, stand in front of him, and fold up a road map the
wrong way.
A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
Attributed to both Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990) in
THE DICTIONARY OF CONTEMPORARY QUOTATIONS (1982),
ed. by Jonathon Green......and.....
Granville Hicks (1901-1982) in
The 1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
selected and compiled by Robert Byrne
They can't censor the gleam in my eye.
Charles Laughton
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
_The Rejected Statement_
Libraries should be open to all--except the censor.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
in "Saturday Review," October 29, 1960
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your
right to say it.
Evelyn Beatrice Hall (1868-1919)
_The Friends of Voltaire_, 1906
Written as S.G. Tallentyre, paraphrasing Voltaire's attitude
regarding a book censorship case in 1798
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home;
but unlike charity, it should end there.
Clare Booth Luce (1905-1987)
Yes, I am in favor of censorship,
but it has to be conducted by people like me.
Roger Scruton, 1998
Don't be afraid of your movie screens. Don't be afraid
of the artists on your stages. Be afraid of anyone who
would make you afraid of the human imagination.
Michael Moriarty (1941- )
Law and Order - Bang the Drum Slowly
If you suffer, Thank God ! It is a sure sign you are alive.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life...When we are
unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have
any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty
pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without
adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm
of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat, but
exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no
pleasures.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
_Rasselas_ (1759) [the character Princess Nekayah]
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it
had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear;
nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so
sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to
cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and
reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then
to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness
to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be
able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men,
it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is
of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is
the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever.
Henry David Thoreau, _Walden_, ch. 2,
"Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"
Life is far too serious a thing to ever talk seriously about.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
[The] Law of Information: 97.6 percent of all statistics are made up.
Joel E. Cohen
_How Many People Can the Earth Support?_ (1997)
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for
support rather than illumination.
Andrew Lang (1844-1912),
Quoted in: Alan L. Mackay, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1977).
The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average
(mean) number of legs.
E. Grebenik
In earlier times, they had no statistics, and so they had to fall
back on lies.
Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)
To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics,
for these are the measure of his purpose.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)
Statistics tell us that Audrey [Hepburn] died young. What no
statistics can show is that Audrey would have died young at any age.
Sir Peter Ustinov
It is proven that the celebration of birthdays is healthy.
Statistics show that those people who celebrate the most
birthdays become the oldest.
S. den Hartog, Ph.D.
Like other occult techniques of divination, the statistical
method has a private jargon deliberately contrived to obscure
its methods from non-practitioners.
G. O. Ashley
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place.
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973), "The Shield of Achilles"
When my mood gets too hot and I find myself wandering beyond control, I
pull out my motorcycle and hurl it top-speed through these unfit roads for
hour after hour. My nerves are jaded and gone near dead, so that nothing
less than hours of voluntary danger will prick them into life.
Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935)
This book is dedicated to all those men who betrayed me at one time or
another, in hopes they will fall off their motorcycles and break their
necks.
Diane Wakoski: 'The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems'
There is nothing second-hand or vicarious about the sense of freedom, which
means possessing one's own and unique experiences, that a big bike well
ridden confers. Anti-social? Indeed, yes. And being so, a means to
sanity. The motorcycle is a charm against the Group Man.
Robert Hughes, in a 1971 essay in 'Time' Magazine.
When he was on the edge of sixty he yielded to the fascination of a motor
bicycle, and rode it away from the factory for seventy-seven miles, at the
end of which, just outside his own door, he took a corner too fast and was
left sprawling.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
of himself, in 'As Frank Ought To Have Done It'.
Another bend, and I have the honour of one of England's straightest and
fastest roads. The burble of my exhaust unwound like a long cord behind be.
Soon my speed snapped it, and I heard only the cry of the wind which my
battering head split and fended aside. The cry rose with my speed to a
shriek; while the air's coldness streamed like two jets of iced water into
my dissolving eyes. I screwed them to slits, and focused my sight 200 yards
ahead of me on the empty mosaic of the tar's gravelled undulations.
Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935), in 'The Road'
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely
different from any other. In a car you're always in a compartment, and
because you're used to it you don't realise that through that car window
everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all
moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all.
You're *in* the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of
presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your
foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it's right there, so
blurred you can't focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it
anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from
immediate consciousness.
Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Solitude
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of it's own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)