The Great Quotes thread

[kfm27917]

“If Russia fails, all bets are off for the 21st century. And if Russia succeeds as a nation-state in the family of nations, it will owe much of that success to one man, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.” – Time magazine, “Putin Man of the Year” in 2007

[kfm27917]

“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.” – Max Planck

[Bill Ryan]

Genius sometimes consists of knowing when to stop.

Charles de Gaulle

[Bill Ryan]

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr

[Eva2]

We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos, the right moment, for a ‘metamorphosis of the gods’, of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing’
-Carl Jung.

[Eva2]

[Raskolnikov]

[rgray222]

I was never much of a Michael J. Fox fan until I heard him say this.

"Optimism is sustainable"

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7kuT6zm5G-c

[Raskolnikov]

"The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it."

Sartre

[Vicus]

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

- John Lennon

( ...and then those insane/maniacs kill him)

[justntime2learn]

"Sometimes something happens and you find that all the people you knew are like nothing and someone you never saw before will reach out a hand to help." ~ Harold Robbins

[kfm27917]

George Bernard Shaw once said “a reasonable man adjusts himself to the world. An unreasonable man expects the world to adjust itself to him.
Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable people.”

[Vicus]

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

- Edmund Burke

[Frankie Pancakes]

"If you find it hard to laugh at yourself, I would be happy to do it for you."

-Groucho Marx

[Raskolnikov]

"No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine."

William Blum (Former U.S. State Department employee)

[Eva2]

"Only he who has experienced the power of extremes finds true balance."
—Davante Yara
“The ALCHEMICAL OPUS is dangerous. Right at the beginning you meet the ‘dragon’, the chthonic spirit, the ‘devil’ the ‘blackness’, the NIGREDO and this encounter produces suffering.... the soul finds itself in the throes of melancholy…
In the language of the alchemists matter suffers until the NIGREDO disappears, when the ‘dawn’ (Aurora) will be announced by the ‘peacock’s tail’ (Cauda Pavonis) and a new day will break, the LEUCOSIS or ALBEDO…
But in this this state of whiteness one does not live.. to make it come alive it must have ‘blood’, ..what the alchemists call the RUBEDO, the ‘redness’ of life. Blood alone can reanimate a glorious state of consciousness in which the last trace of blackness is dissolved”
Carl Jung

Art: Nightmare or salvation, nothingness or existence
Vyacheslav Belov

[Vicus]

The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.

- Erich Fromm

[Bill Ryan]

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 1942
Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging in 1945 at the concentration camp in Flossenbürg, when he was aged 39.

[Bruce G Charlton]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 1942
Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging in 1945 at the concentration camp in Flossenbürg, when he was aged 39.

Actually, I completely disagree!

I would say almost the opposite is true: that stupidity is much less dangerous than malice - so long as the stupid are genuinely well-motivated, they will stumble towards right action.

But malice (i.e. evil) is Not self-correcting, but rather (all too often) malice feeds upon itself, and increases without specific limit.

[Johnnycomelately]

Posted by Bruce G Charlton (here)

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 1942
Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging in 1945 at the concentration camp in Flossenbürg, when he was aged 39.

Actually, I completely disagree!

I would say almost the opposite is true: that stupidity is much less dangerous than malice - so long as the stupid are genuinely well-motivated, they will stumble towards right action.

But malice (i.e. evil) is not self-correcting, but rather (all too often) malice feeds upon itself, and increases without specific limit.

I’m with Bruce here, mostly. Because malice thinks it won’t come to grief, has no broader context for self awareness, operates by jumping over walls.

But competance is def a thing or not, as Bill’s mention of stupidity points out.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cMFWFhTFohk