Random thoughts

[cartman]

Quotes from various people throughout history. Discuss...

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Benjamin Franklin

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
- Benjamin Franklin

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
- Voltaire

If we do not believe in freedom of expression for those despise we do not believe in it at all.
- Noam Chomsky

Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.
- Benjamin Franklin

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
- Jean Jaqueas Rousseau

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent which will reach to himself.
- Thomas Paine

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
- George Orwell

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a car.
- Laurence J. Peter

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action. (you liberate a city by destroying it.) Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests
- Gore Vidal

Truth between candid minds can never do harm.
- Thomas Jefferson

The Aim of an Argument ... should not be victory, but progress.
- Joseph Joubert

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
- M. Planck

Sanity is not statistical -- Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad.
- Winston Smith, from George Orwell's 1984

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
- Bertrand Russell

One defeats the fanatic precisely by not becoming a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.
- George Orwell

The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.
- Thomas Jefferson

Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
- Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
- Edward Abbey

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
- John F. Kennedy

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
- Japanese proverb

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. - Aldous Huxley

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
- George Orwell

Once you have made up your mind, facts are but a mere annoyance.
- Unknown

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
- Hermann Wilhelm Gring, during his trial in Nuremberg

A witty saying proves nothing.
- Voltaire

[Blackadar]

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde

[Blackadar]

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.
Oscar Wilde

[Blackadar]

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde

[Sun Tzu]

We cannot enter into alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbors.
Me

[Joe]

They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program.

- George W Bush

[Leonidas]

I'm as libertine as the next guy, more than most, but it's real easy to throw out bold quotes out of context, from a different age, when theye never seen what a couple of jumbo jets can do to some skyscrapers.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Leonidas

I'm as libertine as the next guy, more than most, but it's real easy to throw out bold quotes out of context, from a different age, when theye never seen what a couple of jumbo jets can do to some skyscrapers.

Or when a strong majority of the citizens demand that their representatives do something to fix problems and to keep them secure.

[DeToxRox]

and jesus said, let's turn water into funk

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Leonidas

I'm as libertine as the next guy, more than most, but it's real easy to throw out bold quotes out of context, from a different age, when theye never seen what a couple of jumbo jets can do to some skyscrapers.

And I'm as reactionary as the next guy, but it's critical to remember the importance of many of these wise quotes, timeless and independant of age, when dealing with the raw emotion and anger felt when you do see what a couple of jumbo jets can do to some skyscrapers.

[CamEdwards]

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

- Frederick Douglass

[CamEdwards]

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.

- Frederick Douglass

[cthomer5000]

I wanna dip my balls in it!

- Louie

[CamEdwards]

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

- James Madison

[Ksyrup]

I'm sensing that the vast majority of these thoughts are not random.

[Ksyrup]

Dola.

Except cthomer's. He's got the general idea down pat.

[Dutch]

[CamEdwards]

For Leonidas:

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

- Abraham Lincoln

[CamEdwards]

actually I'm having fun looking up quotes from some our past leaders. It's amazing to think that they came up with this stuff without the help of speechwriters.

[Blade6119]

I wish to make it very clear, we are not retreating! We are merely advancing in another direction.
Patton

[Tigercat]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.

- Frederick Douglass

I love the first sentence of this quote, and IMO, its quite often true. But the word "Freedom" is almost thrown in there when its taken out of context. It almost seems out of place as if he should just say progress again and not freedom. Freedom and progress do not need to be one in the same thing. This is a strictly context quote, a context where certain freedoms needed conflict. Where the progress was towards specific freedoms.

[cartman]

Where's Fritz when you need him?

That's right, playing war games.

[IMetTrentGreen]

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present

including this one? or no?

[QuikSand]

Why does Max Planck have to settle for a first initial?

[CamEdwards]

three more from our 2nd president, John Adams

"Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society."

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."

"The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality."

Whoops, that original third quote was bogus (a paraphrase of a much longer and much less eloquent statement).

[cartman]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Why does Max Planck have to settle for a first initial?

Why does he have to settle for Max, why not Maximillian? Or Massimo (if Italian)?

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense."

Now THAT one was DEFINITELY not random.

[Leonidas]

It's all fun and games to throw great quotes from great people into the equation, but in all reality, can you really say these people faced anything remotely like we do today with al Qaeda? Most of these great quotes were uttered with British rule or civil rebellion in mind, nothing at all to compare with suicidal, religious global warfare. History will show an entire new generation of relevant quotes to work from.

[JeeberD]

"If they ever come up with a swashbuckling School, I think one of the courses should be Laughing, Then Jumping Off Something."

-Jack Handey

(For Bucc)

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Leonidas

It's all fun and games to throw great quotes from great people into the equation, but in all reality, can you really say these people faced anything remotely like we do today with al Qaeda? Most of these great quotes were uttered with British rule or civil rebellion in mind, nothing at all to compare with suicidal, religious global warfare. History will show an entire new generation of relevant quotes to work from.

It's all relative my friend.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

(I think that is from a Led Zepplin song. Either that, or a paraphrased quote from Matthew McConaughey's character in "Dazed and Confused")

[CamEdwards]

Originally Posted by Leonidas

It's all fun and games to throw great quotes from great people into the equation, but in all reality, can you really say these people faced anything remotely like we do today with al Qaeda? Most of these great quotes were uttered with British rule or civil rebellion in mind, nothing at all to compare with suicidal, religious global warfare. History will show an entire new generation of relevant quotes to work from.

Ya know, for a guy who's screen name references ancient Greece, you seem strangely unconcerned with what lessons can be learned from the past.

Then again, that's why I quoted Abe Lincoln for you. He seemed to be saying that at that point in time, the lessons of the past weren't all that applicable. Could be we're at that point in time again today.

[cartman]

And to go back to the British rule quote, 100 years ago (or less), which country was the soverign entity (don't ask our President to define) in India (including Kashmir), Palestine (including current Israel borders)?

That's right, the United Kingdom.

[Leonidas]

5 years ago I would have been the first person to throw out the old quotes on liberty and all, but now I find we are in different times. Can you really find anything in history that equates to al Qaeda? I can't.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Leonidas

5 years ago I would have been the first person to throw out the old quotes on liberty and all, but now I find we are in different times. Can you really find anything in history that equates to al Qaeda? I can't.

Hmmm, lemme think....

Maybe the Crusades? Some may argue that Al-Qaeda is an extension of that battle. The methods and tools may have changed a bit, but the goal seems to be the same.

[CamEdwards]

al Qaeda's just a different kind of tyranny. The ultimate goal is the same as all tyrants: to make us submit to their whim.

That's why I can still see many quotes that are applicable.

[Tigercat]

Originally Posted by Leonidas

5 years ago I would have been the first person to throw out the old quotes on liberty and all, but now I find we are in different times. Can you really find anything in history that equates to al Qaeda? I can't.

Do you realize how close-minded that sounds? I don't mean to get on your case, I think we all get "close-minded" when we truly feel threatened.

Everyone who is threatened at their point in history thinks their issues are so different, so important, and so inapplicable compared to the past. Maybe things have to be that way because we don't have enough years to develop objectivity. Regardless, there aren't many "new" paths in the human condition.

[VPI97]

Y'all don't know what it's like being male, middle-class and white.
- Ben Folds

[cartman]

"some schmuck in a red jacket making $6 an hour isn't a deterrent against a crazy guy determined to strike a blow against the "Great Satan""

comedian circa 1992

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

al Qaeda's just a different kind of tyranny. The ultimate goal is the same as all tyrants: to make us submit to their whim.

That's why I can still see many quotes that are applicable.

Exactly. In term of actual impact, the tyranny of the Crown on the Colonies were much greater than anything a-Q has done. I would also something about Southern slavery and the struggle to destroy that but I'm too tired now.

Thanks, Jeeb.

[cartman]

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

-- Teddy Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918

[panerd]

Originally Posted by Leonidas

It's all fun and games to throw great quotes from great people into the equation, but in all reality, can you really say these people faced anything remotely like we do today with al Qaeda? Most of these great quotes were uttered with British rule or civil rebellion in mind, nothing at all to compare with suicidal, religious global warfare. History will show an entire new generation of relevant quotes to work from.

Still trying to figure out if this is tongue in cheek or not? You really can't be serious that this is the most trying time in the history of the world.