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Great Quotations

Frideswide said:
A now sadly neglected poet - Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her book A Few Figs from Thistles is more than pleasing.

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah, my foes! and oh, my friends!
It gives a lovely light!
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I love her poetry. This is what got me started.
 
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.”

C.S. Lewis

"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."

Mark Twain

"The wise man speaks because he has something to say, the fool because he has to say something."

Plato

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."

Tacitus

“Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.”

Sir Francis Bacon

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

George Bernard Shaw

maximus otter
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
“If there is a God, He will have to beg my forgiveness.”

Written on the wall of Mauthausen Concentration Camp by an unknown Jewish prisoner.
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There is a wonderful quality to Hebraic culture, when it comes to expressing its woes.
There was another wonderful, related quote, so full of pathos, along the lines of...

"I pray this does not continue for as long as we can endure it."

There is just something so tragic about it.
 
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The engineers just knock it out of the park!

“All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will prevail over those which train lawyers.
No nation has ever sued its way to greatness.” - Richard Lamm
 
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blessmycottonsocks said:
Written on the wall of Mauthausen Concentration Camp by an unknown Jewish prisoner.
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May not have been Jewish. Apparently the quote was written on a wall of a cell in the camp gaol so could have been any of the other prisoners.

One of my favourites:

"Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level." Quentin Crisp
 
A few quotes from Muhammad Ali

"Don't count the days. Make the days count."

"Impossible is just a word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing."

"A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."

"It's not bragging if you can back it up."

"Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything."

"It's hard to be humble, when you're as great as I am."
 
Oh, dear. I find I'm watching television that evening.
Peter Cook (turning down an invitation).

I your morals make you dreary, then, trust me, they are wrong.
Robert Louis Stevenson.

It's more fun not doing things, than it is doing them.
Andy Warhol.

Do I not like that!
Graham Taylor (with a phrase that becomes everr more grammatically complex the more you try to analyse it).
 
Zeke Newbold said:
Oh, dear. I find I'm watching television that evening.
Peter Cook (turning down an invitation).

I your morals make you dreary, then, trust me, they are wrong.
Robert Louis Stevenson.

It's more fun not doing things, than it is doing them.
Andy Warhol.

Do I not like that!
Graham Taylor (with a phrase that becomes everr more grammatically complex the more you try to analyse it).
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Peter Cook's reminds me of Wilde's;

"Unfortunately I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement."
 
Tunn11 said:
Peter Cook's reminds me of Wilde's;

"Unfortunately I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement."
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John Ford's variation
I didn't show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk.
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'We're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?'

The Eleventh Doctor (as written by Stephen Moffat)

'To see a World in a Grain of Sand.
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand.
And Eternity in an hour.'

William Blake
 
"In my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression”

- Rowan Atkinson.

His speech in May, spearheading the Reform Section 5 campaign, is well worth a listen and shows that Rowan Atkinson's comic genius is only matched by his logic and common sense.

 
blessmycottonsocks said:
"In my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression”

- Rowan Atkinson.

His speech in May, spearheading the Reform Section 5 campaign, is well worth a listen and shows that Rowan Atkinson's comic genius is only matched by his logic and common sense.

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Atkinson is a clever bloke, and very down-to-earth. He holds an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Oxford and an HGV licence. He really does drive the truck in that Not the Nine o'Clock News sketch!

Escet read physics at Oxford. You do four years and get the Masters right away rather than the 3 + 1. So Escet's was an M.Phys.
This is relevant, I feel, because students of science and engineering aren't drawn overwhelmingly from private and fee-paying schools. They are likely to have been taught at comps and then gone on to FE colleges rather than posh sixth forms.

When Escet went up, with his decidedly working class background and broad northern accent, I worried about him being picked on by toffs.

He said 'Nah, they're all as common as me!' :chuckle:
 
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