BS: Obscure quotations

Subject: BS: Obscure quotations
From: gnu
Date: 04 Oct 15 - 08:04 PM

Just saw Ralph Nader in a movie about Saturday Night Live (US TV comedy show) say "Political satire is more difficult than poetry."

I found that profound.

BTW, Nader is one of my all time heroes.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Oct 15 - 08:11 PM

For one thing it keeps on being overtaken by reality. For example Donald Trump.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,Gestes
Date: 04 Oct 15 - 10:21 PM

Come and take it  

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Oct 15 - 03:36 AM

"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea." --Eric Cantona, footballer and philosopher.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Oct 15 - 06:17 AM

Probably the most politically astute quote came from the Italian author, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, when he has his main character in his novel, 'The Leopard', say, on observing the Garibaldi Revolution; "Things are going to have to change if they are going to remain the same".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Mr Red
Date: 05 Oct 15 - 08:03 AM

"Political satire is more difficult than poetry."

hmm "Point of Order", Mr Speaker, "Point of Order", could I point to Trump, Berlusconi & Farrage for starters.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Oct 15 - 09:26 AM

""What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?""
― Mahatma Gandhi

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Oct 15 - 09:28 AM

""Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair."" 
― George Burns

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Oct 15 - 09:36 AM

""We learn from history that we do not learn from history""

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: G-Force
Date: 05 Oct 15 - 09:43 AM

You can be in my dream if I can be in yours.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Bert
Date: 05 Oct 15 - 01:32 PM

Things that don't alter, remain as they are.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,Sol
Date: 05 Oct 15 - 03:00 PM

"Sex at my age is like shooting pool with a piece of rope." - George Burns

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Oct 15 - 10:51 PM

"We do not know what we do not know."
-I've see this variously attributed to Wittgenstein, Confucius and Donald Rumsfeld. Oddly profound.

"If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around."
-Will Rogers

"I care not for a man's religion whose dog is not the better for it."
-Abraham Lincoln

"If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?"
-Mark Twain

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 06 Oct 15 - 02:42 AM

" The trouble with normal is it always gets worse"! Bruce Cockburn

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Mr Red
Date: 06 Oct 15 - 04:25 AM

"We are the people our parents warned us about" - Augustus John, painter

My favourite from who knows who
"History repeats itself, it has to, nobody is listening"
GBS said something wordier but essentially the same message.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 06 Oct 15 - 09:51 AM

"Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes."
Sam Vimes, Night Watch (Pratchett)

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Oct 15 - 05:44 AM

The older I get the better I used to be at things.

(posted by Gobby O'Gobbo 3 hours ago on TheSession discussion forum - with apologies to Gobby if he sees this!)

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,Althea Butler
Date: 07 Oct 15 - 11:08 AM

"If only there was a coon of the year award"

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: frogprince
Date: 07 Oct 15 - 11:36 AM

Please tell me that the quote at 11:08 has a meaning other than what would seem obvious to many Americans.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Mr Red
Date: 07 Oct 15 - 11:52 AM

said among the women of Bletchley Park during WW2. There were many more men than women and regarding the chances of finding a suitor:

"The odds are good, but the goods are odd".

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Oct 15 - 11:56 AM

I don't discern any other meaning... and I don't know any Althea Butler. It sure feels wrong to me!

------------------------

re: revolutions

"I advocate a semi-revolution.
The trouble with a total revolution
(Ask any reputable Rosicrucian)
Is that it brings the same class up on top.
Executives of skillful execution
Will therefore plan to go halfway and stop.
Yes, revolutions are the only salves,
But they're the one thing that should be done by halves."

Robert Frost

an answer, by Oscar Williams

"I advocate a total revolution.
The trouble with semi-revolution,
It's likely to be slow as evolution.
Who wants to spend the ages in collusion
With Compromise, Complacence and Confusion?
As for the same class coming up on top,
That's whole cloth from the propaganda shop;
The old saw says there's loads of room on top,
That's where the poor should really plan to stop.
And speaking of those people called the "haves",
Who own the whole cow and must have the calves
(And plant the wounds so they can sell the salves)
They wont be stopped by doing things by halves.
I say that for a permanent solution
There's nothing like a total revolution.

P.S. And may I add by way of a conclusion,
I wouldn't dream to ask a Rosicrucian."

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: JHW
Date: 07 Oct 15 - 03:12 PM

I said "For richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health".
I never said anything about home all day every day.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 07 Oct 15 - 04:25 PM

"I want to be a professional boxer. But I won't wear gloves, because I like the way cardboard feels." 
― Jarod Kintz, If you bring the booze and food, I'll bring the thirst and hunger

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Oct 15 - 09:54 AM

"I want to know more and more about less and less, until I know everything about nothing." --??

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Oct 15 - 10:32 AM

I know many things about several modes of 'nothing'.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Oct 15 - 11:03 AM

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
- Mark Twain, quoted by Rudyard Kipling in "From Sea to Shining Sea"

Irreverence is the champion of liberty. -- Mark Twain, 1888.

Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon -- so long as there is no answer to it -- gives claws to the weak.                --George Orwell, 1945

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act [of 1878] to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.                --Mohandas Gandhi

A rifle this hand will never fire.
                         --Mohandas Gandhi, given a rifle during his service in the Ambulance Corps in WWI.

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it. --A. Lincoln, 6 Apr 1859

Once you learn to read you will be forever free. --Fredrick Douglass

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Oct 15 - 04:23 PM

"You can be in my dream if I can be in yours" - I said that.

Said Dylan.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,randy
Date: 08 Oct 15 - 07:52 PM

God this place is boring. What ever happened to fhe spirited discussions that used to happen here? This whole place is obscure.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Joe_F
Date: 08 Oct 15 - 08:26 PM

When Italy declared war on Britain in WW2, Churchill remarked "It's only fair. We had to put up with them last time."

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: kendall
Date: 08 Oct 15 - 08:51 PM

Humor is the opiate of the melancholy. (Mine)
The older I get, the better I was. (Art Thieme)
If I was any better, I'd be twins. (Mine)

When challenged to use the word "Horticulture" in a sentence, Dorothy Parker said, "You can lead a whore to culture, but, you can't make her think."

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Oct 15 - 11:09 PM

Dorothy Parker also said, "One martini, I'm under the weather. Two and I'm under the table. Three and I'm under the host."

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Oct 15 - 01:08 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Oct 15 - 02:50 AM

"The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made by someone else." 
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Oct 15 - 03:19 AM

"People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost" 
― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Oct 15 - 03:26 AM

"Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein." 
― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 09 Oct 15 - 10:19 AM

Guest of 1:08 A.M., who was it who said that?

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Oct 15 - 10:24 AM

Unk ODO:
An obscure quote from GW Bush. Odd it was not easily recognized.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 09 Oct 15 - 11:37 AM

Re: quotation at 11:08 on Oct 7

That comment (and more) was directed at Dr. Ben Carson, by Professor Anthea Butler of UPenn. Apparently she doesn't like that Republican candidate Carson (a black man for those of you who don't follow USA politics) does not toe the Black victimhood trope.

Whether the guest who posted that racist crap is actually Butler is not known.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Gutcher
Date: 09 Oct 15 - 01:30 PM

"Let me finish my answer Jeremy then you can patronise me"      

Alex. Salmonds, very effective, put down of Jeremy Paxman

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Oct 15 - 08:31 PM

"For people who like that sort of thing, that's the sort of thing they like."
William F. Buckley Jr.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Oct 15 - 09:27 PM

The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion. --Arnold H. Glasgow

For NASA, space is still a high priority. --Dan Quayle

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...' --Isaac Asimov

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another. –-René Descartes

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure it is not in order to enjoy ourselves. –-Ludwig Wittgenstein

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: mrdux
Date: 10 Oct 15 - 12:48 AM

"The sense of well-being continued. Black desolation underlay it, as he knew perfectly well; but the two could exist in the same being."

                        – Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days (1998)

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Oct 15 - 04:02 AM

William F Buckley Junr, few posts back ('...people who like that sort of thing...') was, to put it politely, requoting (or, less politely, plagiarisising) Abe Lincoln, who appears from Oxford Dict of Quotations to have originated this formulation -- subsequently reused [usually, as here, without acknowledgment] by the likes of Buckley, Muriel Spark as a "Miss Jean Brodie-ism", &c &c.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 10 Oct 15 - 04:46 AM

My understanding is there is some doubt put forward as to whether Abe Lincoln was the original source of the quote, (attributed here to W.F. Buckley jr.), a quote which has been modified through time, and reused by others. The basis of some doubt us that the quote is clearly not of Lincolns style. Another source of such doubt is Ralph Keyes' book, The Quote Verifier that provides an earlier source:

""In late 1863 a spoofy newspaper advertisement for [Artemus] Ward included this testimonial: "I have never heard any of your lectures, but from what I can learn I should say that for people who like the kind of lectures you deliver, they are just the kind of lectures such people like""

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Oct 15 - 07:28 AM

That may indeed be an original source to be preferred to the Lincoln one, which ODQ attributes as

Judgement on a book. G.W.E. Russell, Collections and Recollections ch30.

But whether Lincoln quoted Artemus Ward's supposed referee or vice versa (Lincoln & Ward overlapped as contemporaries), or whether both drew on yet another, unidentified, earlier source, my point was that the formulation far antedated both Muriel Spark and W F Buckley jnr.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 10 Oct 15 - 07:32 AM

Of course-but does the replacement of one inaccurate source by another, or questionable one achieve much?

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Oct 15 - 08:26 AM

Birth control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks— those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.

Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood Founder

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Oct 15 - 09:40 AM

Can't quite apprehend the non-point you seem to be making, Ed T. What is 'achieved' is a provisional terminus a quo. I have named a couple of earlier sources than those cited, but have nowhere claimed to have 'established' anything. So what's your problem, precisely?

The gravamen is surely that the attribution of a quote above, 9 Oct 0838pm, is demonstrably not the original source. Do you think it should have been allowed to stand because the absolute ur-original source cannot be conclusively demonstrated? If that is your point, I think little of your standards. If it isn't, then what the hell is, pray?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Oct 15 - 09:58 AM

Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. --Calvin Coolidge

The multiplication of the feeble-minded is a very terrible danger to the race. --Winston Churchill

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Oct 15 - 10:18 AM

"It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined. It was that beauty the great poets dream about but describe most poorly and inadequately."

--Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell, eulogising over the Trinity atom bomb test at Alamogordo, a few weeks before the citizens of two Japanese cities were annihilated by similar explosions.