Favorite Historic Quotes

Do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes.

I do not rule Russia. 10,000 clerks do. - Tsar Nicholas II

The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them. - Queen Victoria

“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” - Thomas Jefferson

"If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me."

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

The only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about - Oscar Wilde

Let's give my man Oscar a second turn: "The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

“Pass the tanning buttah!”

TJ never said that. But Jemmy Madison did say the way to stop political factions from tearing the nation apart was to tax the rich to mediocrity and support the poor to comfort.

Veni. Vidi. Vinci.

Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Goldwater

Of course, he was wrong about what liberty is and what justice is, but I do like that line.

Then render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. - Jesus

Stupid is as stupid does. - Forrest Gump

I can see Russia from my house!”

“We are not amused”

— Queen Victoria

(May be apocryphal)

Admiral Farragut, American Civil War, Battle of Mobile Bay: "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

R15, that was Tina Fey. Here is a Sarah Palin quote. "Waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."

WW I: France, The Battle of Belleau Wood. The US Marines are ready to join the fierce fighting against the Germans. Their commander, Sgt. Dan Daley, yells to his men: "COME ON, YOU SONS OF BITCHES!!! DO YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER?"

"My lord, we had quite forgot the fart!" Queen Elizabeth I.

OP, was that an actual quote, or just some poetic license from Longfellow?

"It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail." - Gore Vidal

“Take that, you bitch”!

George Washington

" I vant $23,000,000 per year, plus $ 1,000,000 a month for clothes or I valk out."

“It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

" Gladiator!"

"Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say 'so what.' That's one of my favorite things to say: 'so what.'" - Andy Warhol

[quote] If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Frederick Douglass

"For Dickon thy master is bought and sold".

"Remember, girls, a good cook cleans as she cooks"-Edna Garrett

"Apres Moi le deluge." Loius XVI I love quotes, thanks OP!

"I regret that I have but one life to give for my country." - Nathan Hale

[quote] Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

"When in doubt, twirl!."

“Marriage is between a man and a woman.”

-Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden

I believe it was Alexia De Tocquville who I'm paraphrasing "The American Republic shall endur until congress figured out how to bribe the people with the peoples own money."

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

Be Best!

We have ten years to save the earth. - Al Gore, 2002.

"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'"

-- J. Robert Oppenheimer, "Father of the Atomic Bomb", after witnessing the first detonation of a nuclear device during the Trinity tests.

My Mother told me to NEVAH speak ILL of the Dead. Joan is dead ....

GOOD

And the Winner is Anne Bancroft for the Miracle Worker .

Bourbon ...

Codine

"Fasten your seatbelts! It's going to be a bumpy ride!! - Margo Channing

GRAB'EM BY THE PUSSY .

I AM NOT ... A CROOK .

Be NICE to each other .

Lucy , you'll be GREAT in MAME !!!

Lucy , I'd tell you to go fuck yourself .

"Sometimes Dolores .... "

R44 - a bumpy NIGHT

You must decide where you're going, then go!

--Phyllis Diller

"Mr. Gorbachev - tear down this wall!" - Ronald Reagan.

"Let them eat cake."

"La La Land!"

"These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppity." - U.S. President Lyndon Johnson

"Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend." - Thomas Jefferson

It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it- Steinbeck

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much ...Jefferson

Yes, Abe, I’ll make sure we get a private booth at Ford’s Theatre.

"Events, Dear Boy, Events!"

Rab Butler

"Be Best"

"If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared." -Machiavelli

"Never give a sucker an even break."

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - Santayana

Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it - Churchill

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit - W C Fields

R31, that was Madame de Pompadour. As in, after us (me and my lover Louis 15th), it's all going to hell.

You can observe a lot by just watching. Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical - Y. Berra.

The coldest winter I spent in California was a summer in San Francisco.

Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect!

Owens Lee Pomeroy

“The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.”

- Queen Victoria

"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."

- Satchel Paige

It's deja vu all over again.

(Also Yogi Berra.)

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Crazy is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.

Freud or Jung

Take [italic]human[/italic] bites!

Let me let you in on a secret. No one wants to hear it.

-Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II

I also love Teddy Roosevelt's "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Very Dirty Harry-ish.

They think it’s all over.....it is now!

I drank what?!

—Socrates

“I invented the Internet!”

“Mission Accomplished!”

“I was recently on tour in Latin America….”

[quote]If It Bleeds, It Leads. No Matter Whose Blood It Is.

Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there.” — David Bowie

"Marshal Lyautey is an admirable, courageous man, who has always had balls between his legs – even when they aren’t his own." - Georges Clemenceau

"We've been to the border. I'm going to the border. I haven't been to Europe." - Kamala

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." - also Yogi Berra

Hey Ted @ r34. Today, when they lose they twerk.

“Mwah my nose!” - Marsha Brady

""We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." uttered by Leona Helmsley.

It stands the test of time because it's still the norm.

"I have sufficient." -Vivian Vance

"We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.” - Hillary Clinton

"Bond. James Bond,"

"Joe Biden has been wrong on every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." - Robert Gates, Obama's Secretary of Defense

Nature is cruel, therefore we have the right to be cruel - Hitler

Promptness is the politeness of kings - Louis XVIII

You will too eat your sister’s pussy if she gets horny!

Mama

“I love your gown, but your purse is on fire”…

TB

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

All right, then, I'll go to hell.

Mark Twain

I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

JFK April,1962

“Nobody wonders what Lyndon and I wear…”

"If I am not (in a state of grace), may the Lord place me there. If I am, may the Lord keep me there."

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." - Winston Churchill

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Shut up and suck my pussy!

My next door neighbor - Fran

Think before you speak.

Read before you think.

--DL fave Fran Lebowitz

Death. It is what we must all come to if we live long enough.

Speaker in Parliament

[quote] Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.

Abraham Lincoln, but it may be in dispute (who said it).

"To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods." - Horatius

"The main misfortune, the root of all the evil to come, was the loss of confidence in the value of one’s own opinion. People imagined that it was out of date to follow their own moral sense, that they must all sing in chorus, and live by other people’s notions, notions that were being crammed down everybody’s throat.” - Boris Pasternak

“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country."

- Charles E. Weller

“Let’s be butter, not bitter.”

What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been? Nothing. What does it desire to be? Something.

Abbe Sieyes

Also too: "Do you not know, my son, with how very little wisdom the world is governed?"

Axel Oxenstierna, Swedish statesman, telling it like it is

Why is Rome going STRAIGHT DOWN THE SHITTER?

Ask not....

All the world old is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer.

- Robert Owen

"To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."

- William Shakespeare

"A jug of wine, a loaf of bread—and thou."

- Omar Khayyám

Only Nixon can go to China.

No one remembers the Armenian Genocide.

I do not recall.

R95 = sociopath

Ah have lusted in mah heart…

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill

I do not recall.

They touched the face of God.

Close, r127. The quote in its entirety is much more heart-rending:

[A]s they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.’

At least Big Bird wasn’t on that flight like they had originally planned.

Do you even lift, bro?

No, Jackie, I think the amount of security for this parade is more than enough.

“I’ll cut a bitch.” - Cher

That’s no way to talk about our daughter, R132.

R128 Thank you.

Whoever was his speechwriter, he did a brilliant job with those beautiful lines.

Upon discovering Cleopatra dead, the Roman soldier asked her dying maid, Charmion:

- “Was this well done of your lady?”

- “Extremely well, as befitting the last of so many noble rulers.”

AIDS? Never heard of it.

r134 His speechwriters had nothing to do with it. It's from a poem.

One of the local TV stations used to use this video as their sign-off at the end of the broadcast day. (Do any stations not broadcast 24/7 anymore?)

Here's the poem

"Quite big tits."

R127 and R134, the quote is actually from the poem "High Flight" by Anglo-American aviator and poet John MacGee. Sadly, as so many of the best of that generation, he was killed during WWII.

“Live, laugh, love.” – Pol Pot

“They misunderestimated me”…

-GB

"In an insane world, the sane man appears crazy." - Mr. Spock

“ Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me, uh, fool me—you can't get fooled again.”

Try it, you’ll like it!

-old dumbass

"Life, liberty, etc., by the, you know, the thing." - President Joe Biden

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

“Chuck it down the pan! Bring me………….a knitting needle!”

R137 He was so young when died too.

Interesting R35 that there is one president in the last 30+ years who didn't claim to be opposed to gay marriage in order to get elected. Which president was it, I wonder, who didn't trample all over gay peoples fundamental rights in order to win office?

Joe Biden?

R151, can you read above the first grade level? Do you even speak a language? Were you born without a brain stem?

two of those three r152.

R153, just for you.

Hey, did you know Trump's vice president was Mike Pence? True fact. True homophobe. Wonder if that was why Trump tried to kill him on January 6? It must have been Trump's deep and abiding interest in gay rights.

'They touched the face of God.'

Obviously somebody else that line for Reagan, who was a dumb cluck actor. It's s dumb line, anyway. The Challenger passengers didn't "touch the face of God." They were blown to smithereens.

but back on topic

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Benjamin Franklin

My quim doth a frightful odour emit!

And I don't know who actually said this, but apparently it was a saying in the British Navy:

Ashore, it's wine, women, and song. Aboard, it's rum, bum, and concertina.

I just adore a concertina, and a bum too. Rum I can do without.

[quote] They were blown to smithereens.

Not true R156. But your idiotic post did make me think of this:

"Now listen here you mullet. Why don't you just light your tampon and blow your box apart, because it's the only band you're ever going to get." - Bernadette, in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

What did you think happened to them, moron at R161? They were in a space ship that blew up. But your dumbassedness did make me think of this:

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

R162, the screw cabin fell to earth intact. They died from the water impact. They were not "blown to smithereens".

Maybe if you weren't so busy sucking off homeless guys for a hit off their pipe, you would have time to learn how to use this thing intelligent people (i.e. people who are not you) created called a search engine.

"Go fuck yourself." - Me

R155, do you know what a "straw man argument" is? I thought not.

I dunno, but I hear straw men go both ways.

Dumbfuck at R163, the bodies of the hapless Challenger passengers were not rendered intact at impact. Hitting water from a great height like hitting concrete. They were smashed to bits, due to being blown out of the sky and crashing down into water. Hence, blown up, in a manner of speaking.

You seem to take anything that gets said literally. At first I thought you might have Asperger's but you're not intelligent enough. You just sound like an asshole. Poor you.

Anywho,

I have tried him drunk, and I have tried him sober, and there's nothing in him.

Charles II on his niece Anne's future husband

It’s alright to look back, just don’t stare!

Tell me about it r168

Hey R166, I just wanted you to know I really enjoyed your show with the donkey the last time I was in Tijuana.

"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise." - Cato the Elder

"An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes." - Cato the Elder

[quote] AIDS? Never heard of it. —Gaetan Dugas

Condoms? Never heard of them. - Danielle Pintauro

Hey, R170, if you've ever been to Tijuana it was to to find some Mexican rent boy to suck your inch worm on the cheap.

"OP is a major troll."

Hey R175 at least my step-mother didn't catch me with my dick in the hose of her canister vacuum.

"Violent delights have violent ends." - Shakespeare

Man who farts in church sits in own pew.

“He had a hot ass but couldn’t live forever.”

"Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever."

SHUT UP AND SUCK-MY-PUSSY!

Nice guys finish last.

Well all know you meant they were blown to bits in the explosion, r166, but keep moving that goalpost, it's hilarious!

R183 sounds like an Aspie. Poor fucker. He must be so alone. Aspies generally are because they're such unbearable assholes. He has my pity.

“ ... for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself”

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take – Wayne Gretzky – Michael Scott”

"Jesus Christ, that old cock sucker!"

Richard Nixon, upon being informed of J. Edgar Hoover's death.

Just take the L r184. And please stop acting as if you're Gore Vidal, you're embarrassing the both of us.

"Let us not ask if God is on our side. Let us ask if we are on God's side." - Abraham Lincoln

[quote]"Jesus Christ, that old cock sucker!" Richard Nixon, upon being informed of J. Edgar Hoover's death.

Richard Nixon, that old cocksucker!

“In order for the revolution to succeed, the Communist party must control the guns.” - Mao Tse Tung

"It does not matter who votes. What matters is who counts the votes." - Joseph Stalin

[quote]Be Best! —Melania

Bea best!

"Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." - Jesus

[quote]- Jesus

Who would’ve thought my landscaper was so philosophical?

R196 = Dianne Feinstein

“For reasons that are well known to her!”

"I hereby throw the first brick at the Stonewall Riot on behalf of all Black trans women of color." — Sylvia Johnson or Marsha P. Rivera

"Like, with a cloth?" - Hillary Clinton

"Gay white men have enough rights already." — Michael Steele

And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.

"I am sick of guys who moan that giving up careless sex until this (AIDS)blows over is worse than death. How can they value life so little and cocks and asses so much? - Larry Kramer.

20-something showgirl and 80-year-old Dorothy Parker are entering the Algonquin dining room at the same time:

Showgirl to Dorothy: "Age before beauty."

Dorothy to showgirl: "Pearls before swine."

Transmen are men

When asked if Montgomery Clift was a homosexuality, Miss Bankhead replied "Well, I really wouldn't know daahhling. He never sucked my cock"

"Women are made to be loved, not understood." - Oscar Wilde

"One down, forty-nine to go!"

"Dio Mio, why doth one of my blue balls droppeth lower than the other when I pusheth them over the edge? Whateth the fuck?!!"

R204, I had always heard that it was Dorothy Parker and Claire Booth Luce…

"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone." and "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal

“Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum”

Belgium is a country invented by the British to annoy the French.

"Imagine no possessions." - Billionaire John Lennon

“Gimme two in the pink, one in the stink.”

On meeting Abe Lincoln at a social gathering:

"He told me he wanted to dance with me in the worst way, and that's exactly what he did." -- Mary Todd Lincoln

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables."

Can someone answer my question at R21? Did Paul Revere actually say the quote in the OP, or was it invented by Longfellow?

R218 As always Primary Source Documents are your friend. Revere did a deposition and also twenty years later this letter.

"The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which ‘the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one’s skin or color or race’ are minor indeed. Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs.” - Hannah Arendt

r219 So the answer is ... Longfellow made it up (although the facts were accurate.)

Longfellow was writing as the storm grew for the Civil War. There was no draft, part of his motivation was to make individuals believe that they alone could change and effect history and that fighting for a just cause was important. If you read the account throughly you realize that many were involved, most importantly Dawes.

Revere gets stopped and caught, he doesn’t continue onward saying the “British are coming!” which wouldn’t have been said at all. It would have been the red backs or the red coats. Longfellow is using that famous poetic license to tell the story he wants to tell. As with most literature understanding the time it was written in is important to fully understanding the intent and meaning of what the writer wrote.

When I would teach this to my fourth graders I started with an accurate historical account of what happened. Then I would read the Longfellow poem and we would compare the two. Then I would ask them wouldn’t it be great to hear what Paul Revere would have said. At that point I would introduce primary documents and read his deposition. We then would discuss all of it including the fact that the colonists were terrorist going against the government. And that history is written by the victors.

"oh yeah. you better be home".

"daaag! i guess i dont get to watch my BET"!

"Elementary, Watson."

“Champagne for everyone!”

Go fuck yourself you fat four-eyed FUCK!!

“And to think, on the coldest night of the year. Makes you proud to be British”

Winston Churchill upon waking to learn a senior Tory MP had been arrested in Regent’s Park on a frigid night being buggered by a Guardsman on a park bench.

This powdered wig sure is itchy.

"An Argentine is an Italian who speaks Spanish and thinks he's British."

“The actress, hasn’t learned the lines (you’d like to hear)!”

"Lucy, you got some splainin' to do!"

Veni, vidi, vici.

[quote] Veni, vidi, vici.

Which means "I came, I saw, I asked to play the robot girl."

[quote]but couldn't be bothered to read through the thread

Then what’s the point of even being here? Your comment is oh so important, but no one else’s is?

You sound like a douche.

"Et Tu, Brute?" - Caesar

I particularly love this line because of its twin suggestions that everything will be revealed at the end, and that you might not like what is revealed.

R234 is dreaming of summer, cool breezes, fresh air.

"...all virtue is merely a matter of prices." - Rhett to Scarlett.

Margaret Mitchell

Spit, don’t swallow.

NOW a warning?!?!

"America will never be destroyed from the outside; if we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves" - Abraham Lincoln

He may be a war hero but he never had the balls to buy his old lady a box of tampons.

You cannot wash the blackamoor white

"Man who does not pass through airport turn-style sideways is going to Bangkok!!" - Confucius

“A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

"Kiss me Hardy." Lord Nelson dying at Trafalgar to Captain Thomas Hardy

Fuck me runnin’!

No one asked if I'm OK.

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure; the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its only virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill

“Your better check for teeth before you wrap that fox around your neck too tight”.

-One of my mom’s old Yankee saying about new friendships

“Just the tip.”

[quote]airport turn-style

Oh, dear.

Just the shaft.

[quote]"Let us not ask if God is on our side. Let us ask if we are on God's side." - Abraham Lincoln

If only the NRA would contemplate that for a few minutes. But I suppose most of them are John Wilkes Booth supporters.

"I did try and fuck her. She was married. ... I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn't get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she's now got the big phony tits and everything. She's totally changed her look. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything."

For R253: "God helps those who help themselves."

"That depends on what the meaning if 'is' is." - William Jefferson Clinton, when asked if he had raped Juanita Broderick.

You’ve taken that Clinton comment completely and utterly out of context.

That’s not at all when he used that phrase.

He said it in grand jury testimony when the Prosecutor asked why he wasn’t lying to his staff when he told them, “There’s nothing going on between us,” meaning Monica.

You sure that wasn't for R254, R255?

You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

Luck be a lady tonight!

“IS IT IN YET?”

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." - Montgomery Scott

I like that old sailor adage ………’I guess it’s your turn in the barrel tonight….’

Juanita Broaddrick’s Deposition

^^Huh?

R.U.N. - “Are You In”

"I know about head, but how do you do shoulders?"

We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal.

R268 “And when I meet Thomas Jefferson, I’m ‘a compel him to include women in the sequel!”

"They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. And among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." - Every True American

R269 only a moron would believe that Jefferson was using the term "men" in a gender-exclusive way.

Jefferson was a scholar and a humanitarian. He valued life.

R271 And yet he still he meant men to only mean “white men.” As for the other take it up with LMM.

"Where there's four, there's a fifth"

Can we get a few more WW’s at R268 & R270 ?

“Kill the negress.” - Prince Philip on his deathbed.

I'm as pure as the driven slush

“Cocaine isn't habit forming. I should know, I've been using it for years”

"I've had a man and I've had a woman, and there's got to be something better.”

"DON'T THINK THIS HAS TAUGHT ME A LESSON" (after being hospitalized with an STD)

“I must be seen to be believed.”

"I've never been proud of this country." - Michelle Obama

Beverly Leslie is a homosexual. Repeat: Beverly Leslie is a homosexual.

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe

Einstein

DON'T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA !!!!

R281, go drown yourself in the pool, LuPoon. We said it first and better.

“I come from the people, they need to adore me, so Christian Dior, make an Argentine rose!”

"Who put pubic hair on my Coke?"

"We have made oblongs and stood them upon squares. This is our triumph; this is our consolation"

--V. Woolf

I've found the quote is much more useful than it might seem at first.

R285 Was that about Stonehenge?

Who's Afraid Of Me?

R286: It could be. I love it because it's enigmatic and yet somehow specific and definite. It's from The Waves, from one of the six soliloquies of a sort, one that more than anything, I suppose, looks to how the writer and her mind work.

Woolf lived in quite a few places in London, many of them Georgian squares. She was very interested in architecture and discussed the quote in relation to those Georgian squares at one point, and a lot of architectural writers like the quote for that reason. But read some of her own words at the link about visiting Stonehenge at age 21 (1903) and it seems all part of the same thing.

[quote]‘”Like” and “like” and “like”–but what is the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing? Now that lightning has gashed the tree and the flowering branch has fallen and Percival, by his death, has made me this gift, let me see the thing. There is a square; there is an oblong. The players take the square and place it upon the oblong. They place it very accurately; they make a perfect dwelling-place. Very little is left outside. The structure is now visible; what is inchoate is here stated; we are not so various or so mean; we have made oblongs and stood them upon squares. This is our triumph; this is our consolation.

"It's an odd thing: most conservatives aren't stupid people, but most stupid people are conservative" -- John Stuart Mill.

Lady Astor to Winston Churchill: "If I were your wife, I'd put poison in your coffee."

Winston Churchill to Lady Astor: "Madame, if I were your husband, I'd drink it."

Clement Attlee (his successor as PM in 1945) to Winston Churchill at a dinner held in the Savoy Hotel: "Winnie, where is the loo?"

Winston Churchill to Clement Attlee: "Go down these stairs, turn left and go down the corridor until you see a door marked 'Gentlemen.' Do not be deterred. Enter and do your business."

MP Bessie Braddock to Winston Churchill: “Winston, you are drunk, and what’s more you are disgustingly drunk.”

Winston Churchill to Bessie Braddock: “Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and what’s more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly.”

No, no.... That wasn't a question.

So, I called up the captain and said "Please bring me my wine."

Churchill could have been a Datalounger with his bitchy retorts. He was fat enough to wear caftans all day too.

Atheistic existentialism, which I represent, is more coherent. It states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and that this being is man, or, as Heidegger says, human reality. What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself

JP Sartre

[quote] Atheistic existentiali

Ohh Look who thinks her shit doesn't stink!

[R294] "Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence."

Provides a rationale for a man like Hitler. Oh, that will-to-power rag never stops playing.

Show-biz ain't history. Not even in the library.

“Charity is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.”

“There were few who thought him a starter, Many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM, an Earl and a Knight of the Garter"

"If only all Rome has but one neck" Caligula

"Who is she? Who was she? Who does she hope to be?" - Harold

"Where's the beef?" - Clara Peller

"The whipped cream of Europe"

"You think I have a big cock? Yeah, that's what the girls say."

“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

"How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?"

-- Charles de Gaulle

"I'll sing 'em all and we'll stay ALL NIGHT!"

OK Futura. Let's take the TV train.

-- A Clash Song

Grab ‘em by the pussy

“There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.” -Helena Rubenstein

“Leave the table while you still feel you could eat a little more.” -Helena Rubinstein

Corn? When did I eat corn?

" I hope King Geroge can read it without his glasses."

John Hancock

“Snitches get stitches.”

"He was as confident as a Christian holding four aces." - Mark Twain

When asked at a state dinner held at Buckingham Palace in the 1960's to honor her husband, French President Charles De Gaulle, what she looked forward to most in retirement, Mme DeGaulle - not a polished English speaker - replied "A penis."

After a long and awkward period of silence, Queen Elizabeth came to the rescue, smiling broadly when she said, "Ah, happiness."

Boop-oop-a-doop!

R316: no where is The Crown when you need it?

Take that, you bitch!

I’m pissed off. I hear those fucking squirrels running across my roof! One of those bastards will be inside my house before long.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

"I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly."