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Favourite quotes

S

Siderz

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 10, 2012
991
6
From anybody, quotes which you like a lot, preferably give credit if known.

A few I like, mainly motivational:
  • "I live my life with no regrets. Sure, I **** up catastrophically on a daily basis, but dammit, it's experience that shapes who we are."
  • "It is impossible to live without failing at something. Unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default" - J.K.Rowling
  • "There will always be someone better than you, so run against yourself, not others."
  • "Don't judge those who try but fail. Judge those who fail to try."
  • "You are what you delete" - Nimrod Kamer
  • "Free to play, pay to win." - /u/shoegarbagebiology on Reddit
  • "Android; race to the bottom" - richardpaulknight on Engadget
  • "If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.” blue_beetle on metafilter.com (http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent#3256046)
  • “A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves an unrecorded, unanalysed thought. And that’s a problem because privacy matters, privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.” - Edward Snowden
  • “Fake it ’til you make it"

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Shrink

Shrink

macrumors G3
Feb 26, 2011
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New England, USA
"a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.” William Shakespeare - MacBeth


"I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short."
— Blaise Pascal


"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
---Joseph Welch to Joe McCarthy


“I just want to enter my house justified” — Ride The High Country
 
Scepticalscribe

Scepticalscribe

macrumors Ivy Bridge
Jul 29, 2008
63,979
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In a coffee shop.
"When a man is willing and eager, the gods join in" - Aeschylus.

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett

"Do not ask whether a thing is true, but rather ask for whom it is true, for there can be no absolute truth." - Herbert Marcuse

"Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit. Touch it, and the bloom is gone." (Lady Bracknell) - Oscar Wilde

"Think of your breed; for brutish ignorance your mettle was not made. You were made men to follow after knowledge and excellence." - Dante, quoted in Primo Levi (If This Is A Man).

And of course, I also love the quote from the Bard's "Scottish Play", which Shrink quoted above, and which I used not so long ago elsewhere on these fora.
 
maflynn

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,469
43,390
"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times." ~Bruce Lee.

for me as a martial arts student it helps keep me centered. Its not about how much material or techniques I may have, but rather I execute what I do have.

Quality is better then quantity.
 
Scepticalscribe

Scepticalscribe

macrumors Ivy Bridge
Jul 29, 2008
63,979
46,438
In a coffee shop.
Another one, which I have long liked, much for reasons to do with the old 'tempus fugit', perspective, history, language, and indeed, who tells stories and how these stories are told and the disagreements that ensue as a consequence over the ownership - and right to ownership - of such narratives.

Cecil Rhodes, - he of the eponymous Rhodes Scholarship Foundation to our US readers, (on his deathbed): "They d-don't change the names of countries, do they?"
 
maflynn

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,469
43,390
I also like
"Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" ~ Steve Jobs

Because getting older doesn't mean you have to grow up. I'm quickly approaching 50 but I want to be just as foolish today as I was as a 16 year old. Perhaps this is why I enjoy playing with my kids so much and making sure they're smiling and laughing :D
 
S

Siderz

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 10, 2012
991
6
“A story about someone’s DUI and minor offences interrupts and overtakes a story about how we need to stop monitoring people’s lives and respect privacy. Deep irony present here.” - /u/gilgameshthehero on Reddit (Justin Bieber MSNBC news report interrupts NSA news report)

"At least you came second!" - Pixar's Cars

"Give a man a mask, and he will show you his true face.” - Oscar Wilde

"A bad artist blames his tools"

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

"Pain is temporary, film is forever" - Michael J. Fox

"If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." - Eric Schmidt (I wonder what Edward Snowden thinks of this one eh? Starting to not like this quote anymore considering who it's from...)

"Be careful who you call friends; I'd rather have 4 Quarters than 100 Pennies"​
 
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mobilehaathi

mobilehaathi

macrumors G3
Aug 19, 2008
9,368
6,352
The Anthropocene
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." --Ray Bradbury

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." --Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest
 
Berlepsch

Berlepsch

macrumors 6502
Oct 22, 2007
303
48
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

John Cage
 
The Doctor11

The Doctor11

macrumors 603
Dec 15, 2013
5,974
1,406
New York
"Bow ties are cool"
The Doctor
"Wibbley wobbly timey whyme"
The Doctor
"You shot my Tardis"
The Dcotor
"The reality is that we love competition at apple we just wan people to inner their own stuff"
Tim Cook
 
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LizKat

LizKat

macrumors 604
Aug 5, 2004
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Catskill Mountains
"The gates of Hell are open night and day; smooth the descent and easy is the way."
--Virgil



"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."---- William Morris



"It had been built without concession to beauty, and with the expectation of defilement."

--Monica Ali, in her novel "Brick Lane", describing a building used as a community meeting room at the edge of some London public housing occupied primarily by Bangladeshi immigrants.

(I was remembering that quote when I drove past some low income housing near Elmira NY in December. It's not that it was ugly. It's that it looked like "No Expectations.")



"The history of Mozambique's wars reads like a synopsis of a plan to end the world, skip the day of judgment and send everyone straight to hell."

Alexandra Fuller, "Scribbling the Cat"




"Alienation is the only intelligent response to a political culture that insults our intelligence."
--Matt Miller, then of Fortune magazine, on June 4, 2005 in a column for the NY Times.



"Graft's what they call it when who's doin' it don't know which fork to use..."
-- southern newspaper writer turned governor's aide in the film All the King's Men



On grief: “You come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.”
-- Julian Barnes, in “Flaubert’s Parrot”



"It cost a great deal of money to keep the Mahatma living in poverty..."
-- a comment by the poet Sarojini Naidu, as a member of an association of wealthy Bengali merchants and others who made contributions to underwrite the maintenance of the ashram in which Mohandas Gandhi and his family and closest spiritual associates lived.



After the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box.
~ Italian proverb



"If there really was a god here, he'd have raised a hand by now..."
-- the band Editors, in their dance anthem 'Papillon' from the 2009 album In This Light and On This Evening



Paul Otellini, now the former CEO of Intel Corporation, was asked by Charlie Rose on February 26, 2010, what would become obsolete next as technological advances make more and more information instantly available on practically any device. Otellini responded: "Ignorance."


C.S.Lewis: "I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right, the reader will most certainly go into it."
 
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Scepticalscribe

Scepticalscribe

macrumors Ivy Bridge
Jul 29, 2008
63,979
46,438
In a coffee shop.
LizKat said:
.......
"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."---- William Morris



"It had been built without concession to beauty, and with the expectation of defilement."

--Monica Ali, in her novel "Brick Lane", describing a building used as a community meeting room at the edge of some London public housing occupied primarily by Bangladeshi immigrants.

(I was remembering that quote when I drove past some low income housing near Elmira NY in December. It's not that it was ugly. It's that it looked like "No Expectations.")



"The history of Mozambique's wars reads like a synopsis of a plan to end the world, skip the day of judgment and send everyone straight to hell."

Alexandra Fuller, "Scribbling the Cat"

.........


"It cost a great deal of money to keep the Mahatma living in poverty..."
-- a comment by the poet Sarojini Naidu, as a member of an association of wealthy Bengali merchants and others who made contributions to underwrite the maintenance of the ashram in which Mohandas Gandhi and his family and closest spiritual associates lived.



After the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box.
~ Italian proverb

........






C.S.Lewis: "I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right, the reader will most certainly go into it."
Click to expand...

Some really lovely quotes here, including a few (the Italian proverb which is excellent and the very sardonic observation by Sarojini Naidu, which has the awful ring of authenticity) which I had never come across before. Lovely selection, and thanks for posting them.

 
firedept

firedept

macrumors 603
Jul 8, 2011
6,277
1,130
Somewhere!
Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you!

Some village is missing its idiot!

There are more horses a$$es in the world, than there are horses!
 
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J

johnmadden78

macrumors member
Dec 19, 2008
72
0
Dublin, Ireland
"Success is not a matter of spontaneous combustion. You have to light yourself on fire." - Fred Shero

“Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.” - Kurt Vonnegut

"The pen is mightier than the sword, especially when you fire that pen from a gun." - Stephen Colbert
 
roadbloc

roadbloc

macrumors G3
Aug 24, 2009
8,784
215
UK
"If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!" - Zapp Brannigan.
 
Scepticalscribe

Scepticalscribe

macrumors Ivy Bridge
Jul 29, 2008
63,979
46,438
In a coffee shop.
A few more which I rather like:

"Against ignorance, the very gods themselves contend in vain," Friedrich Schiller.

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars," Oscar Wilde.

And, more recently, the wonderful last text sent by Seamus Heaney, the Irish (Nobel-prize winning) poet, to his wife, shortly before his death: "Noli timere." (Do not be afraid).
 
Shrink

Shrink

macrumors G3
Feb 26, 2011
8,929
1,727
New England, USA
"The law in its majesty makes no distinction between rich
and poor; both are forbidden to sleep under the bridges of Paris.” …Anatole France
 
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