Quotation of the Day

Quotation of the day for January 28, 2012

2012-01-28T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 28, 2012

"Every fact of science was once damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and 'progress,' everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow to Authority. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant, and the intransigent. As Oscar Wilde truly said, 'Disobedience was man's Original Virtue.'"

- Robert Anson Wilson

Submitted by: Bob Bruin
Jan. 12, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 27, 2012

2012-01-27T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 27, 2012

"For many right-wingers, Obama was a foreign object, whose unexpected entrance into the body politic activated their immune systems -- hence the 'birther' movement and other bizarre right-wing obsessions. Whether the right's aversion to Obama constitutes classic racism is a Talmudic question; what is undeniable is that his race activated a horde of (literally) white cells, rushing to expel the invader. Like organisms, cults always delineate themselves by drawing sharp lines between Us and Them."

- Gary Kamiya

[http://www.salon.com/2012/01/08/the_anti_obama_cult/singleton/]

Submitted by: Bob Bruhin
Jan. 8, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 26, 2012

2012-01-26T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 26, 2012

The village of Hollywood was planned according to the notion
People in these parts have of heaven. In these parts
They have come to the conclusion that God
Requiring a heaven and a hell, didn't need to
Plan two establishments but
Just one: heaven. It
Serves the unprosperous, unsuccessful
As hell.

- Bertolt Brecht, "Hollywood Elegies".

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 25, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 25, 2012

2012-01-25T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 25, 2012

"Not only may one imagine that what is higher derives always and only from what is lower; one may imagine that - given the polarity and, more important, the ludicrousness of the world - everything derives from its opposite: day from night, frailty from strength, deformity from beauty, fortune from misfortune. Victory is made up exclusively of beatings."

- Ladislav Klima, Czech philosopher and novelist.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 8, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 24, 2012

2012-01-24T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 24, 2012

"...(only in a rock-and-roll band, by the way, can someone like Keith Richards perceive himself as the responsible one)..."

- Malcolm Gladwell, in "Creation Myth", The New Yorker, May 16, 2011.

Submitted by: Jeff Copeland
Jan. 17, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 23, 2012

2012-01-23T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 23, 2012

"'No accident that _débâcle_ is a French word,' observed my brother once.... The word _débâcle_ suggests the going-wrong of an elaborately conceived plan: a disaster that somehow leaves the principal parties not only having lost what they were aware that they were risking but much more besides, as if an attempt to charm the boss by inviting him to dinner and cooking an ambitious favourite dish of his were to result in the death by poisoning of his wife, the loss of one's job, collapse of one's marriage, one's bankruptcy, turn to violent crime, and subsequent death in a shoot-out with police - when all one was worried about was the risk of curdling the hollandaise. Compare the implication of mismanagement, of organization going wrong, in the Gallic _débâcle_ with the candidly chaotic, intimate quality of the Italian _fiasco_, or the blokishly masculine and pragmatic (and I would suggest implicitly reversible and therefore, in its deep assumptions, optimistic) American _fuck-up_."

- John Lanchester, The Debt to Pleasure.

Submitted by: Duncan Thornton
Jan. 10, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 22, 2012

2012-01-22T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 22, 2012

"Even more than critical thinking or time management, what the white-collar economy requires from most workers is the ability to spend the bulk of their waking hours completing tasks of no inherent importance or interest to them, to show up every day, and to not complain overmuch about it."

- Christopher R. Beha

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Jan. 18, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 21, 2012

2012-01-21T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 21, 2012

"As a friend of mine from Texas says: 'I'll believe corporations are people when the State of Texas executes one'."

- Bill Moyers, in a interview on the Colbert Report (Dec. 10, 2011).

Submitted by: Mike McGuffin
Jan. 11, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 20, 2012

2012-01-20T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 20, 2012

"In other words, I think it is very, very difficult for outsiders to come into a situation like this and to do only good. I think their presence is apt to confuse the political realities, rather than to be helpful to the resolution of them."

- George Kennan, discussing Vietnam in 1966.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 12, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 19, 2012

2012-01-19T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 19, 2012

"Do I drink actual alcohol when I`m presenting? Yes. Lager. Although where I`m from, that`s considered a soft drink."

- Ricky Gervais, tweeting about his oncoming hosting of the 69th Golden Globe Awards. Quoted by Alex Strachan, Postmedia News, January 14, 2012.

Submitted by: Z.D. Hora
Jan. 14, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 18, 2012

2012-01-18T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 18, 2012

"A new mythology, essential to the twentieth-century American funeral rite has grown up--or rather has been built up step by step--to justify the peculiar customs surrounding the disposal of our dead... Gradually, almost imperceptibly, over the years the funeral men have constructed their own grotesque cloud-cuckooland where the trappings of Gracious Living are transformed, as in a nightmare, into the trappings of Gracious Dying..."

- Jessica Mitford, from The American Way Of Death.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 10, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 17, 2012

2012-01-17T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 17, 2012

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no! You see that's not true. You injure other people today also using social media. You've informed on them. You've created more records about them. You've added to the problems not of yourself but of other people. If it were as simple as just you're only hurting yourself I wouldn't bother pointing it out to you. See, that's the difference, okay? The reason that this all works is that even when you know you're hurting other people, you're too selfish to stop. And there are hundreds of millions of people like you. That's why it works."

- Eben Moglen, law professor at Columbia University and digital privacy advocate, denouncing a reporter for recognizing the dangers of social media, but not breaking the Facebook habit.

[http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/13/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit-yells-at-me-for-being-on-facebook/]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 10, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 16, 2012

2012-01-16T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 16, 2012

"A lifetime of manual labour bred a man who, in the end, yielded more than the industry standard of 200 cubic inches of cremated remains. This is the problem with standards in an industry where the raw materials are annoyingly non-standard. An off-the-shelf casket measures 24 inches across but the fact is that a growing number of corn-fed North Americans do not. They have a hard enough time finding belts, or fitting into airplane seats, and when they die, they represent an under-addressed market. In answer, Batesville, one of the big casket manufacturers, has already retooled its plants, launching a line of plus-sized caskets called Dimensions ("New Caskets to Offer a Little Extra Room for Life's Final Journey"), and the Goliath Casket, Inc., of Lynn, Indiana, which covets the big-and-tall niche, manufactures a 52-inch-wide casket (almost four and a half feet) nicknamed, among the likes of us, the B-52."

- Tom Jokinen, in his memoir of being a trainee undertaker, Curtains.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 11, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 15, 2012

2012-01-15T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 15, 2012

"I am almost incapable of logical thought, but I have developed techniques for keeping open the telephone line to my unconscious, in case that disorderly repository has anything to tell me. I hear a great deal of music. I am on friendly terms with John Barleycorn. I take long hot baths. I garden. I go into retreat among the Amish. I watch birds. I go for long walks in the country. And I take frequent vacations so that my brain can lie fallow -- no golf, no cocktail parties, no tennis, no bridge, no concentration, only a bicycle."

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man.

Submitted by: Kathleen Magone
Dec. 23, 2011

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Quotation of the day for January 14, 2012

2012-01-14T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 14, 2012

"No good American ever seriously questions an English judgment on an aesthetic question."

- H.L. Mencken

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 11, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 13, 2012

2012-01-13T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 13, 2012

Triskaidekaphobia,
I got triskaidekaphobia,
And triskaidekaphobia
Has got me.

I open doors for claustrophobia,
And I wear glasses for myopia,
But that triskaidekaphobia
Won't let me be.

- Bobby Troup, from his song Triskaidekaphobia, recorded by Les Brown and his Band of Renown.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
May 13, 2011

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Quotation of the day for January 12, 2012

2012-01-12T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 12, 2012

"It got started in 2006, which was the height of national stupidity. This was pushback. People were sick of being dumb."

- Mike Garbarino, about the Secret Science Club, a monthly lecture series in Brooklyn. The Club features "mind-bending lectures, volatile experiments, chemical libations, star-gazing sounds".

[http://secretscienceclub.blogspot.com/]

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/arts/secret-science-club-nerd-nite-and-other-barroom-education.html]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 6, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 11, 2012

2012-01-11T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 11, 2012

"I'd have no problem with this type of thing being written if they were out of office. I think some small emoticon of privacy... I'm just saying they deserve some small emoticon..."

- Meghan McCain, MSNBC contributor, defending the presidential right to privacy. [The submitter notes: Sort of.] McCain later claimed she said "modicum", not "emoticon".

[http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2012/01/09/meghan-mccain-measures-privacy-in-text-message-terms/]

Submitted by: Bob Bruhin
Jan. 10, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 10, 2012

2012-01-10T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 10, 2012

"The USA lies in complete moral ruin despite the exertions of ten thousand evangelical preachers in dusty back-road tilt-up chapels from Texas to Carolina, several new museums of Creation Science, and the shining example of former Senator Rick Santorum. Just look at how we behave, from the cloakrooms of Congress to the piercing parlors of West Hollywood to the 7-Elevens of suburban Maryland: a nation of thieves, racketeers, reality TV sluts, wannabe road warriors, light-fingered gangsta-boyz, and crybabies living in an anomie-drenched decrepitating demolition derby landscape of failure. When everybody is a zombie, whose brains are left to eat?"

- James Howard Kunstler

[http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/01/2012-forecast-bang-and-whimper.html]

Submitted by: Reddy, Michael
Jan. 3, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 9, 2012

2012-01-09T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 9, 2012

"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."

- Albert Einstein

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 4, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 8, 2012

2012-01-08T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 8, 2012

"The bottom line is that 2011 was a year in which our political elite obsessed over short-term deficits that aren't actually a problem and, in the process, made the real problem -- a depressed economy and mass unemployment -- worse.

- Paul Krugman

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/opinion/keynes-was-right.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print]

Submitted by: Reddy, Michael
Jan. 3, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 7, 2012

2012-01-07T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 7, 2012

"Whatever you want to do can be done before midnight. I always tell my kids that. Nothing good happens after midnight."

- Vanna White, game-show hostess.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 4, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 6, 2012

2012-01-06T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 6, 2012

"We went out with two cupcakes in a jar, the TSA in Boston said 'these look delicious', but TSA in Las Vegas thought they looked dangerous."

- Rebecca Hains, stopped at a Las Vegas airport's security checkpoint by Transport Security Administration (TSA) personnel after trying to board an airplane with a cupcake.

[http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_europe/cupcake-sparks-airport-terror-threat.html?back=%2F&.ts=1325109361&.intl=gb&.lang=en-gb&.ysid=BWcAwmqZRBQ0vav0ckygoypM]

Submitted by: Jean Rogers
Dec. 30, 2011

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Quotation of the day for January 5, 2012

2012-01-05T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 5, 2012

[Note: the following quotation contains language some readers may find offensive. -eds.]

"Rock & roll is dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world," he says, blowing cigarette smoke out the window of his rented East Village loft a few days before the band heads to L.A. "So they became OK with the idea that the biggest rock band in the world is always going to be shit --- therefore you should never try to be the biggest rock band in the world. Fuck that! Rock & roll is the music I feel the most passionately about, and I don't like to see it fucking ruined and spoon-fed down our throats in this watered-down, post-grunge crap, horrendous shit. When people start lumping us into that kind of shit, it's like, 'Fuck you,' honestly."

- Patrick Carney, drummer for The Black Keys, quoted in Rolling Stone.

[http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/cover-story-excerpt-the-black-keys-20120104]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 4, 2012

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Quotation of the day for January 4, 2012

2012-01-04T00:10:00.000-05:00

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Quotation of the Day for January 4, 2012

"Now, it may seem like SOPA [the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act] is the end game in a long fight over copyright, and the Internet, and it may seem like if we defeat SOPA, we'll be well on our way to securing the freedom of PCs and networks. But as I said at the beginning of this talk, this isn't about copyright, because the copyright wars are just the 0.9 beta version of the long coming war on computation. The entertainment industry were just the first belligerents in this coming century-long conflict. We tend to think of them as particularly successful -- after all, here is SOPA, trembling on the verge of passage, and breaking the internet on this fundamental level in the name of preserving Top 40 music, reality TV shows, and Ashton Kutcher movies!

...

"Freedom in the future will require us to have the capacity to monitor our devices...to maintain them as honest servants to our will, and not as traitors and spies working for criminals, thugs, and control freaks. And we haven't lost yet, but we have to win the copyright wars to keep the Internet and the PC free and open. Because these are the materiel in the wars that are to come, we won't be able to fight on without them. And I know this sounds like a counsel of despair, but as I said, these are early days. We have been fighting the mini-boss, and that means that great challenges are yet to come... we may yet win the battle, and secure the ammunition we'll need for the war."

- Cory Doctorow, from his speech The Coming War on General Computation, presented at 28C3,the Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin, Dec. 26, 2011.

[https://github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow/blob/master/transcript.md]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jan. 3, 2012

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