A Random Quote

[Quesoman]

L'enfer, c'est les autres.
-Jean-Paul Sartre

Glory is a poison one should only have in small doses.

Life, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
- Thomas Hobbes

I also have some less grim ones hanging around:

Before going out to change the world, walk 3 times around your own house.
-Chineese proverb

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
-Einstein

And my personal favourite:
If it is solvable, why complain? If it isn't solvable, why complain?
-Arabian proverb

This last one helps to shut up very annoying people ;)

[Thyphon]

"better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" - John Milton

That's what i think when ever i make Soulforged Steel. :)

[DragonFire2876]

lifes a bitch then you die (so many times have i thought of this when things are going wrong and funny enough i dont know who was the first one to say this to me)
one mans trash is another mans treasure
one mans ceiling is another mans floor
give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

and just for lolz
three tree! three fish in a tree! three fish in a tree how can that be? -Dr seuss

[grimper12341]

"It is necessary (...) to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope. " - Niccolo Machiavelli

After thinking about that one a lot and having some interesting philosophical discussions with people, I'm inclined to believe it's true. The only good in men is how well we can control it.

[Triskelli]

Here's a quote from the Iron Chancellor himself, Otto Von Bismarck:

"They treat me like a fox, a cunning fellow of the first rank. But the truth is that with a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and when I have to deal with a scoundrel, I try to be a scoundrel and a half."


...I think that's a good description of everyone on the internet, and the mindset of everyone that loves being the bad guy from time to time. =]

[morvelaira]

give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

And then of course there's this variant:

Build a man a fire, and he will be warm for the night.
Set the man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

[CheGiuAn]

give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

I knew this in this way (somehow related with the communism):
''Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a perfect business possibility.''

Also:

''If the archer shoots for fun, it's shooting accurately.
If the archer shoots for a gold ring, it's hand is shakeing.
If the archer shoots for the first prize of a turnament, it's sight is misty.''
(this is a relatively inaccurately quoted zen buddhist koan (if I remember right), but I think you can understand what it's trying to say)

And:


''Coffee first, brush teeth later.''
~Adam Phillips

[HavokSCOUT]

"It's a fez/stetson. Fezes/stetsons are cool."

-Doctor Who.

"Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana."

[Urian]

"Because I can lie beautiful, true things into existence, let people escape from inside their own heads and see through other eyes."
-Neil Gaiman (on why he writes)

[TheTJackson]

It disappoints me the lack of Firefly quotes in this thread.
So as follows:
"I brought you some supper but if you'd prefer a lecture, I've a few very catchy ones prepped...sin and hellfire... one has lepers."

"Ten percent of nuthin' is...let me do the math here...nuthin' into nuthin'...carry the nuthin'..."

"What did I say to you about barging into my shuttle?"
"That it was manly and impulsive?"
"Yes, precisely. Only the exact phrase I used was 'don't'."

"I swear by my pretty floral bonnet: I will end you."

and finally,

"You know, with the exception of one deadly and unpredictable midget, this girl is the smallest cargo I've ever had to transport. Yet by far the most troublesome. Does that seem right to you?"
"What'd he do?"
"Who?"
"The midget."
"Arson. Little man loved fire."

[Likewhat]

"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers."

[joetalbot1]

"Never trust someone who never opens their eyes or stops smiling."

[danielngtiger]

"Excuse me, but real programmers use butterflies. They open their hands and let them flap once. The disturbance ripples outward, changing the flow of the eddy currents in the upper atmosphere. These cause momentary pockets of high pressure air to form, which act as lenses which deflect incoming atomic rays, focusing them to strike the drive platter and flip the desired bit." -XKCD

Win.

[BinoAl]

"Excuse me, but real programmers use butterflies. They open their hands and let them flap once. The disturbance ripples outward, changing the flow of the eddy currents in the upper atmosphere. These cause momentary pockets of high pressure air to form, which act as lenses which deflect incoming atomic rays, focusing them to strike the drive platter and flip the desired bit." -XKCD

Win.

Opening up your hard drive to the elements is a bad idea. The space between the read/write heads and the platter is smaller than a dust speck, and can be easily messed up by dust. No, real programmers set the universal constants as such so that the universe evolves to contain the desired data on the disc.

[Urian]

"Excuse me, but real programmers use butterflies. They open their hands and let them flap once. The disturbance ripples outward, changing the flow of the eddy currents in the upper atmosphere. These cause momentary pockets of high pressure air to form, which act as lenses which deflect incoming atomic rays, focusing them to strike the drive platter and flip the desired bit." -XKCD

Win.

C-x M-c M-butterfly

[grimper12341]

"It is necessary (...) to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope. " - Niccolo Machiavelli

After thinking about that one a lot and having some interesting philosophical discussions with people, I'm inclined to believe it's true. The only good in men is how well we can control it.

Pulling us off topic for a bit here...but does anyone else agree with that view?

[Urian]

"It is necessary (...) to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope. " - Niccolo Machiavelli

After thinking about that one a lot and having some interesting philosophical discussions with people, I'm inclined to believe it's true. The only good in men is how well we can control it.

Pulling us off topic for a bit here...but does anyone else agree with that view?

Nope but I have been involved in several discussions regarding that egoism is the main (or in some discussions, the only) driving force behind human behavior. Egoism isn't something negative or evil though, merely putting one's own interests first. E.g. someone giving money to charity or beggars do so in order to feel good about themselves.

[grimper12341]

Nope but I have been involved in several discussions regarding that egoism is the main (or in some discussions, the only) driving force behind human behavior. Egoism isn't something negative or evil though, merely putting one's own interests first. E.g. someone giving money to charity or beggars do so in order to feel good about themselves.

Ego only explains so much though.
Have you head of the Stanford Prison Experiment?
http://www.prisonexp.org/

There's more detail on that site, but basically it was an experiment to see what happen if you put ordinary college students into roles as a prison guard or a prisoner. None of them had any history of psychological incidents or drug abuse, yet by the end of it the prison guards were abusing the prisoners and treating them like animals.

From what I can see though, there were no women in that experiment; all the students are referred to as boys. Can you imagine women doing the same thing?

Also think about crimes committed against humanity throughout history, Hitler and the holocaust for example. 99% of the people that committed these crimes were male.

[Dirdle]

From what I can see though, there were no women in that experiment; all the students are referred to as boys. Can you imagine women doing the same thing?

Yes. Easily. I mean, really really easily.* The hard part is usually imagining *yourself* doing bad things. You'd never kill someone because you were told to, right? And oooobviously I never would, I'm faaaaaar too heroic and noble for that.

Also think about crimes committed against humanity throughout history, Hitler and the holocaust for example. 99% of the people that committed these crimes were male.

Well... yes. History is full of patriarchy. You can't perpetrate crimes against humanity if you're the oppressed 50% of the population.


I don't think a topic dedicated to thought-provoking statements usually too short to clarify their meaning was ever NOT going to dissolve into meandering discussion, but here's a nice quote anyway:

"Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there."

- Feynman

* - I suspect you meant, "do you expect women to do the same thing?" to which my answer is 'I don't know, I'd like to find out though'.

[Gilberreke]

From what I can see though, there were no women in that experiment; all the students are referred to as boys. Can you imagine women doing the same thing?

Also think about crimes committed against humanity throughout history, Hitler and the holocaust for example. 99% of the people that committed these crimes were male.

Yeah, bullcrap, women are just as bad as men.

There's obviously NO examples whatsoever of women dictators, none at all. And surely none of em ever commited any crimes against society.

[Flesh_Engine]

"My armour is contempt, my shield is disgust and my sword is hatred. In the Emperor's name, let none survive..." -WAR40K

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. " -Nietzsche

[Kwilt]

In the throes of existence, here is an unfortunate truth.

“Depression can seem worse than terminal cancer, because most cancer patients feel loved and they have hope and self-esteem.” ~ David D. Burns