821) He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Albert Einstein
"The World As I See It"
aka "Mein Weltbild" ["My Worldview"]
Forum and Century (1931)
republished in
Ideas and Opinions (1949)
posted by Todd McMaster [IQM] (5/1/95)

822) Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideas hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Transformed Nonconformist" (sermon)
Strength to Love (1963)
posted by Todd McMasters [IQM] (5/1/95)

823) When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.

Jomo Kenyatta (widely attributed)
posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (4/30/95)

824) Battles are fought by platoons and squads.

George S. Patton
"Letter of Instruction No. 2" (4/3/1944)
quoted by Samuel Hynes in
"So Many Men, So Many Wars:
50 Years of Remembering World War II" in
New York Times Book Review (4/30/95)

825) I had heard it suggested one time that the seasons in the temperate zone should be six rather than four in number: summer, autumn, locking, winter, unlocking, and spring. And I remembered that as I straightened up beside our manhole, and stared and listened and sniffed.

There were no smells. There was no movement. Every step I took made a gravelly squeak in blue-white frost. And every squeak was echoed loudly. The season of locking was over. The earth was locked up tight.

It was winter, now and forever.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Cat's Cradle (1963)

[Note: Extensive research has failed to turn up any prior source for the concept of six seasons instead of four. It was suggested on the alt.fan.kurt-vonnegut Usenet newsgroup that the originator might be Robert Frost, but nothing has been found to support this contention. It seems that perhaps Vonnegut himself might be the original source.]

Sources

[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
[UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 659 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.