(3089/898) Bits and pieces

970) Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
posted by Kevin Anthony Boudreaux [UAQ] (5/29/95)

971) Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

H.L. Mencken
"Sententiae: The Mind of Men" in
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949) [CQ]
posted by Kevin Anthony Boudreaux [UAQ] (5/29/95)

972) A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
quoted by Opie Percival Read in
Mark Twain and I (1940)
posted by Kevin Anthony Boudreaux [UAQ] (5/29/95)

973) Morality is society's rules for the individual's survival; Ethics is the individual's rules for society's survival.

Theodore Sturgeon
"Baby is Three" in
Galaxy (1952)
the basis for the novel
More Than Human (1953)
posted by Martin Cohen on the Dinosaur mailing list (5/20/95)

974) Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

Robert Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)

975) The fact is that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation becomes almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

Oscar Wilde
The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1895) [B16]

976) The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.

Oscar Wilde
A Woman of No Importance (play, 1893) [ODQ]

977) A remarkable characteristic of the Americans is the manner in which they have applied science to modern life [...] In England an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America an inventor is honored, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

Oscar Wilde
Lecture in England (1883)
posted by skeptic3 [UAQ] (5/23/95)

978) As I looked at this great shopping center as we drove in here, I was thinking of one of the bedtime stories in this campaign [...] and that is that America has been standing still for the last 7½ years. Well, you know anybody that says America has been standing still just hasn't been traveling around America, that's all. [Cheers.] Where did that freeway come in? It wasn't here 7½ years ago. Where did this shopping center come from? It's been built in these last 7½ years. After all, those people who say America's standing still, of course, are living in a dream world.

Vice President Richard M. Nixon
remarks at the Hillside Shopping Center, Chicago, IL (7/29/1960)
posted by Kevin Harris [UAQ] (5/31/95)

979) I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.

Clarence Darrow
speech at the Scopes trial (7/13/25) [ODQ]
posted by Kevin Harris [UAQ] (5/31/95)

Sources

[B16] - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition (1993)
[CQ] - Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993)
[ODQ] - Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th edition (1992)
[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 609 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.