Favorite quotes

[SarDragon]

A selection from my rotating sig quotes:

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."
-- Julius Caesar, Act 2, scene 2

"Basic Flying Rules - 1. Try to stay in the middle of the air. 2. Do not go near the edges of it. 3. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there."

"Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." -- Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914)

"Radioactive cats have eighteen half-lives."

"Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty."

"Time is the best teacher; Unfortunately it kills all its students."

"Six essential elements of *good training*: you gotta be cold, wet, tired, hungry, pissed off and doing something stupid."

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

"667 - the neighbor of the beast"

"When working with electronics, my best advice is to do whatever it takes to prevent the smoke from leaking out of the components.  Electronic parts require the smoke to stay inside to function correctly!"

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
-- Macbeth, Act V, Scene v

"In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience." -- Oscar Wilde

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible." -- T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) from Seven Pillars of Wisdom

"Remember this: Even if you win the rat race, youre still a rat." -- Rev. William Sloane Coffin

"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." -- George Orwell

"The Army has doctrine, the Navy has tradition, and the Air Force is new." -- anon.

"The one good thing about repeating your misteaks is that you know when to cringe."

[RogueLeader]

Stealth is nice, but when you want to make a lasting impression, a blaster does just fine.- Han Solo

Warlord, I'm not a rich man, or a particularly an ambitious man.  You should take that into account.  That means you'll never cost me as much as I have cost you.  But I could let you kiss my Wokkiee.- Han Solo to Warlord Zsinj

Make the most of today-not tomorrow, because only HE knows when your last tomorrow was today.

[Michael]

"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift."

"A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Nobody is going to win a 5,000 meter race after running an easy 2 miles. Not with me. If I lose forcing the pace all the way, well, at least I can live with myself."

- Steve Prefontaine

[mikeylikey]

"Unless you are a hemorrhoid, get off my Ass"  ~ Some hillbilly bumpersticker I saw at a state fair Demo Derby.

[Johnny Yuma]

"I should killed that sonofa[censored] years ago to keep him from breeding, son."
Gary Busey in Rough Riders

"Those [darn]Yankee Spanish Mausers are hard to find, but we are finding them, we are killing them and we are advancing!"
Gary Busey in Rough Riders

Spacing - MIKE

[RogueLeader]

Support C.A.P. Search & Rescue: GET LOST!

[a2capt]

"Regs? Ah, those are just guidelines."

..the things you have to put up with.

[Hoser]

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Hermann Goering

Reality must take precedence over public relations. For nature cannot be fooled.
Richard Feynman

For those who place their faith in fire, them by their faith shall be repaid
Quicksilver Messenger Service

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
Theodore Roosevelt

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

Edward R. Murrow

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.
Barbara Ehrenreich

What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility ... a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
Adlai Stevenson

It is fortunate for governments that men do not think
Hitler

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
Hellen Keller

A generation which ignores history has no past—and no future.

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.


Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it!

What a wonderful world it is that has girls in it!

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss

Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous.(He is also a fool).

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects!

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

Yield to temptation, it may not pass your way again

Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anytbing from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants "just a few minutes of your time, please--this won't take long." Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time--and squawk for more! So learn to say No--and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you. (This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don't do it because it is "expected" of you.)

Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.

A committee is a lifeform with six or more legs and no brain.
Lazarus Long


Smoked carp is just as good as smoked salmon when you ain't got smoked salmon
Rancid Crabtree

Spacing - MIKE

[SStradley]

Somebody around here has my favorite on their tag line already...
"Duty then is the sublimest word in the English languarge; you can never do more, you should never wish to do less." Robert E Lee.

That would be me.

Here is another Lee quote that I like"

A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.

[♠SARKID♠]

"Pull stick back plane go up, pull stick all the way back plane go down." -Andy Stockhousen, CAP

"Someday they are going to make an airplane were the cockpit isn't an afterthought." -Lt Col Dan Donovan, CFII

"Procedure, procedure, procedure. Do that and you'll never go wrong." -Lt Col Dan Donovan, CFII

"When the paperwork equals the weight of the airplane, it's time to fly." -Lt Col Dan Donovan, CFII

"LOST would be a boring show if we responded"

[bosshawk]

I have many, but here are three that I particularly like:

We get too soon old and too late smart: Pennsylvania Dutch saying.

We don't need all kinds, we just have them.  Anonymous

If it sounds like it is too good to be true, it probably is.  Anonymous

[notaNCO forever]

Those who don't read the newspaper are uninformed those who do are missinformed. Samuel Clemens/Mark twain.

[Fifinella]

"Would a cow lick Lot's wife?"

"I've traveled a long way, and some of the roads weren't paved."

"The power to obstruct, exercised by self-important people, is the real bureaucratic evil." – Louis B. Lundborg

"Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again."

"A leader is best when people barely know he exists. Less good when they obey and acclaim him. Worse when they fear and despise him. Fail to honor people and they fail to honor you. But of a good leader, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say: 'We did this ourselves.' "—Former U.S. Senator Alan Cranston   

"He who wills the end must will the means." – Greek proverb

"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." – John Ruskin

"The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.  What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value." - Thomas Paine

"They forgot what it is to know, when one is hungry, cold, or tired to death, that one has got to go on whatever happens." – Ibid

"When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again." – Edith Hamilton

"The day people stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them." – Colin Powell, My American Journey

"There's a difference between interest and commitment.  When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstances permit.  When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results." – Art Turock

"A Christian is a person whose life makes it easier for others to believe in God." – Norman Vincent Peale

[mamadinos]

"He that blows the coals in a quarrel he has nothing to do with has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face."   -Benjamin Franklin

"The only thing we seem to learn from history is that we learn nothing from history."  -Friedrich Hegel

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple" - Dr. Seuss

"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you're dead and rotten, either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing." - Benjamin Franklin

"People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first." -David H. Comins

[smj58501]

"It's not a lie, if you believe it"
- George Costanza

"This was supposed to be the summer of George!"
- George Costanza

"Ask not what I can do for you. Ask what you can do for me"
- Jerry Seinfeld

"I was in the pool, I was in the pool"
- George Costanza

"No soup for you"
- Soup Nazi

"Not that there's anything wrong with that"
- Jerry Seinfeld

[mikeylikey]

A few faves from M*A*S*H

"We all know it's brutal up there at the front, especially those of us at the rear"
Frank Burns

"Sex happens to be one of the most important things in life in as much as each one of us is one or the other gender of it once we're born, which is the direct result of the act of it."
Henry Blake

"I'm sick of hearing about the wounded. What about all the thousands of wonderful guys who are fighting this war without any of the credit or the glory that always goes to those lucky few who just happen to get shot."
Frank Burns

Finally a few from my father.....

"Mike I am so proud of the fact that you didn't embarrass your mother or I while you were growing up, because well, I just don't know if we could have kept loving you".

"Son, let me tell you what your Grandfather told me at your age, if you get a girl pregnant don't come home"

"Now that you are going off to College in a few months, I thought I would help you pack.  We decided to make your room into an office, and I start work tomorrow, which means you gotta get out of here tonight"

"Hey Mike this summer, we were thinking about taking a vacation when you get back from school.  However, your mother believes it best that since you are an independent man now, that the trip to the Bahamas should just be for me and her".

[Johnny Yuma]

"I should killed that sonofa[censored] years ago to keep him from breeding, son."
Gary Busey in Rough Riders

"Those [darn]Yankee Spanish Mausers are hard to find, but we are finding them, we are killing them and we are advancing!"
Gary Busey in Rough Riders

Spacing - MIKE

MIKE!!!

You're messing with my Chi here!

[Tater]

"You love a lot of things if you live around them.  But there isn't any woman and there isn't any horse, not before nor after, that is as lovely as a great airplane.

And men who love them are faithful to them even though they leave them for others.

Man has one virginity to lose in fighters, and if it is to a lovely airplane he loses it to, there is where his heart will forever be."

Ernest Hemingway - Colliers 1944

[genejackson]

"I wanted to be a Marine, but my parents were married"   Author unknown, but I just love that one.

[♠SARKID♠]

"Don't do anything you wouldn't want to explain to the paramedics."

"Well you know what they say, 'People in glass houses sink ships!'". - Boondock Saints

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here" - just friggin epic
   
"Delicious today, diahrrea tommorrow. I'm gonna be leakin' like the Exxon Valdeese." - Anthony Bourdaine

"Some people talk so much they could time out a simplex channel." - Me

"I sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world." - Walt Whitman

Stepmom - "Danny, what are you doing?"
Me - "I'm on the internet."
Stepmom - "Well pause it and come to dinner."

"Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn." - Fulton J. Sheen

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." - Douglas Adams

"The secret to flying is to throw yourself at the ground, and miss." - Douglas Adams