MARCUS: You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair; then I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happened to us come because we actually deserved them?’ So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.
So we’re just in this maze for now, trying to figure out if that glint in the distance is daylight, or a Minotaur with an Uzi.
J. Michael (Joe) Straczynski (b. 1954) American screenwriter, producer, author [a/k/a "JMS"]
rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, “ATTN JMS: Warner Bros” (8 Dec 1996)
(Source)
It saddens me that literacy has become suspect, and degraded, given how many millions of years of evolution spent developing the ability to create language. The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language. The less precise the usage, the less clear the process of language, the less you can achieve what you want to achieve when you open you mouth to say something. We have slowly bastardized and degraded and weakened the language, abetted and abided by a growing cultural disdain for literacy, a cyclical trend toward anti-intellectualism.
J. Michael (Joe) Straczynski (b. 1954) American screenwriter, producer, author [a/k/a "JMS"]
rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, “ATTN JMS: Influences?” (27 Oct 1995)
(Source)
SEBASTIAN: Good luck to you in your “holy cause,” Captain Sheridan. May your choices have better results than mine: remembered not as a messenger, remembered not as a reformer, not as a prophet, not as a hero, not even as Sebastian. Remembered only as “Jack.”
SHERIDAN: Oh, now that is a lie!
DELENN: Minbari do not lie.
SHERIDAN: Well then it is slander.
DELENN: To be slander, it must be false. That’s two down.
SHERIDAN: Well then it’s damned inconvenient.
DELENN: The truth always is.
And people wonder where I get this weird sense of humor; the universe considers me its personal cat toy. You have ANY idea what it’s like to go through life covered in cosmic cat spit?
J. Michael (Joe) Straczynski (b. 1954) American screenwriter, producer, author [a/k/a "JMS"]
irc.warnerbros.com #Babylon5 (23 Jan 1997)
(Source)
G’KAR: By G’Quon I can’t recall the last time I was in a fight like that! No moral ambiguity, no hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces. They were the bad guys, as you say, and we were the good guys! And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor!
VIR: I’d like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave, like this. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?
Fanatics are governed rather by imagination than by judgment.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) American author
(Attributed)
This quote was attributed to "Stowe" in the 1913 ed. of Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (itself a reprint of Webster's International Dictionary). It is referenced in quotes as an uncited aphorism in The Unjust Judge (1854).
Everyone confesses that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us; but most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive them to do.
A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.
Mildred W. Struven (1892-1983) American Christian Scientist, housewife
(Attributed)
Quoted by her daughter Jean Harris, Stranger in Two Worlds (1986)
HENRY: Buddy Holly was twenty-two. Think of what he might have gone on to achieve. I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.
ADAMS [praying to God in song]:
A little flood, a simple famine, plagues of locusts everywhere,
Or a cataclysmic earthquake, I’d accept with some despair.
But no, you send us Congress! Good God, sir, was that fair?
Love is stronger than justice,
Love is thicker than blood,
Love, love, love is stronger than justice,
Love is a big, fat river in flood.Sting (b. 1951) British singer-songwriter, actor [b. Gordon Matthew Summer]
“Love is Stronger than Justice (The Munificent Seven)”
I had a linguistics professor who said that it’s man’s ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be, but I think there’s one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren’t afraid of vacuum cleaners.
Jeff Stilson (b. c. 1959) American comedian, writer
(Attributed)
Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. Long ago, those who wrote our First Amendment charted a different course. They believed a society can be truly strong only when it is truly free. In the realm of expression, they put their faith, for better or for worse, in the enlightened choice of the people, free from the interference of a policeman’s intrusive thumb or a judge’s heavy hand. So it is that the Constitution protects coarse expression as well as refined, and vulgarity no less than elegance. A book worthless to me may convey something of value to my neighbor. In the free society to which our Constitution has committed us, it is for each to choose for himself.
Potter Stewart (1915-1985) US Supreme Court Justice (1959-81)
Ginzburg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463, 498 (1966) [dissenting]
(Source)
Books were the proper remedy: books of vivid human import, forcing upon their minds the issues, pleasures, busyness, importance and immediacy of that life in which they stand; books of smiling or heroic temper, to excite or to console; books of a large design, shadowing the complexity of that game of consequences to which we all sit down, the hanger-back not least.
If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say “give them up,” for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.
A generous prayer is never presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“The Merry Men” (1882)
Full text.
There is no duty we so much under-rate as the duty of being happy.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“An Apology for Idlers” (1881)
(Source)
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
An Inland Voyage, ch. 3 “The Royal Sport Nautique” (1878)
Full text.
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Familiar Studies of Men and Books, “Henry David Thoreau” (5) (1882)
(Source)
You cannot run away from weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“The Amateur Immigrant” (1895)
The world has no room for cowards. We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suffer, to die. And yours is not the less noble because no drum beats before you when you go out into your daily battlefields, and no crowds shout about your coming when you return from your daily victory or defeat.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Address to the Samoan Students, Malua (Jan 1890)
Full text.
Whether we like it or not, the natural and the human environment are inseparable. It would be a great mistake to try to completely erase human traces from any part of the landscape. We need to protect the natural world, but we also need to protect reminders of the human past so that we can learn from them.
Bonnie Stepenoff (b. 1949) American writer, researcher, historian
“Landscapes Remember”
The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people — and this is true whether or not they are well educated — is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations — in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.
There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions
Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923) American electrical engineer
(Attributed)
Quoted in John J. B. Morgan and T. Webb Ewing, Making the Most of Your Life (2005). Sometimes given as: "No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions."
The wise person questions the wisdom of others because they question their own; the foolish one, because it is different from their own.
Leo Stein (1872-1947) American art collector, writer
(Attributed)
If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
Herb Stein (1916-1999) American economist
Stein’s Law (c. 1980)
This was a frequent statement by Stein. He explained it: "This proposition, arising first in a discussion of the balance-of-payments deficit, is a response to those who think that if something cannot go on forever, steps must be taken to stop it -- even to stop it at once."
Variants.:
- "If something can’t go on forever, it won’t."
- "Anything that can’t go on, won’t."
- "Trends that can't continue won't.