+- Too Many Message Boards (https://tmmb.co.nz/forums)
+-- Forum: General Topics (https://tmmb.co.nz/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=5)
+--- Forum: General Discussion (https://tmmb.co.nz/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=8)
+--- Thread: Sayings & Quotes (/showthread.php?tid=791)
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 29-11-2023
A quote from Dr Samuel Johnson, written in the 16th century and still worth remembering today.
"What signifies, says some one, giving halfpence to beggars? They only lay it out in gin or tobacco".
"And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to shew even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths."
To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there's more idleness and abuse of government favours among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged.
Norman Mailer
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque & insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
Oscar Wilde
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 30-11-2023
"All great truths begin as blasphemies."
George Bernard Shaw
“Men build too many walls & not enough bridges.”
Isaac Newton
"No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate & if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than it’s opposite."
Nelson Mandela
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 01-12-2023
“Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.”
"Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another".
Nelson Mandela
"Oh love is a wonderful cycle of song,
a model of extemporanea.
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
and I am Marie of Romania."
Dorothy Parker
RE: Sayings & Quotes - zqwerty - 01-12-2023
"People desperately want to think somebody knows what's going on, that there's some sort of plan"
from Reddit.
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 02-12-2023
“You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.”
GK Chesterton
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience."
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
"A person with innate talents will bring them into use, somehow or other, sooner or later – nothing on earth will stop him but death itself – for he is the talent & the talent is him, inseparable."
George Mackay Brown
RE: Sayings & Quotes - zqwerty - 02-12-2023
“You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.”
GK Chesterton
Wow, ain't that the truth?
Great find Lilth7.
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 03-12-2023
(02-12-2023, 11:10 PM)zqwerty Wrote: “You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.”
GK Chesterton
Wow, ain't that the truth?
Great find Lilth7.
There are some really good ones out there.
"A new fascism promises security from the terror of crime. All that is required is that we take away the criminals' rights -- which, of course, are our own. Out of our desperation and fear we begin to feel a sense of security from the new totalitarian state."
Gerry Spencer
'A man’s character is most evident by how he treats those who are not in a position either to retaliate or reciprocate.'
Malcolm Forbes
" Its like any orthodoxy, let it run for a few centuries & what started as something that came from deep inside the human spirit turns into a set of holy texts that stultify thinking. Then people who yearn after the real experience as you do get palmed off with a set of rigid theological propositions - & all that's left to do is learn to read it"
Marion Molteno
RE: Sayings & Quotes - zqwerty - 03-12-2023
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ."
- Gandhi
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 03-12-2023
(03-12-2023, 05:13 PM)zqwerty Wrote: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ."
- Gandhi
That's a favourite of mine.
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 04-12-2023
Fintan O'Toole once wrote..."We have now reached the point where every goon with a grievance, every bitter bigot, merely has to place the prefix, 'I know this is not politically correct, but...' in front of the usual string of insults in order to be not just safe from criticism, but actually a card, a lad, even a hero. Conversely, to talk about poverty and inequality, to draw attention to the reality that discrimination and injustice are still facts of life, is to commit the sin of political correctness. Anti-PC has become the latest cover for creeps. It is a godsend for every curmudgeon and crank, from fascists to the merely smug"
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
Stephen Roberts
Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?
Nietzsche
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 05-12-2023
Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.
Steve Eley
All great truths begin as blasphemies
George Bernard Shaw
The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
Denis Diderot
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 06-12-2023
A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Albert Einstein
If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
Thomas Szasz
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Albert Einstein
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 07-12-2023
"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."
Gene Roddenberry
"As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."
George Orwell
"I can resist everything except temptation."
Oscar Wilde
RE: Sayings & Quotes - zqwerty - 07-12-2023
Thou who passest on this path,
If haply thou dost mark this monument,
Laugh not, I pray thee, though it is a dog's grave.
Tears fell for me, and the dust was heaped above me
By a master's hand.
Ancient Greek epitaph
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 07-12-2023
(07-12-2023, 05:04 PM)zqwerty Wrote: Thou who passest on this path,
If haply thou dost mark this monument,
Laugh not, I pray thee, though it is a dog's grave.
Tears fell for me, and the dust was heaped above me
By a master's hand.
Ancient Greek epitaph
Nicked that one...
RE: Sayings & Quotes - zqwerty - 08-12-2023
Thomas Szasz 1920–2012
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naïve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.
RE: Sayings & Quotes - zqwerty - 08-12-2023
Einstein said about God:
He said he believed in “Spinoza's God” – referring to Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century Dutch thinker – “who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind”.
Who was the atheist scientist who converted to Christianity?
Allan Sandage – prolific astronomer; converted to Christianity later in his life, stating, "I could not live a life full of cynicism. I chose to believe, and a peace of mind came over me."
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 08-12-2023
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
Oscar Wilde
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."
Napoleon
"If someone cannot explain some idea in simple terms that you can understand, then you must assume they are full of shit."
Kragus
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 09-12-2023
"You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be -
I had a mother who read to me."
Anon
"I have learnt that a man has the right and obligation to look down at another man only when that man needs help to get up from the ground'.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
"Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true."
Buddha - Hindu Prince Gautama Siddhartha
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 10-12-2023
"Old Age, I decided, is a gift. I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, not my body! I sometime despair over my body, the wrinkles, the baggy eyes, and the sagging butt. And often I am taken aback by that old person that lives in my mirror (who looks like my mother!), but I don't agonize over those things for long. I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly.
"As I've aged, I've become more kind to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need, but looks so avante garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant. I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging...
Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60&70's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love - I will. I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old .I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things."
Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver. As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore I've even earned the right to be wrong.
So, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day. (If I feel like it)..."
Anon