h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.

Robert Burns

America always does the right thing. She just exhausts every other option first - Churchill
There's never been a good war or a bad peace - someone

"Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
Mark Twain(Samuel Clemens)- "Chronicle of Young Satan"

NM

Albert Einstein (1879-1955):
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought,
but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Albert Einstein (1879-1955):
"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved
by the level of thinking that created them."

"I believe violence will only increase the cycle of violence"
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama, September 12, 2001

(unknown):
Principles are never more important than when it is inconvenient or
dangerous to stand up for them.
(Stand for Peace!)

Not war related...but then again...maybe!

"Do not put off until tomorrow what can be put off till day-after-tomorrow just as well."
Mark Twain(Samuel Clemens)- More Maxims of Mark

NM

'War is over if you want it' - John Lennon

(Don't forget: 'beautifulgarbage' by (duh) Garbage is being released today.)

Wish I'd seen this conversation earlier...

"I have become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Yep, it is indeed a translation from the Bhagavadgita. And Oppenheimer, who supervised the atomic bomb project, quoted it when he saw the first successful test of an atomic bomb in New Mexico. Some sources say that he actually said it in Sanskrit. He was opposed to the proliferation of atomic weapons and his quote was meant as a personal reflection on the implications of what he'd done.

Everyone of the great scientists, Fermi, Feynman and so on, had an interesting reaction at that moment.

Hmmm... quote for today...
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

Silly me. I just realised that (Antipodean) magrat already posted the Einstein quote.

How about this one?
"We turned the switch, saw the flashes, watched for ten minutes, then switched everything off and went home. That night I knew the world was headed for sorrow." - Leo Szilard

"Life is music, music is life. The rest is wife"
(Ahmed 2001)

As my big bro said the other day:

One hopes that George Dubya is mindful of "Shepherd's Prayer"; that is Alan Shepherd - astronaut - "Dear God, please don't let me screw this up. Amen."

Hi

I have plundered this thread pretty freely for quotations for the page http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A638174 - I truly hope no-one objects that I have done so without crediting the researchers who left the quotes here.

If anyone does object, please drop a note in my personal space: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A638174

All the best

a girl called Ben

While I was rustling up quotes, I came across this, which I thought might amuse Two Bit...

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!'... till you can find a rock.



agcB

Yes, I was just shown that one. I thought it was pretty funny.

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last." - Winston Churchill

Here comes a biggie with fries, and super-sized at that.

(I've been 'collecting' aphorisms for a while now, with the intent to turn them into pithy rubberstamps and in doing so assure my place in history as one of the wealthiest philan... philan... good-deed doers of humankind. Remember that you saw it here first. Enjoy.)



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 tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. - H. Goering

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace. - J. Lennon

If we can’t be free, at least we can be cheap. - F. Zappa

Politics is the showbiz of industry. - F. Zappa

Information doesn’t kill you. - F. Zappa

War has no eyes. - Chinese proverb

The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. - Chinese proverb

If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed. - Chinese proverb

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nonviolence doesn’t always work - but violence never does. - Madge Micheels-Cyrus

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. - John F. Kennedy

No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo

If we wish to create a lasting peace, we must begin with the children. - Mahatma Gandhi

For it isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work for it. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do. - Voltaire

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. - F. Nietzsche

Man is the cruelest animal. - F. Nietzsche

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of 'Truth' than lies. - F. Nietszche

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history. - G. W. Hegel

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. - Mark Twain

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. - N. Chomsky

We have seen the Enemy, and he is Us. - Walt Kelly’s 'Pogo'

When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a Communist. - Archbishop Helder Camara

Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. - E. Goodman

A philosopher sees the earth as a large planet, traveling through the heavens, covered with fools. - Bernard de Fontenelle

We have nothing to lose except everything. - A. Camus

Barbarism is never temporary. - A. Camus

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot. - C. Chaplin

Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die. - S. Dali

History repeats itself; first as tragedy, second as farce. - K. Marx

Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity... and I’m not sure about the former. - A. Einstein

Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race. - A. Einstein

God gets into the act:

One of the greatest tragedies in human history was the hijacking of morality by religion. - Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping the common people quiet. - N. Bonaparte

There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world’s religions. - F. Nietzsche

Belief means not wanting to know what is true. - F. Nietzsche

I cannot believe in a god who wants to be praised all the time. - F. Nietzsche

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad. - F. Nietzsche

Man appoints, and God disappoints. - M. de Cervantes

For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain. - Gene Roddenberry

'So just be a 'Dumb F**k' and you’ll go to Heaven.' That’s the sub-text of Christianity. - F. Zappa

Let’s be realistic about this; the guitar can be the single most blasphemous device on Earth. - F. Zappa

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. - Voltaire

Puritanism - the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. - H. L. Mencken

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them. - H. L. Mencken

Church: a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to people who will never get there. - H. L. Mencken

If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be - a Christian. - Mark Twain

When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it. - O. Wilde

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. - Numbers 31:17

The Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: For generations to come, none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No person who has any defect may come near: no one who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no one who has a crippled foot or hand or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has any eye defect or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles.” - Leviticus 21:16-23

Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it. - G. W. Bush

Blessed Be.



-7rob7

Gulp!

7thanks7

(We must talk about Zappa in a different thread...)

agcB

If Hitler were to invade Hell, I would find occasion to make a favorable reference to the devil.

- Winston Churchill

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

- Groucho Marx

It's not the bullet with your name on it you have to worry about. It's the twenty-thousand-odd other bullets labelled Occupant.

- Dunno

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth. o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, and a' that.

For a' that, an' a' that
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

Robert Burns

Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superios to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. - Robert Heinlein

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

- Last stanza of Rudyard Kipling's poem 'The Young British Soldier', written in 1892.