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

*gives up on trying to switch the topic to something entirely different*

*try replying to an OLD posting in the same thread - that usually works for switching the subject... *

'Don't walk - dance!'

(on a postcard)

-> more? see Quotations on life, the universe and everything http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A559389

I do that all too often

"Wake up and dream"

This is from an amazing film called Terror Firmer:

Sarah: It's a baby, and that baby is your mother.
Toxic Avenger: I'm the happiest mother a son could be
Sarah: I'm the happiest father a wife could be


Also this one is a native American saying about consumption:

‘Only when the last tree has died,
and the last river been poisoned,
and the last fish been caught,
will we realise that we cannot eat money.’

This is rapidly turning into my second favourite thread (after Back Again: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F25868?thread=100636 check you have got to the end of the thread and join in the fun!) Re Shakespeare and the lawyers: This is referred to in the Eagles song 'Get Over It' 'The more I think about it old Billy was right Let's kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight' This has another line which I love 'I wanna find you Inner Child And kick it's little ass' The mention of WC Fields reminded me of a quote I cannot remember about Afghansistan which reminds me of a story I *can* remember about Afghansistan. I am a daughter, neice and grand-daughter of the British Empire, and in the mid-to-late 20s my grandfather was up beyond the Kyber Pass doing what the Brits are still doing up beyond the Kyber Pass. A small group of them had been holed up in a cave for a couple of weeks, defending themselves. Think about this. If there is no way out there is nowhere to go when you need to go. Think about it again. Feeling queasy yet? When they were relieved (as it were) one of the party was a Staff Officer whose idea of a tough campaign was one where there was only cold water to shave with in the morning. He exclaimed to the senior officer there 'My god Halifax, what Dreadful Squallor!' To which Halifax replied: 'It was not the Dreadful Squallor which bothered us, Sir, so much as the Appalling Danger'. And while I am on a run of military quotes, (and I dearly wish I could remember the name of the person involved), at the battle of Waterloo there was a senior officer who had his leg blown off by a cannon ball, though his horse and the rest of him were fine. He said to the officer nearest him: Good Gad, I've lost my leg sir! To which the other offier replied: Good Gad, so you have sir! And finally, a Walt Whitman quote in memory of my mother, and those who were killed in the World Trade Center. The beginning is everthing, but the end is something. Ben

This is rapidly turning into my second favourite thread (after Back Again: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F25868?thread=100636 check you have got to the end of the thread and join in the fun!) Re Shakespeare and the lawyers: This is referred to in the Eagles song 'Get Over It' 'The more I think about it old Billy was right Let's kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight' This has another line which I love 'I wanna find you Inner Child And kick it's little ass' The mention of WC Fields reminded me of a quote I cannot remember about Afghansistan which reminds me of a story I *can* remember about Afghansistan. I am a daughter, neice and grand-daughter of the British Empire, and in the mid-to-late 20s my grandfather was up beyond the Kyber Pass doing what the Brits are still doing up beyond the Kyber Pass. A small group of them had been holed up in a cave for a couple of weeks, defending themselves. Think about this. If there is no way out there is nowhere to go when you need to go. Think about it again. Feeling queasy yet? When they were relieved (as it were) one of the party was a Staff Officer whose idea of a tough campaign was one where there was only cold water to shave with in the morning. He exclaimed to the senior officer there 'My god Halifax, what Dreadful Squallor!' To which Halifax replied: 'It was not the Dreadful Squallor which bothered us, Sir, so much as the Appalling Danger'. And while I am on a run of military quotes, (and I dearly wish I could remember the name of the person involved), at the battle of Waterloo there was a senior officer who had his leg blown off by a cannon ball, though his horse and the rest of him were fine. He said to the officer nearest him: Good Gad, I've lost my leg sir! To which the other offier replied: Good Gad, so you have sir! And finally, a Walt Whitman quote in memory of my mother, and those who were killed in the World Trade Center. The beginning is everthing, but the end is something. Ben

Sorry about the double post - and such a long one too - my connection died half way through.

Ben

"Here's a quote, I'd really like to know who said it:

If a person is a conservative at 20, he's heartless. If he's a liberal at 40, he's brainless."

It was Churchill, he said it a little differently though, but it was him.

On the military quotes, from Zulu, during the roll call
"Hitch? ... Hitch? ... Now then Hitch, your alive, I saw you."
"I am? Oh thanks sarge."

Well, since we're on the subject of the military, here's more of a fact than a quote from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade:
"The price of one British Aerospace Hawk is roughly the amount needed to provide 1.5 million people in the third world with fresh water for life."

Noteriety is not as good as fame but is better than obscurity

Dum vivimus vivamus (Let us live whilst we live, apologies if I have the Latin wrong)


Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?

This one is for the programmers among us

"Debugging is at least twice as hard as writing the program in the first place. So if your code is as clever as you can possibly make it, then by definition you're not smart enough to debug it."

- Brian Kernighan


Dancer

So many ... where do I start?

Tommy Lee-Jones as Agent K in Men In Black:

"Don't 'Sir' me young man you have no idea who you're dealing with"

And again:

"Let me tell you something about your experience son. As of now, it means precisely d**k"

Various others include:

"Poets have remained surprisingly silent on the subject of cheese"
G.K.Chesterton (current fave!)

"I do like Americans, but not when they try and speak French. What a blessing it is they never try and speak English"
Saki

"Last night I shot an Elephant in my pyjamas. How it got into my pyjamas I'll never know"
Groucho Marx

"No, I aint Jewish I just don't dig on swine"
Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction

One of the many put downs in Kind Hearts and Coronets;
"He had the greatest propensity for middle age I'd ever seen in a young man."

Or something like that.

Oh and Orson Welles' lines about the Swiss in The Third Man. How does that go again?
Something like;
"Italy under the Borgias, murder, terror, extortion and some of the greatest art ever to be produced. The Swiss have had five hundred years of peace and brotherhood and what have they produced? ... The cuckoo clock."

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent -- it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.
--Lazarus Long

Isn't Heinlein great?


Vidmaster

Some scientific quotes I like:

Science has, as its whole purpose, the rendering of the physical world understandable and beautiful. Without this you have only tables and statistics.
J Robert Oppenheimer

Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(And as I try to complete my PhD, how true this is! )

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
Baron Rutherford of Nelson

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein

Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.
Albert Einstein

One from Conrad:

No man succeeds at everything he undertakes. In that sense we are all failures. The great point is not to fail in ordering and sustaining the effort of our life. In this matter vanity is what leads us astray. It hurries us into situations from which we must come out damaged; whereas pride is our safeguard, by the reserve it imposes on the choice of our endevour as much as by the virtue of its sustaining power.

Joseph Conrad -- The Duel

* did you pick your name because there _are_ smileys for it ?? *

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge" Albert Einstein

* oh well. the question was directed at of course *