The awesome quotes thread

'Racing is an addiction which makes heroin look like a vague longing for something salty.' -Peter Egan

'Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more.' -Dorothy

'That's a self correcting problem.' -Toyman (regarding the poor fit of two moving parts) and an old boss (regarding an idiot co worker steadily headed for unemployment).

'Oh, great. Now we ALL gotta do one.' - Brain Deegan, freestyle MX rider, after seeing Carey Hart do the first motorcycle backflip at the X Games.

"Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than a question is an answer. "

-Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #208

You love a lot of things if you live around them, but there isn't any woman and there isn't any horse, nor any before nor any 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. A man has only one virginity to lose in fighters, and if it is a lovely plane he loses it to, there his heart will ever be.

— Ernest Hemingway, 'London Fights the Robots,' written for Collier's, August 1944.

Me, to my metalwork students:

"You don't fully own a project until you've bled on it."

'Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.'

                                        Oscar Wilde —

Said this to the boss one day.

Your all filler and no killer.

                      Donebrokeit :)

…

Come to the edge.

We might fall.

Come to the edge.

It's too high!

COME TO THE EDGE!

And they came,

and he pushed,

and they flew.

— Christopher Logue

Lancer007 wrote:

hell yes!

"Continues to fill a much needed void." - Rocklopedia Brittanicus, re: Spinal Tap

"Getting old ain't for Bob Costas, but it beats the alternative"

"Don't set a standard you're not willing to keep"

Here is my motto for many years past now. No idea who came up with it:

If you settle for what you've got, you deserve what you get"

Also, anything by Yogi Berra

"Great, a compromise! Now no-one gets what they want"

Sheldon Cooper

"I mostly use 1" OD by .035 or .049" wall tubing. The thin wall stuff will dent easier, so don't throw hammers at the bike."

-Michael Moore

An excerpt from an essay I recently did. Given the anti-humanist timbre of the Sochi Olympics, these quotes have been on my mind much recently.

1) Thomas Payne (more accurately spelled Paine) was a pamphleteer (basically an early editorialist or lobbyist) who was credited at the time with being the "Father of the Revolution." His philosophical grasp on humanity (and subsequent authoring of "Common Sense" was said to have set the stage for the Founding Fathers' decision to declare independence. He was quoted in his own publications as saying, "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all." 2) George Washington was the first President of the United States. He was a declared agnostic. Upon appointing a military Chaplain who did not believe in the existence of Hell and who was not Ordained, many of the religious enlisted men called for dismissal of the Chaplain. Washington appointed him anyway. Washington originally wanted the First Amendment to read, "freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion." From Biography.com 3) John Adams, the second president. He began studies in law, but was threatened by his father to become Clergy. From The Character of John Adams by Peter Shaw: "He wrote that he found among the lawyers 'noble and gallant achievments" but among the clergy, the 'pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces'. Late in life he wrote: 'Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!"' It was during Adam's administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." 4) Thomas Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration of Independence and our third president. Jefferson was abhorrently against organized religion. He fully supported individual rights to express their own beliefs, but was himself quoted as saying, "The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained." Jefferson also referred to the Book of Revelations as "...the ravings of a maniac." From: Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie 5) James Madison, the fourth President, and the man who suggested the Declaration of Independence be written. Madison was quoted as saying, ""During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." Source: The Madisons by Virginia Moore. 6) Ethan Allen, a farmer, businessman, land speculator, philosopher, and writer. He was an American Revolutionary War patriot and is best known as one of the founders of the U.S. state of Vermont, and for the capture of Fort Ticonderoga early in the American Revolutionary War. From Religion of the American Enlightenment by G. Adolph Koch, "That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words... I am no Christian." When [Ethan] Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised "to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God." Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws those "written in the great book of nature." 7) Benjamin Franklin, Delegate of the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. Franklin was labeled a Deist, although his writings suggest a more Agnostic sponsor. Franklin was quoted (one month before his death): "As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion...has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon.... and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble."

That's my story and I'm stickin to it

those willing to trade freedom for security, deserve neither, and will lose both. -ben franklin (paraphrased, there is some contention over the actual phrasing of the original quote).

"when i look into your eyes, there's nothing there to see. nothing but my own mistakes, staring back at me..." -linkin park.

"when life gives you lemons, you paint that E36 M3 gold!" - atmosphere

"the fastest way to ruin a perfect relationship is marriage." -all men everywhere.

"you know why divorces are so expensive? cause their worth it!" -willie nelson

and my favorite that i have been spouting off at random at whining lefties: "you were promised equal opportunity, NOT equal outcome."

ill stop now... -J0N

We've done so much with so little for so long soon we will be able to do anything with nothing.

I've heard this is a common saying in Texas: "That man is all hat and no cattle." Original source unknown.

kazoospec wrote: I've heard this is a common saying in Texas: "That man is all hat and no cattle." Original source unknown.

I've heard that one as 'Big hat, no cattle'.

'I won't pay, I won't pay ya, no way

na-na, why don't you get a job?'

-The Offspring

I don't remember where I first heard it but "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" is one that seems to get proven over and over again.

"Here we stand and here we fall, history won't care at all" - Freddie Mercury

Paraphrasing here, can't find the original text. During the interview after the first ever 200 mph Pro Stock run:

"Professor, how does it feel to be the first driver over 200 mph?"

"Not that different from 199" - Warren Johnson.

The great Winston Churchill has many, some were even said by him!

Never in the history of mankind have so many owed so much to so few

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. I love this one as apparently if you went back 1,000 years the average Britain would have been able to understand the whole thing...with the exception of the word surrender that wasn't part of the English language until after the French came over

Here's another exchange attributed to him but apparently not true.

Lady Astor: Sir, if I were your husband I'd give you poison. Churchill: Madam, if I were your husband I'd drink it.

Wally wrote: We've done so much with so little for so long soon we will be able to do anything with nothing.

that's Navy Seabees ?

A few from my favorite historical statesman, Thomas Jefferson:

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

Determine never to be idle...It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.