Brendan's quotes

(showing 1-48 of 48)

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
— Douglas Adams

tags: learning
980 people liked it

"The major problem- one of the major problems, for there are several- one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of whom manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

tags: elections, hg2g, politics, president, rulers
499 people liked it

"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."
— Douglas Adams

260 people liked it

"Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet."
— Douglas Adams

149 people liked it

"3. There are bears and there are small dogs. Be strong like bear! If they take out your teeth, sit on the dogs. Bears always forget they can just sit on the dogs. Sit on the dogs."
— Dave Eggers (You Shall Know Our Velocity)

23 people liked it

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

tags: family, friends, parties, social
970 people liked it

"The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say"
— J.R.R. Tolkien

tags: road
358 people liked it

"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

tags: compassion, justice, mercy
811 people liked it

"'You cannot pass,' he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. 'I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.'"
— J.R.R. Tolkien

44 people liked it

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

tags: faith
341 people liked it

"If more of us valued food and cheer above hoarded gold, it would be a much merrier world."
— J.R.R. Tolkien

tags: food, happiness
473 people liked it

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

tags: fantasy
129 people liked it

"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again)

100 people liked it

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
— Terry Pratchett (Jingo)

tags: humor, proverb
2,007 people liked it

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
— Terry Pratchett (Diggers)

tags: humor, open-mind, thinking
2,949 people liked it

"Stick Boy liked Match Girl,
he liked her a lot.
He liked her cute figure,
he thought she was hot."
— Tim Burton (Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love) (The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories)

11 people liked it

"True love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. "
— William Goldman (The Princess Bride)

tags: cough, drops, love
126 people liked it

"DWIGHT:

Stay smart. Stay cool. It's time to prove to you're friends that you're worth a damn.
Sometimes that means dying.
Sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people."
— Frank Miller (Sin City, Vol. 3: The Big Fat Kill)

tags: writing
22 people liked it

"There's nothing more embarrassing than to have earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal."
— Michael Chabon (Wonder Boys)

tags: life
30 people liked it

"CALVIN:
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning & inhibit clarity."
— Bill Watterson

tags: writing
60 people liked it

"Reality continues to ruin my life."
— Bill Watterson (The Complete Calvin and Hobbes)

tags: calvin-and-hobbes, humor, life
2,635 people liked it

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
— Anaïs Nin

tags: death, love
2,208 people liked it

"Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions."
— Tony Kushner (Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches)

tags: delusions
7 people liked it

"It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them."
— Tom Stoppard

tags: love
93 people liked it

""Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.""
— Tom Stoppard

10 people liked it

"Pirates could happen to anyone."
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)

40 people liked it

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn to the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

tags: motivational, scifi
374 people liked it

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."
— Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)

tags: humor
115 people liked it

" "Generally speaking, I think it is fair to say that I am a friend to the creatures of the Earth when I am not busy eating them or wearing them." "
— John Hodgman

17 people liked it

"Stupid, Stupid Rat Creatures! "
— Jeff Smith

tags: bone
11 people liked it

"I have learned that newborn infants roll their eyes around and move their heads and their arms in short jerky spasms. And if you homeschool them, they will stay this way forever."
— John Hodgman (The Areas of My Expertise)

8 people liked it

"Though my soul may set in darkness,
it will rise in perfect light.
I have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night."
— Sarah Williams

1 person liked it

"A stopped clock is correct twice a day, but a sundial can be used to stab someone, even at nighttime."
— John Hodgman (More Information Than You Require)

7 people liked it

"Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that."
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

tags: humor, inspirational, satan
15 people liked it

"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we would expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. "
— Charles Darwin

4 people liked it

"The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic."
— Charles Darwin

11 people liked it

"Great is the power of steady misrepresentation"
— Charles Darwin

2 people liked it

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
— Charles Darwin

2 people liked it

"Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until your forehead bleeds."
— Douglas Adams

tags: craft, humor, writing
592 people liked it

"The problem with designing something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of a complete fool. "
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

533 people liked it

"A learning experience is one of those things that says, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.""
— Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time)

tags: life
443 people liked it

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
— Douglas Adams

tags: fiction, humor, science
344 people liked it

"You live and learn. At any rate, you live."
— Douglas Adams

tags: learning
327 people liked it

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

tags: skeptic
198 people liked it

"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."
— Douglas Adams

tags: atheism, intelligence
178 people liked it

"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own set of laws."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

tags: fiction, humor, novelist, science
175 people liked it

"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."
— Douglas Adams

147 people liked it

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."
— Douglas Adams

119 people liked it

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