Thomas > Thomas's Quotes

“Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.

"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"

"All of them at once," said Bilbo. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.

...

"Good morning!" he said at last. "We don't want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water." By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.
"What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!" said Gandalf. "Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution?”
― Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

“In a designed economy there would be no trees, or certainly no very tall trees: no forests, no canopy. Trees are a waste. Trees are extravagant. Tree trunks are standing monuments to futile competition - futile if we think in terms of a planed economy. But the natural economy is not planned. Individual plants compete with other plants, of the same and other species, and the result is that they grow taller and taller, far taller than any planner would recommend.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

“Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

“Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part...and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority... other than through the tragic logic of history... No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“...¿No es eso todo lo que somos? Un cerebro que es mantenido con vida por una compleja y vulnerable máquina llamada cuerpo. El cerebro no puede seguir vivo si parte de la máquina es destruida, o por lo menos privada de algunos elementos básicos como comida y oxígeno. Esa es la única diferencia considerable entre nosotros y “los muertos vivientes.” Sus cerebros no necesitan de todo ese sistema de soporte para vivir, así que es
necesario atacar el órgano directamente...”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“In war, men lose what makes them great. Their creativity. Their wisdom. Their joy. All that’s left is their utility.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“Till Shade is gone, till water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder's eye on the Last Day. By my honor and the Light, my life will be a dagger for Sightblinder's heart.
Until the Last Day, To Shayol Ghul itself.”
― Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven