Mike > Mike's Quotes

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

“The Japanese fought to win - it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and high explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically.”
― E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

“To be under a barrage of prolonged shelling simply magnified all the terrible physical and emotional effects of one shell. To me, artillery was an invention of hell. The onrushing whistle and scream of the big steel package of destruction was the pinnacle of violent fury and the embodiment of pent-up evil. It was the essence of violence and of man’s inhumanity to man. I developed a passionate hatred for shells. To be killed by a bullet seemed so clean and surgical. But shells would not only tear and rip the body, they tortured one’s mind almost beyond the brink of sanity. After each shell I was wrung out, limp and exhausted.”
― Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

“The aggressor is always peace-loving (as Bonaparte always claimed to be); he would prefer to take over our country unopposed.”
― Carl von Clausewitz, On War

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Plato

“Losses are inevitable on the battlefield, of course, but in my view, no one’s expendable apart from the enemy; angry, resentful troopers aren’t going to cover my back when the las-bolts start flying,”
― Sandy Mitchell, Saviour of the Imperium

“Before I met Durandal, I was a luggage bearer and sparring dummy for the soldiers in the army. After I met Durandal, I’m a luggage bearer and experimental dummy for Durandal. It feels like my life hasn’t changed much.”
― Virlyce, The Godking's Legacy

“I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of “Women’s Rights,” with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to “unsex” themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.”
― Queen Victoria

“The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast, and if you’re not careful it’s too late. Of course, the young man will never understand this truth.”
― Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story

“Women are attracted to funny men, it is often said. This is not true. It only appears this way because women laugh at everything a very handsome man says. So this gives the very handsome men the idea that they are funny.”
― Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story

“Once I learned this truth, I began to see examples of it everywhere. A picture hung on the wall of our parlor. In it, a woman was taking a shirt from a clothesline. She had clothespins in her teeth and it was windy and a boy was tugging at her dress. The woman looked like she was in a hurry and the whole scene gave me the idea that, just outside the frame, full, dark clouds were gathering. But that was not what it was. It was paint. So I decided right then and there to see the picture as it really was. I stared at the thing long and hard, trying to only see the paint. But it was no use. All my eyes would allow me to see was the lie. In fact, the longer I gazed at the paint, the more false detail I began to imagine. The boy was crying, as if afraid, and the woman was weaker than I had first believed. I finally gave up. I understood then that it takes a powerful imagination to see a thing for what it really is.”
― Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story

“Earlier this week, Marlon Brando met with Jewish leaders to apologize for comments he made on Larry King Live, among them that “Hollywood is run by Jews.” The Jewish leaders accepted the actor’s apology and announced that Brando is now free to work again.”
― Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story

“On the final night, Adam Sandler told me the following season would be a rough, divisive one, and he wanted to know which side I’d take. I told him I wanted to be on the side of the guy who had shoved the baby tomatoes up his ass. Adam smiled.”
― Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story

“The true aesthetic moment hangs in suspension between pornography and didacticism.”
― James Joyce

“Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult”
― Carl Von Clausewitz

“Hate is a place where a man who can't stand sadness goes.”
― Kentaro Miura

“The idiot sees the world as Good vs Evil. The cynic sees the world as Evil vs Evil. The truth that no one seems able to see is that the world is, and always has been, a battle of Good vs. Good.”
― Norm Macdonald

“The book trade invented literary prizes to stimulate sales, not to reward merit.”
― Michael Moorcock