The De-Textbook Quotes

“Every time you encounter information that runs contradictory to your beliefs, regardless of how irrefutable it may be, your mind will spin the facts in any way it can to keep you shielded from humiliation.”
― Cracked.com, The DeTextbook: The Stuff You don't Know About Stuff You Thought You Knew

“The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was so outraged at Disney for murdering all of those lemmings that they gave White Wilderness an Oscar for Best Documentary. The world is a terrible and unfair place, kids!”
― Cracked.com, The DeTextbook: The Stuff You don't Know About Stuff You Thought You Knew

“Remember: Nature hates you so much that pretty much everything around you right now is actively trying to kill you.”
― Cracked.com, The DeTextbook: The Stuff You don't Know About Stuff You Thought You Knew

“Long before the Italian Renaissance, the Islamic caliphs realized that the Greeks and Romans had been onto something with that book-learning stuff, and they used this realization to revolutionize astronomy, literature, physics, philosophy, and architecture. Still bored, they went ahead and invented algebra and modern medicine as well.”
― Cracked.com, The DeTextbook: The Stuff You don't Know About Stuff You Thought You Knew

“Most of what we think of as traditional or natural gender roles are actually constructed by our society, and often almost totally arbitrary. For instance, our culture is actually the exception for thinking that it’s unmanly to cry. Japanese samurai, medieval heroes, and even Beowulf himself cried like babies throughout their adventures. As recently as the nineteenth century, male tears were actually celebrated as a sign of honesty, integrity, and strength. And not in the “You’re brave enough to show your weakness” way, but just as a symbol that you actually gave a crap. Odysseus (the guy who killed a Cyclops and frickin’ won the Trojan War) would break down into tears periodically, at least once just because he listened to an emotional song. 3.D”
― Cracked.com, The DeTextbook: The Stuff You don't Know About Stuff You Thought You Knew

“Most of what we think of as traditional or natural gender roles are actually constructed by our society, and often almost totally arbitrary.”
― Cracked.com, The DeTextbook: The Stuff You don't Know About Stuff You Thought You Knew

“THE TRUTH: Shakespeare would have gotten a hard R from the MPAA. Well,”
― Cracked.com, The DeTextbook: The Stuff You don't Know About Stuff You Thought You Knew

“But the biggest shift to a pastier body of Christ happened in medieval times, most likely because, in the age of the Crusades, the Christian Church didn’t want to remind its soldiers that the Muslim guys they were fighting looked a hell of a lot like the little brown Jew they were fighting for.”
― Cracked.com, The DeTextbook: The Stuff You don't Know About Stuff You Thought You Knew

“A Russian poacher named Vladimir Markov shot and wounded a tiger but wasn’t able to track it down. Deciding that he didn’t want to walk away from the hunt empty-handed, the poacher stole part of the animal the tiger had killed and was in the process of eating when it ran away. This is where you’d expect the tiger to come bounding back into the clearing and kill the poacher. But this tiger’s brain was built more like that of Jason Voorhees. According to NPR, “The injured tiger hunted Markov down in a way that appears to be chillingly premeditated. The tiger staked out Markov’s cabin, systematically destroyed anything that had Markov’s scent on it, and then waited by the front door for Markov to come home.” Between twelve and forty-eight hours after he wounded the tiger, Markov returned home and was devoured by it,”
― Cracked.com, The DeTextbook: The Stuff You don't Know About Stuff You Thought You Knew