Favorite Quotes
Here is a selection of my favorite quotes! (Newest additions added at the top.)
“In order to be successful, we are going to have to continue to do what we have always done – make games that we would want to play, and hope there is audience for them. We don’t believe in focus testing ideas (it’s like asking an audience what album they want to hear – they don’t know until they hear it!) or thinking of a target market or anything like that; it’s an anathema to creativity. We are trying to make commercially viable art, not sell washing powder. While people like what we do, we will continue to do it to the best of our abilities. When they don’t, we will have to stop and do something else.” — Sam Houser of Rockstar Games (i.e. Grand Theft: Auto)
“How perfectly goddamned delightful it all is, to be sure.” — Charles Crumb
Scott Adams (Dilbert):
- “In case you ever consider getting off caffeine yourself, let me explain the process. You begin by sitting motionlessly in a desk chair. Then you just keep doing that forever because life has no meaning.”
- “You’re working hard, I’m not, and in 100 years, we’ll both be dead.”
- “If you’re following the news, you know that the major religions differ in their interpretation of the holy books. For example, one way to interpret God’s will is that you should love your neighbor. An alternate reading of the holy books might lead you to rig a donkey cart with small mortar rockets and aim it at a hotel full of infidels.”
- “It’s important to agree with people if you want them to think you are a genius. For most people, the definition of smart is “Thinks exactly like me but even more so.”
“Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.” — Robin Williams
Charlie Brown: “Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, ‘Why am I here?’ Then a voice answers, ‘Why? Where do you want to be?’” — from Peanuts
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” — Douglas Adams, from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. — Douglas Adams
Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the light bulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
“My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.” — Christopher Morley
Mr. Cole’s Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.
“The seven deadly sins … Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones from man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the milestones are lifted.” — George Bernard Shaw
“Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.” — Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”
“At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.” — Zeno’s paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.” — George Bernard Shaw
“If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.” — George Bernard Shaw
“Those who think that the rewarding things in life are somewhere beyond the rainbow burn their toast a lot.” — from The Tao of Pooh
Homer Simpson [watching TV]: “Quiet, the commercial is on… we don’t watch these, it’s like we’re stealing TV.”
“I am going to be pretty kick ass by the time I’m thirty, and I can’t wait!” — Rose McGowan… my sentiments, exactly.
“If you’re waiting… don’t. Live your life. That’s your responsibility not mine. If it were not to happen you won’t have missed a thing. If in fact it does you might get something that works for you; in the end you could win on this either way. But if you’re really into waiting, try holding your breath for Jesus ’cause I hear the payoff may be that much greater.” — Axl Rose, regarding the release of his newest album, “Chinese Democracy”, but applicable to so much more in this day of instant gratification.
“A world of made / is not a world of born — pity poor flesh / and trees,poor stars and stones,but never / this fine specimen of hypermagical / ultraomnipotence.” — from e.e. cummings’ poem “pity this busy monster,manunkind” … you have to read the poem to “get it”, I think.
“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.” — Henry David Thoreau
“In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”– Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
“I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Perhaps we should have prefaced the show a little bit. In case you were wondering, there is a difference between anger and hate. Anger is constructive, hate is not. We’re about compassion as opposed to fear. We’re about growth as opposed to stagnancy. Right? We’re about remembering our connection with each other, so we can all evolve together. It is not about kicking each others asses, it’s not about pointing a finger at someone else and blaming them for the problems. It’s about going inside and figuring out what we can do together to heal everyone. So stop f**king beating each other up or we’ll leave.” — the music group Tool responding to some over-eager fans
“There” [says the Devil] “are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here they are all in my worshipping [sic] assembly.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”
“I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to get off my driveway.” — Steven Wright
“A man travelling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a lucious [sic] strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!”– Buddha told a parable in Sutra
“It’s not a war on drugs, it’s a war on personal freedom.” — Bill Hicks
“Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.” — Ambrose Bierce
“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, / Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend / More than cool reason ever comprehends. / The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact.” — Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” V.i
“It’s not a war on drugs, it’s a war on personal freedom.” — Bill Hicks
“You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door — Pray what is the reason of that?” “In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, “I kept all my limbs very supple; By the use of this ointment — one shilling the box — Allow me to sell you a couple?” — Lewis Carrol
“Writing is hard work and bad for the health.” — E. B. White
