Here’s this month’s collection of quotes encountered.
It’s almost impossible to believe he [Boris] exists in politics. It’s as if we took everything that was ever bad about the UK, scraped it up off the floor, wrapped it in an old sausage skin and then taught it to make noises with its face.
[Jim Whitehouse on Twitter]
What is offensive about a penis, a vulva or breasts? Nothing as such. I would argue, it’s like a knife. It’s not offensive until you point it at someone.
[Marc at https://www.nudeandhappy.com/2022/06/13/i-love-being-naked-and-no-its-not-sexual/]
My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.
[Cary Grant]
The only thing which has improved since Brexit is the average IQ of EU citizens.
[Kenneth Clarke]
We are a society of altruists, governed by psychopaths.
[George Monbiot]
There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.
[Yosemite National Park Forest Ranger]
I see
and I hear
and I speak no evil;
I carry
no malice
within my breast;
yet quite without
wishing
a man to the Devil
one may be
permitted
to hope for the best.
[Piet Hein, An Ethical Grook]
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
[Seneca]
The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject … And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them … Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.
[Seneca]
Acting ethically is how we, the musicians contributing to this performance called the universe, avoid hitting bum notes and screwing up the performance. Acting unethically is how We make the symphony of life into something ugly, confused, and cacophonous rather than something beautiful and deeply moving.
[Brad Warner, The Other Side of Nothing]
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
[Blaise Pascal]
St Augustine [in his] pages about the nature of time in his book “The Confessions” says, “When I listen to music I get a meaning from a musical phrase, but I never listen to the phrase. I listen to one note at a time.” If I listen to one note, how do I know about the previous notes? Well, of course I know because I remember them, but if I remember them … the meaning comes from the notes playing now and the memories of the previous ones. So it’s all in the present and it can only be the present together because there is memory. But it’s more than that because since the brain is designed by evolution to use memory to anticipate for
a purpose, because it is designed to try to get somewhere. That’s how living evolution designed our behaviour.
[Carlo Roovelli, Lecture “The Physics and the Philosophy of Time”]