“Luke’s description in Acts of the early church’s communism of goods in Jerusalem is one that good Christians have striven heroically for the better part of two millennia to pretend not to notice.” – David Bentley Hart, “Notes on Authorship,” The New Testament: A Translation
Month: June 2024
“Pain or damage don’t end the world, or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back.” – Jody Worth, “E. B. Was Left Out,” Deadwood
“The Creator, in His infinite wisdom, salted His works so that where gold was, there also you’d find rumor. Though He decreed just as firm that the opposite wouldn’t always hold.” – Ted Mann, “Requiem for a Gleet,” Deadwood
“Announcing your plans is a good way to hear God laugh.” – Ted Mann, “Sold Under Sin,” Deadwood
“I mean, you—you gotta behave like a grown fuckin’ man, huh? You gotta shut the fuck up. Don’t be sorry, don’t look fuckin’ back, because . . . believe me, no one gives a fuck.” – Ricky Jay, “Jewel’s Boot Is Made for Walking,” Deadwood
“As a base of operations, you cannot beat a fuckin’ saloon.” – Malcolm MacRury, “Plague,” Deadwood
“Rarely, accidental deaths occur when a car is started and left running in a garage to warm up while the driver goes back to the house. Carbon monoxide from the exhaust then leaks into the house, killing the residents. Occasionally, someone commits suicide in a garage by leaving the car running, and at the same time inadvertently kills the occupants of the house as well.” – Dominick J. Di Maio & Vincent J. M. Di Maio, Forensic Pathology
“During the first nineteen months of its participation in World War II, the U.S. Army purchased almost 950,000 trucks, nineteen times the number it had procured during the corresponding period of World War I. From Pearl Harbor to V-J Day it procured for its own and Allied forces some 84,000 tanks, 2.2 million trucks, 6.2 million rifles, 350,000 artillery pieces, .5 billion rounds of ground artillery ammunition, 41 billion rounds of small arms ammunition. It shipped overseas 127 million measurement tons of cargo, and 7.3 million troops and other passengers.” – Richard M. Leighton and Robert W. Coakley, Global Logistics and Strategy: 1940-1943
“It is better and cheaper to have a strong Army and not need it than it is to need a strong Army and not have it.” – Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
“Any politician should be put in jail who votes for an appropriation bill and fails to vote the tax to pay for it.” – Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
“I can see it in a vision. It comes to haunt me at night. I am standing there knee deep in the water and all around me as far as the eye can see are dead men, floating like a school of dynamited fish. They are all floating face up with their eyes wide open and their skins a ghastly white. They are looking at me as they float by and they are saying, ‘Patton, you bastard, it’s your fault. You did this to me. You killed me.’” – Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
“The unleavened bread of knowledge will sustain life, but it is dull fare unless it is leavened with the yeast of personality.” – Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
“You are not beaten until you admit it.” – Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
“When a man gets married, he must be just as careful to keep his wife’s love as he was to get it. It would be very sad for both of them if he said to himself, ‘Now that I have you I need not worry about losing you’. Don’t do that, ever!” – Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
“Soldiers are always contrary. I could issue them coats without buttons and I will bet that within twenty four hours they would find some, sew them on, and keep them buttoned.” – Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
“The early Christians were (in the strictly technical sense) communists, as the book of Acts quite explicitly states. If these are indeed the Last Days, as James says—if everything is now seen in the light of final judgment—then storing up possessions for ourselves is the height of imprudence. And I imagine this is also why subsequent generations of Christians have not, as a rule, been communists: the Last Days are in fact taking quite some time to elapse, and we have families to raise in the meantime.” – Richard Bentley Hart, “Introduction” to The New Testament: A Translation (emphasis in original)
“‘Knowledge is power,’ but to a degree only. Its possession per se will raise a man to mediocrity, but not to distinction.” – Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., “The Secret of Victory”
“The quickest way to get to heaven is to advance across open ground swept by effective enemy anti-tank fire.” – Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., “Use of Armored Formations, Letter of Instruction No. 3, 20 May 1944 ”
“Follow your discomfort. And listen to it.” – Stephen Colbert, The Late Show
“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.” – attributed to Valery Legasov, in Chernobyl, by Craig Mazin
“The core values that have defined America: Honesty; Decency; Dignity; Equality; To respect everyone; To give everyone a fair shot; To give hate no safe harbor.” – President Joe Biden, “State of the Union Address,” March 7, 2024
“Change is not an event. It’s a process. It takes time.” Justin King, “The Roads Not Taken, Ep. 29,” March 10, 2024
“Political hyperbole cannot substitute for legal argument. The Court must decide issues based the laws and facts before it. It is improper for courts to accept a fact as true simply because a governor has declared it so or the House of Representatives narrowly declares so in a non-binding resolution.” – Judge David Alan Ezra, United States of America, et al. v. State of Texas, et al.
“Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart and write.” – Sir Philip Sidney, “Astrophil and Stella”
“Memoir is literature and literature is art and in art you must seek to illuminate something.” – Jo Ann Beard (interviewed by Susan Lerner in Booth 19)
“The trouble with English speakers was that they always made you wait for the noun.” – Rachel Salguero Kowalsky, “The Delivery Boy”
“Childlike creativity is wonderful because it knows no boundaries and borders. As we grow older, we acquire boundaries and borders, rules and etiquette, concepts regarding what we shouldn’t say or do. That’s useful, obviously, but it can kill creativity, you know? And creativity, I think, is partly about seeing the world without any kind of limitation.” – Viet Thanh Nguyen (interviewed by Jennifer Delgado in Booth 19)
“I think most kids are naturally creative—it’s life that beats the creativity out of people.” – Viet Thanh Nguyen (interviewed by Jennifer Delgado in Booth 19)
“Life can be recognized by its deeds — life is disequilibrium.” – E. G. Nisbet & N. H. Sleep, “The habitat and nature of early life”
“A very simple definition of a living system might be: compartments separated from their surroundings that spontaneously multiply with energy gleaned through self-contained, thermodynamically favourable redox reactions.” – William Martin and Michael J. Russell, “On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells”