“You are not beaten until you admit it.” – Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
Author: Tetman Callis
“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”
“Revenge is a dish best served with ice cream.” – Not a troll, Wonkette, February 27, 2024
“Well, I stared into the abyss, as they say, and the abyss stared back into me. Then it got bored and left. So here I am!” – Paul Lamb, Parent Imperfect
“The thing to know about cameras and government is, if the camera is rolling, nothing really important is happening. What you’re watching is the theater. The governing will not be televised.” – Lawrence O’Donnell, “The Last Word,” February 21, 2024
“We are pathologically linguistic. We chop the world up into propositions and, if we’re not careful, examine those rather than the world itself.” – Charles Foster, “The Soliloquies of the Lambs”
“Marriage is not to be undertaken frivolously; it requires a mature, fully developed dependency and a vast capacity for endurance.” – Valerie Solanas, “Up You Ass”
“I talk to men on their level; I have virile, potent, sophisticated interests—I adore positions of intercourse, Keynesian economics, and I can look at dirty pictures for hours on end.” – Valerie Solanas, “Up Your Ass”
“The five Pillars of Aristocracy are Beauty, Wealth, Birth, Genius, and Virtues. Any one of the three first, can at any time, over bear any one or both of the two last.” John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 15, 1813 (capitalization and punctuation in original)
“Inequalities of Mind and Body are so established by God Almighty in the Constitution of Human Nature that no Art or policy can ever plain them down to a level.” – John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 19, 1813 (capitalization and spelling in original)
“The same political parties which now agitate the U.S. have existed thro’ all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals.” – Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, June 27, 1813
“I am 60 years old and can give you some advice. Never commit a crime against anybody whatsoever. That’s how you’ll grow old with clean hands.” – Mikhail Bulgakov, The Heart of a Dog (trans. Avril Pyman)
“One has to know about food, and — can you imagine? — the majority of people do not. You don’t just have to know what to eat, but when and how.” – Mikhail Bulgakov, The Heart of a Dog (trans. Avril Pyman)
“A cat sits until it is tired of sitting, then gets up, stretches, and walks away.” – Alan Watts