Notable quotes
 

I had no idea where to put this, but I had to share it. Post your own memorable but random quotes.

From Naked Conversations, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel:

A few geek T-shirt quotes:

_____There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

_____If at first you don't succeed; call it version 1.0

_____ Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips."

one that seems to ring more true as I get older:

Life is like a shit sandwich, the more doe you got, the less shit you taste.

Rex, who the hell spells it "doe?"

And the accurate quote is "bread."

I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour.

Henry David Thoreau

This is, I think my favourite Tom Paine quote.

<----"this guy"

"There is one thing I would break up over and that is if she caught me with another woman. I wouldn't stand for that."
Steve Martin

Stolen from cookies:

"The universe is expanding."
"What is that your business?"

- Woody Allen, "Annie Hall"

I love Woody Allen.

So I keep stealing from teh cookie jar, what of it?

I think college administrators should encourage students to urinate on walls and bushes, because then when students from another college come sniffing around, they'll know this is someone else's territory.
- Deep Thoughts

I'm bringing this up at the next Town Hall meeting.

"If you can survive 11 days in cramped quarters with a friend and come out laughing, your friendship is the real deal."

"Always avoid alliteration."

~unknown

Eschew obfuscatory sesquipedelian circumlocutions.

Aaron Altman: A lot of alliterations from anxious anchors placed in powerful posts!
--Broadcast News

"The winner of the rat race is still a rat."

The rats may be deserting a sinking ship, but it's still sinking.

(Dunno who said it.)

'Damn the torpedoes Full speed ahead'

Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (1801-1870)

'Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?'
Thomas Jefferson

"Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit."

"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door"

I like my beers cold and my homosexuals flaming.
Homer Simpson

Anita Bryant like Anita hole in the head.
Graffiti

As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children.
Anita Bryant

As long as society is anti-gay, then it will seem like being gay is anti-social.
Joseph Francis

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
Dr. Seuss

Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.
Woody Allen

Closets are for clothes.
Bumper sticker

Did you hear about the Scottish drag queen? He wore pants.
Lynn Lavne

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Drag is when a man wears everything a lesbian won't.
Author Unknown

Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.
Shakti Gawain

Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.
James Baldwin

For a long time I thought I wanted to be a nun. Then I realized that what I really wanted to be was a lesbian.
Mabel Maney

Gay and lesbian people fall in love. We settle down. We commit our lives to one another. We raise our children. We protect them. We try to be good citizens.
California Sen. Sheila Kuehl
After California Senate approved gay marriage bill AB849

Gay people ... were the first to find me, and they get everything, they're so sharp. I'll look out in the audience and I see three or four gay guys right in the front row, or a couple of lesbians, I know it's gonna be a good show.
Joan Rivers
To Denver's Out Front

Gay people, well, gay people are EVIL, evil right down to their cold black hearts which pump not blood like yours or mine, but rather a thick, vomitous oil that oozes through their rotten veins and clots in their pea-sized brains which becomes the cause of their Nazi-esque patterns of violent behavior. Do you understand?
Trey Parker and Matt Stone
From South Park, spoken by Mr Garrison

Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don't are ladies. This is, however, a rather archaic usage of the word. Should one of you boys happen upon a girl who doesn't put out, do not jump to the conclusion that you have found a lady. What you have probably found is a Lesbian.
Fran Lebowitz

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.
William Shakespeare

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
Homer

Homophobia is a social disease.
Bumper sticker

Homosexuality is a sickness, just as are baby-rape or wanting to become head of General Motors.
Eldridge Cleaver
"Notes on a Native Son," Soul on Ice, 1968

Homosexuality is god's way of insuring that the truly gifted aren't burdened with children.
Sam Austin

I am reminded of a colleague who reiterated "all my homosexual patients are quite sick" - to which I finally replied "so are all my heterosexual patients."
Ernest van den Haag, psychotherapist

I am the love that dare not speak its name.
Lord Alfred Douglas
From poem Two Loves

I can't help looking gay. I put on a dress and people say, "Who's the dyke in the dress?"
Karen Ripley

I don't mind straight people as long as they act gay in public.
T-shirt
Worn by Chicago Bulls transvestite Dennis Rodman during a network-TV interview

I get sick of listening to straight people complain about, "Well, hey, we don't have a heterosexual-pride day, why do you need a gay-pride day?" I remember when I was a kid I'd always ask my mom: "Why don't we have a Kid's Day? We have a Mother's Day and a Father's Day, but why don't we have a Kid's Day?" My mom would always say, "Every day is Kid's Day." To all those heterosexuals that bitch about gay pride, I say the same thing: Every day is heterosexual-pride day! Can't you people enjoy your banquet and not piss on those of us enjoying our crumbs over here in the corner?
Rob Nash

I just wish more of my fellow queers would come out sometimes. It's nice out here, you know?
Elton John
Accepting Distinguished Achievement Award from Elizabeth Taylor at Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center's 25th anniversary blowout

I like my beers cold and my homosexuals flaming.
Homer Simpson

I think God is a callous bitch not making me a lesbian. I'm deeply disappointed by my sexual interest in men.
Diamanda Galas

I'd rather be black than gay because when you're black you don't have to tell your mother.
Charles Pierce
1980

If adjustment is necessary, it should be made primarily with regard to the position the homosexual occupies in present-day society, and society should more often be treated than the homosexual.
Harry Benjamin

If gay and lesbian people are given civil rights, then everyone will want them!
Author unknown
As seen on a button

If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nailbiters.
Anita Bryant

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
Johann von Goethe

If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work: "Hello. Can't work today, still queer."
Robin Tyler

If horse racing is the sport of kings, then drag racing must be the sport of queens.
Bert R. Sugar

If male homosexuals are called "gay," then female homosexuals should be called "ecstatic."
Shelly Roberts

If Michelangelo had been straight, the Sistine Chapel would have been wallpapered.
Robin Tyler

If time and space are curved, where do all of the straight people come from?
Author Unknown

If you are ashamed to stand by your colors, you had better seek another flag.
Author Unknown

I'm a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.
Paul Newman

I'm not a lesbian but my girlfriend is.
Bumper sticker

I'm not gay but my boyfriend is.
Bumper sticker

In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.
Quentin Crisp
The Naked Civil Servant, 1978

In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.
Simone de Beauvoir

Is life not a hundred times too short for us to stifle ourselves.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Isn't it a violation of the Georgia sodomy law for the Supreme Court to have its head up its ass?
Letter to Playboy magazine, February 1987

It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It's like disapproving of rain.
Francis Maude

It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.
Daphne Fielding
The Duchess of Jermyn Street

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
Agnes Repplier

It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.
Lucille Ball

For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
Clifton Fadiman

It's hard enough to be taken seriously in the struggle for gay rights without having a bunch of straight girls running around kissing each other to get the attention of boys and videocameras.
M. Robin D'Antan
2002

I've wondered what my sexuality might be, but I've never wondered whether it was acceptable or not. Anyway, who really cares whether I'm gay or straight?"
George Michael
To Britain's Big Issue magazine

Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich were shaking hands congratulating themselves on the introduction of an antigay bill in Congress. If it passes, they won't be able to shake hands, because it will then be illegal for a prick to touch an asshole.
Judy Carte

Labels are for filing. Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people.
Martina Navratilova

Lesbianism has always seemed to me an extremely inventive response to a shortage of men, but otherwise not worth the trouble.
Nora Ephron
Heartburn, 1983

Let my lusts be my ruin, then, since all else is a fake and a mockery.
Hart Crane

Let's get one thing straight, I'm not.
Bumper sticker

I think the message is excellent in theory, whoever they are from.

but, but .... YES WE CAN!

Well, we could...if people would stop bitchin'! :p

Class hatred is always ascribed to the lower class in that equation. The ones at the top are never blamed for their part. What they do is simply seen as right and proper. And the ones at the bottom are only a problem when they refuse to accept that status quo.

And this, my favourite Billy Bragg song:

There was no blame implied nor intended. I think you are taking the quote out of context.

I don't think I am. Not when put with the rest of the quote:

It seems very clear to me what side of the argument this quote comes from and what it is arguing against.

Hmmm. I think he was saying that you cannot raise one by lowering another. I still do not see the "blame" you are referring to.

The blame is ascribed to the one who wants to bring the rich down in order to help the poor. Those who are seen as sowing class hatred are not the rich. It is always the poorer classes, the workers and the unions who argue for greater equality and better rights, higher wages and greater levels of fairness who are accused of sowing class hatred. It is not the business owner, nor is it the wealthy who are accused of such things.


The rich have benefited themselves at the expense of the poor for a thousand years and more. But they are not accused of class hatred.

Wealth is not a pie to be divided up and when it's gone it's gone. Wealth is mostly creation of things that were not there previously. The wealthy don't get wealthy because they managed to sneak themselves a bigger piece of pie. Most wealthy get wealthy because they find or build a bigger pie.

Maybe this is easier to see in a young culture, where 120 years ago there was fuck-all and now there's awesome wealth. If we were all still arguing about the pie of 1900 we'd all still be poor.

There was huge wealth in America 120 years ago. It was held in the hands of a relatively small group of people. There is now even greater wealth in America. It is still held in the hands of a relatively small group of people.

The richest person in 1900 would give all his wealth to experience what the middle class can experience today.

Well, relatively speaking, you may be correct about the amount of wealth that there was in America a hundred years ago, then again there really wasn't even much of an America to speak of.

However, The distribution of wealth will never be equal in a free society. Additionally, to simply view "the wealth" as a stagnant amount and to then conclude from that, that some must be taken from one in order for it to be given to another is also false.

One cannot be raised by lowering another. That doesn't work. :headshake

*Smiles* I don't see it as a single pie. I am not an eighteenth-century economist; I do not see it in zero-sum terms.

The comment about the wealth of America 120 years ago was simply in response to UT's comment.

If the wealthiest are taxed at a higher level and those taxes used to 'raise' the condition of the poorest then that has changed the picture.That is not a case of redistributing a fixed and immutable sum. If a minimum wage prevents the more unscrupulous employers from undervaluing their workforce, then that has changed the picture. As with unions, it has reduced the 'power' of the wage-payer, and raised the status of the wage-earner.

There will never be total economic, or indeed social equality. But the balance can (and should in my opinion) be altered. The gap will never be closed, but it can be narrowed. In order for the working-classes to increase their power and standing, it is, in my opinion, necessary to reduce the power and standing of the employers.

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

And if you don't think the poor the poor/employee have benefited from the rich/employer - think about what UT said some more.

A fair point. But I was talking about the working-class, not the middle class.

Over here, the middle class works for a living..... so I don't understand the distinction.

Bu there's another point; I would like to have the same academic degrees that you do, but I've been busy with other things. I feel it would really benefit my future though - so could you give me some of yours? You could just go back and re-do some of your work...

I've a better idea: let's see if we can find someone who inherited several thousand academic degrees and see if they can dob you one of theirs that they will never in five lifetimes have the time to use. Or better still, let's find someone who has many degrees but which were primarily earned by someone else's labour and let the people who did the work have the degrees.

This isn't about taking away from the middle-class. It's not even about taking from the rich. It's about denying the extremely wealthy the opportunity to exploit those who have few choices but to be exploited.

But you want to tax people higher based on income they are making now. And I want a nice fresh degree.

Well, how bout I pay a higher rate of tax when my degree allows me to get a graduate job and that money goes to ensure someone else who wants to go to university can have their funding?

Personally I am in favour of a graduate tax.

The two are not comparable. Money is necessary to put food on your table and a roof over your head. That's why people who have fuck all are so easily exploited by those who have much. Other than a certificate I have gained nothing tangible through my education. Bread is pretty tangible, as is hearth and home.

How about those of us who don't have the level of degree that you have get to decide, since we outnumber you?

Personally, I'm in favor of a flat tax, or tax based on consumption. Anything else is really just unfair, and reduces incentive to try and better yourself and your progeny.

You worked hard for your degree and you should be proud of it and all that it stands for for you - and I really don't think anyone should be able to take that away from you just because they think it would benefit them. That's my point. If you think it was a waste of time getting it because you can't pay the rent with it - why did you?

:yelgreedy

Let me ask again, what is "rich" or "Wealthy"? The person who has less than the other will always see those who have more as rich. It is a never ending cycle. If you want to be "rich" do it.

I'm a bit late here, but I have two cents worth lying about, so here goes....

I agree with Dana's interpretation of the original intent of the quote, in its full context. It seems to be saying, sit down, working man, stop rocking the boat.

And yes, the economic pie is NOT a zero sum game, we seem agreed on that.

But yes and no, some rich people get rich by making the pie bigger. Some rich people get rich by enlarging their slice of the pie at the expense of others. I hazard the guess that *most* rich people do both, and aren't really too fussed about which they are doing at any particular time.

Carry on.

Zen, what is a "rich" person. How do you define it?

I didn't say it was a waste of time. I said I gained nothing tangible. I gained plenty of intangible things from it. And I was able to do it because my government subsidised my education: paid for by progressive taxation. Without that progressive taxation it would not have been subsidised. Without that subsidy I would have had no access to such higher learning. University would be far too expensive for the likes of me, a working-class woman with no property to borrow against and no savings to call upon.

So is a Higher Education a "right" of all people in the UK, to be paid for by the working and earning?

Not exactly. You have to fulfil the university's entrance requirements. Universities get a large part of their funding from central government. They also charge tuition fees; however there is a limit on what they can charge: so-called 'top-up fees'. They get a certain amount for the number of students they take (this is limited) and each student is charged top-up fees. At present the limit on how much can be charged to the student is somewhere around £4k a year. The student can choose to pay that themselves or take a low interest student loan which is not repayable until they are earning above 15k a year. On top of that they can choose to apply for a maintenance loan and grant: a combined figure of up to £5.5k a year depending on their level of household income. As my income was below the threshold I was able to apply for the full amount. approx £3k a year loan and £2.5k a year non-repayable grant.

I have come out with a debt of around £20k. But for that I got 3 years of tuition at a Russell Group university in a school of History ranked 31st in the world.

It is heavily subsidised through progressive taxation. Even without the non-repayable grant element, the cost of tuition is garnered mainly through government money and overseas students with the UK student themselves paying (either at the time or through repayment of loans) a fairly small portion. Who is likely to pay higher levels of taxes? Graduates who have benefitted from that subsidy.

This is a fairly recent development. Up until a few years ago, UK students were not expected to pay towards tuition fees at all. And they could apply for a maintenance grant of £5k a year (non repayable). The grant was abolished over a decade ago. Top-up fees were introduced a few years ago. One of the ideas put forward as a way of getting money into the system without making students pay at the time was the Graduate Tax. This wuold basically have meant the old system remained in place, but graduates would pay an extra bit of tax once they were earning above a certain amount. This would mean the people who had taken from the system would retrospectively pay for it. I would have preferred that option. But c'est la vie.

I see. So as in the US with our healthcare, they over charge the students who can pay to pay for those who can't. And that is fair? If yes, why?

In higher education in the U.S., it's called a "Pell Grant."

The quotation marks were sarcastic, but are you not paying attention?

Who are they over-charging? The only students who pay the full price of tuition fees are overseas students: the ones who will not be paying UK taxes when they have completed their degree and whose parents have not been in residence within the UK to pay taxes, or who have not themselves been resident and paying tax. If someone has been resident in the UK for 3 years then they will only have to pay top-up fees.

Sure I am paying attention. Sounds no different than our current healthcare system. Those who have no money get it for free while those who have money are overcharged so others get it for free.

True, but your system of taxation is much higher than in the US, which funds many other things including the NHS.

Not so. Those who are resident pay the same tuition fees regardless of income. Low interest loans for those top-up fees are available regardless of income. The only element dependent on income levels is the maintenance loan/grant. That goes on a sliding scale: if you have a household income of less than 15k per annum you can get the full loan (note: loan) of 3k a year. You can also get the full grant (non-repayable) of 2.5k a year. This is not to cover the cost of university fees and is not paid for by overcharging other students. Overseas students are not over-charged: they are charged at the market rate for university tuition. All UK resident university students are subsidized through general taxation.


[eta]actually, not quite all. There are a handful of institutions which are not subsidized and charge full rate tuition fees. They have chosen not to be funded by government. I would point out that these do not include Oxford or Cambridge. Even with the changing rules on top-up fees, the cost of attending an Oxbridge institution is not much higher than attending my university. They receive general taxation funding, therefore they are obliged to offer education on similar terms.

Ok, got it now. They don't go for a lessor price because the UK peoples are taxed more to make up the difference or that Non-UK residents are charged more to subsidise their loans. They just have better access than those who can pay. Correct?

Not sure what you mean merc?

Incidentally: the low interest government backed loans are a one shot deal. I could not now go and do another degree and get a low interest loan from the Student Loan company, nor can I apply for any governmant backed maintenance loans or grants. The cost of my MA tuition is lower than if I was an overseas student because the government gives general subsidy funding tagged to the number of MA students, but I have to find my own way of paying for that tuition. I am fortunate to hve a scholarship, many don't.