Being Quotes (page 556)
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A commander-in-chief cannot take as an excuse for his mistakes in warfare an order given by his sovereign or his minister, when the person giving the order is absent from the field of operations and is imperfectly aware or wholly unaware of the latest state of affairs. It follows that any commander-in-chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather...
Napoleon Bonaparte
The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief and sedentary hiatus we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds though through the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth.
Carl Sagan
Because I don't want you forgetting how different our circumstances are. If you die, and I live, there's no life for me at all back in District Twelve. You're my whole life, I would never be happy again. It's different for you. I'm not saying it wouldn't be hard. But there are other people who'd make your life worth living.
Suzanne Collins
Chester nods all the way through this, but does not rudely interrupt Randy as a younger nerd would. Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into it an ssertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering...
Neal Stephenson
In a word there seems to be the light of the outer world, of those who know the sun and moon emerge at such an hour and such another plunge again below the surface, and who rely on this, and who know that clouds are always to be expected but sooner or later always pass away, and mine. But mine too has its alterations, I will not deny it, its dusks and dawns, but that is what I say, for I too must have lived, once, out there, and there is no recovering from that.
Samuel Beckett
The widespread willingness to rely on thermonuclear bombs as the ultimate weapon displays a cavalier attitude toward death that has always puzzled me. My impression is that...most of the defenders of these weapons are not suitably horrified at the possibility of a war in which hundreds of millions of people would be killed...I suspect that an important factor may be belief in an afterlife, and that the proporttion of those who think that death is not the end is much higher among the...
Thomas Nagel
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from...
F. Scott Fitzgerald
You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred? Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn't that right? Haven't your head it all your life? I want to be happy people say. Well aren't they? Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? That's all we live for, isn't it? For pleasure, for titillation ? And you must admit that our culture provides plenty of these.
Ray Bradbury
The woman is perfected. Her dead. Body wears the smile of accomplishment, The illusion of a Greek necessity. Flows in the scrolls of her toga, Her bare. Feet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over. Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little. Pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded. Them back into her body as petals. Of a rose close when the garden. Stiffens and odors bleed. From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower. The moon has nothing to be sad about,...
Sylvia Plath