Category: quotes

“The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H. Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.”

Robert A. Heinlein

I wish I could describe Singlish as well as solios described Pittsburghese:

That’s Pittsburghese for you, though – this town will stop loving football long before it embraces the hard consonant. A lot of the locals, when they speak… sentences do not emerge. What comes out is a pile of loosely related vowels, punctuated with the occasional grunt and the glimmer of realization in their eyes that they’re not getting through to you. It’s not for a lack of trying – the inhabitants of the region all seem to have evolved some sort of highly specialized section of larynx – a post-larynx, perhaps – a section that belt-sands all of the hard pointy bits of words clean off, leaving only the most basic impression of phonetic intent.

solios, in this post [deadcityradio.org] on Dead City Radio

“But I don’t want to go among stupid people,” beggs remarked.

“Oh you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re all stupid here. I’m stupid, you’re stupid.”

“How do you know I’m stupid?” said beggs.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “Or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Beggs, In parody of Lewis Carrol from Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland

…the basic principles of Americanism:

The right to criticize;

The right to hold unpopular beliefs;

The right to protest;

The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn’t? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in.

Margaret Chase Smith [wikipedia.org]