Dagens dybsindige citat

[Perec]

Jep, der er begrænsninger jf. overskriften: Bjarne Riis' klynken i dagens avis er ikke velkommen. Dette kan man smide i den almene Dagens citat-tråd, som er at finde her. Altså et citat -- dvs. en stump tekst på mindst en sætning, og maksimalt et afsnit -- som du lige er faldet over og gerne vil dele. Indholdet er op til dig, men de vil jo nok typisk indeholde en eller anden form for observation, definition eller anden indsigt. Husk gerne at fortælle, hvor det er fra -- det forhøjer nytten & glæden.

Denne tråd vil gerne ligge i det kommende kulturforum!

[EinarGonzalez]

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
- Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

[tricolor]

- Kultur er om man tager med på lejrskole.

Karen Jespersen

[Hr. Stena]

Jeg læste en række af F. Scott Fitzgeralds noveller (som iøvrigt ikke kan anbefales varmt nok IMO) i min sommerferie. I samlingen var som bonus optrykt et kolossalt essay fra The American Magazine, september 1922, hvor Fitzgerald som 25-årig, rig, succesfuld og verdensberømt blev bedt om at gøre status i essayet "What I Think and Feel at 25". Essayet er fantastisk skrevet, fuldt af paradokser, provokationer og påståligheder:

For one thing I do not like old people - They are always talking about their "experience", and very few of them have any! But it is the old folks that run the world, so they try to hide the fact that only young people are attractive or important.

But I am really not old enough to begin drawing morals out of my own life to elevate the young. I will save that passtime until I'm sixty, and then, as I have said, I will concoct a Scott Fitzgerald who will make Benjamin Franklin look like a lucky devil who loafed into prominence. Even in the above account I have managed to sketch a outline of a small but neat halo. I take it all back. I am twenty-five years old. I wish I had ten millions dollars, and never had to do another lick of work as long as I live.

Kerneindsigten

But as I do have to keep at it, I might as well declare that the chief thing I've learned so far: If you don't know much - well, nobody else knows much more. And nobody knows half as much about your own interests as you know.

If you believe in anything very strongly - including yourself - and you go after that thing alone, you end up in jail, in heaven, in the headlines, or in the largest house in the block, according to what you started after. If you don't believe in anything very strongly - including yourself - you go along and enough money is made out of you to buy an automobile for some others fellow's son, and you marry if you've got time, and if you do you have a lot of children, whether you have time or not, and finally you get tired and you die.
If you're in the second of the those two classes you have the most fun before you're twenty-five. If you're in the first, you have it afterward.

Også lidt lol om ægteskabet:

...after thirty, both husband and wife know in their hearts that the game is up. Without a few cocktails social intercourse becomes a torment. It is no longer spontanenous; it is a convention by which they agree to shut their eyes to the fact that the other men and women they know are tired, dull and fat, and yet must be put up with as politely as they themselves are put up with in their turn.
I have seen many happy young couples - but I have seldom seen a happy home after husband and wife are thirty. Most homes can be divided into four classes:
1st. Where the husband is a pretty conceited guy who thinks that a dinky insurance business is a lot harder than raising babies and that everybody ought to kow-tow to him at home. He is the kind whose sons usually get away from home as soon as they can walk.
2d. When the wife has got a sharp tongue and the martyr complex, and thinks she's the only woman in the world that ever had a child. This is probably the unhappiest home of all.
3d. Where the children are always being reminded how nice it was of the parents to bring them into the world, and how they ought to respect their parents for being born in 1870 instead of 1902.
4d. Where everything is for the children. Where the parents pay much more for the children's education than they afford, and spoil them unreasonably. This usually ends by the children being ashamed of the parents.

And yet I think that marriage is the most satisfatory institution we have. I'm simply stating my belief that when Life has used us for its purposes it takes away all our attractive qualities and gives us, instead, ponderous but shallow convictions of our own wisdom and "experience".

Her citeret fra The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Bryant Mangum p. 280 og pp. 282-3.

[GhostInTheShell]

The doer alone learneth

- ukendt pragmatiker ganske vist

[:..ReX..:]

"At jeg er univerets midte / er ingen hazaderet dom / jeg slutter mig rent logisk til det / resten er jo udenom"
- Piet Hein

[FUTZ]

her et par til denne ganske udemærkede tråd:

Den aktuelle
"Vi jøder har et hemmeligt våben i kampen mod araberne - vi har ingen steder at flygte hen"
Gloda Meir



John Glenn, the first American astronaut in space, was once asked to describe his (presumably profound) thoughts just before taking off into space. "I looked around me and suddenly realized," Glenn replied, "that everything had been built by the lowest bidder!"


"Vilkårene kan jo kun ændres på de nuværende vilkår"
Niccoló Machiavelli (1469 - 1527)


The three articles of Civil Service faith: it takes longer to do things quickly, it's more expensive to do them cheaply and it's more democratic to do them in secret.
Permanent secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby ("Yes Minister.")


Den til Q i ens liv

Der er en Troldom paa din Læbe,
Der er en Afgrund i dit Blik,
Der er i Lyden af din Stemme,
En Drøms ætheriske Musik.

Der er en Klarhed paa din Pande,
Der er et Mørke i dit Haar,
Der er en Strøm af Blomsteraande
Omkring dig, hvor du staar og gaaer.

Der er en Skat af evig Viisdom
I Smilehullet paa din Kind,
Der er en Brønd, en Sundhedskilde
For alle Hjerter, i dit Sind.

Der er en Verden i dit Indre,
En sværmerisk, chaotisk Vaar -
Som jeg umulig kan forglemme,
Som jeg tilbeder og forstaaer.

Emil Aarestrup

Og den morsomme:

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

Jack Handy

[Vagn30]

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi

[Perec]

Nå, jeg faldt lige over det her i indbakken!

/Skribentens tanker ved kærlighedens komme

Dit helende nærvær er
svøbt som fløjl
om min sjæl, når vi
går hånd i hånd i hånd
- amorinernes dans.

Charlottenlunds Forts grønne
mod et solramt Øresund
det ene uden det andet kun
en halv /Skribent
- sjælens hjemkomst, vi to.

Som forårets klarhimmel
friskblæsende rammer du mig
et stenhjerte smeltes af
din blidhed
- livets transcendens, i dit blik.

[Bergdølmo]

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Evelyn Beatrice Hall, 1906

[k b hagen]

"Det er en del af totalitarianismens væsen, at den fordrejer alle begreber og perverterer alle målestokke. Den vinder ikke sine tilhængere ved at forjæte dem en gratis straffri tilfredsstillelse af deres drifter, men ved konsekvent at bringe forvirring ind i alle moralske kategorier og efterfølgende forkynde sin egen, ny moral. Da den har løsrevet sig fra alle overordnede værdisystemer, er den ikke andet end ren funktionel sædelighed, der orienterer sig efter det der giver magt. Ved at påberåbe sig historien, racen, folkefællesskabet eller andre elastiske begreber, vække systemet det latente beredskab, der frem for alt findes hos de desorienterede, til at underordne sig en 'højere lov' og identificere sig med en 'jernhård nødvendighed'" (joachim fest, med udgangspunkt i nazismen, men man kan jo more sig fint ved at indsætte nyliberalistiske termer i stedet)

[Zetterstedt]

Kvinder er lort.


Mvh,
Z

[Yours Truly]

På vores køleskab står der:

Jo flere man er med til det grove, jo mere tid er der til det sjove


Neden under har jeg et gammelt go-card hvor der står:

HUSK ALT
du glemmer mere end du tror

[k b hagen]

"Jeg kan ikke se, at man i den verden, hvori vi lever, med rette kan bebrejde nogen for at være fortvivlede, pessimistiske, negative. Snarere er de mennesker indskrænkede, der krampagtigt overdøver den objektive fortvivlelse igennem de umiddelbare aktioners hurra-optimisme, for psykologisk at gøre sig det lettere” (adorno)

[RAIUno]

If God had consulted me before embarking on the creation, I would have suggested something simpler!
Alfonso de castile

Iøvrigt sakset fra en bog om gletcherfysik