John Mccullough > John's Quotes

“In all cultures mothers try to shape sons in their female image. For their own good. The boys resist—and the rite of passage helps this resistance. There is always symbolism involved, because symbols are a way to represent the myths that underlie every culture.”
― Harry Harrison, A Stainless Steel Trio: A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born, The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted, The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues

“Colonel Cathcart stopped in his tracks. “What atheists?” he bellowed defensively, his whole manner changing in a flash to one of virtuous and belligerent denial. “There are no atheists in my outfit! Atheism is against the law, isn’t it?” “No, sir.” “It isn’t?” The colonel was surprised. “Then it’s un-American, isn’t it?” “I’m not sure, sir,” answered the chaplain. “Well, I am!” the colonel declared. “I’m not going to disrupt our religious services just to accommodate a bunch of lousy atheists. They’re getting no special privileges from me. They can stay right where they are and pray with the rest of us. And what’s all this about enlisted men? Just how the hell do they get into this act?” The chaplain felt his face flush. “I’m sorry, sir. I just assumed you would want the enlisted men to be present, since they would be going along on the same mission.” “Well, I don’t. They’ve got a God and a chaplain of their own, haven’t they?” “No, sir.” “What are you talking about? You mean they pray to the same God we do?” “Yes, sir.” “And He listens?” “I think so, sir.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“So Rosewater told him. It was The Gospel from Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space, shaped very much like a Tralfamadorian, by the way. The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected. So it goes. *** The flaw in the Christ”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“The master of ceremonies asked people to say what they thought the function of the novel might be in modern society, and one critic said, “To provide touches of color in rooms with all-white walls.” Another one said, “To describe blow-jobs artistically.” Another one said, “To teach wives of junior executives what to buy next and how to act in a French restaurant.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.”
― Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

“And the more technically developed a nation or race is, the more cruel, ruthless, predatory, and commercialized its systems tend to become … all because we continue to think like animals and have not learned how to think consistently like human beings. A. K.”
― A.E. van Vogt, The World of Null-A

“While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out.”
― Roger Zelazny, Isle of the Dead / Eye of Cat

“It’s more in line with the warnings they put on plastic laundry covers: Don’t wrap this around your head: could be bad for you. I think Darwinism has to get a chance to work. The more we protect stupid people from themselves, the more we ensure the long, slow descent of the human race into idiocracy.”
― Bob Mayer, Nightstalkers

“It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall / Bring Up the Bodies

“The Great Butter Rebellion, which took place at Harvard University in 1766, was the first recorded student protest in the United States. Since the opening of Harvard’s gates in 1636, food service had been an issue and the quality of the butter was exceptionally poor. Apparently one meal with particularly rancid butter led Asa Dunbar (the grandfather of Henry David Thoreau) to jump upon his chair and proclaim: “Behold, our butter stinketh!—give us therefore, butter that stinketh not.” The cry was adopted by fully half the student body as they rose together and exited the Commons in protest. They were subsequently suspended. Eventually the students were readmitted, but its unclear whether the butter continued to stinketh or not. —The Harvard Crimson”
― Elaine Khosrova, Butter: A Rich History

“If you don’t understand something, you should just try to learn more, that’s all.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Fox

“Don’t promote your troubles beyond your rank.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric’s Mission

“Another day will put some other plate on your table, more to your taste, but do not waste the food in front of you.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Fox

“Out of the steam and the foam and the froth, a man in white with poor eyesight will craft a liquid paradox, and it shall be called the Triple Nonfat Double Bacon Five-Cheese Mocha!”>”
― Kevin Hearne, Hounded, Hexed, Hammered - The Iron Druid Chronicles Bundle

“Most people in Kingsbridge could talk only about agriculture and adultery, neither of which interested her.”
― Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth

“The concept of multitasking evolved from the computer field to explain a microprocessor performing two jobs at one time. It turns out that microprocessors are mostly linear and so are really performing only one task at a time. Computers give the illusion of simultaneous action by jumping between competing activities in a complex and rapid-paced algorithm.”
― Danielle Ofri, What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear

“Walpole invented a term, gloomth, to convey the ambience of Gothick; Wyatt’s houses were the very quintessence of gloomth.”
― Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life

“People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws. EDMUND BURKE”
― Conn Iggulden, Margaret of Anjou

“You do know that women aren’t rational, don’t you?” “I do. Neither are men.” “Well, you have a point,”
― Diana Gabaldon, Seven Stones to Stand or Fall: A Collection of Outlander Fiction

“You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you, if you work fast enough.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber

“Good luck is a sham. The wheel of fortune is a Ponzi scheme. True success requires sacrifice.”
― Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena

“It was a hot summer—there wasn’t any other kind in Boston”
― Diana Gabaldon, Voyager

“It is for this reason that a scientist constructs hypotheses—suggestions for the cause of an observation. But a hypothesis must never be confused with an explanation—with proof.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Voyager

“A bully doesn’t answer you; he may hear but pays no heed; he talks on as if you were of no account, and it gives him the advantage always at the start, though not always”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Gifts

“Power makes good people uneasy rather than joyful or boastful. That’s why good people so rarely rise to power.”
― Rick Riordan, The Burning Maze

“Thy life’s journey lies along its own path, Ian,” she said, “and I cannot share thy journey—but I can walk beside thee. And I will.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Written in My Own Heart's Blood

“How then should we regard the past? Indeed, why should we study it at all but to prove to our fellow men that we can, and for the skill of disputation? The answer lies not in preferring the blurred, grand vision to the scrupulous detail, nor does it lie in the opposite prejudice: neither contains sufficient truth. Instead, we must find our own way, in the sure knowledge that we too will enter that underworld, where the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. If we wish to understand our own place on earth, we must seek to understand those who have gone on before us. We must look beyond the present moment and see ourselves reflected in the deep pool of time as individual elements of a greater humanity, and not as the passing shapes that we may glimpse every day in a looking glass, which then are gone forever.”
― Ian Mortimer, The Outcasts of Time

“The man who has no knowledge of the past has no wisdom.”
― Ian Mortimer, The Outcasts of Time

“Sing hey! for the bath at close of day that washes the weary mud away! A loon is he that will not sing: O! Water Hot is a noble thing! O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain, and the brook that leaps from hill to plain; but better than rain or rippling streams is Water Hot that smokes and steams. O! Water cold we may pour at need down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed; but better is Beer, if drink we lack, and Water Hot poured down the back. O! Water is fair that leaps on high in a fountain white beneath the sky; but never did fountain sound so sweet as splashing Hot Water with my feet!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“They are quite different from what I expected – so old and young, and so gay and sad, as it were.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring