Will > Will's Quotes

“There are certain men who are sacrosanct in history; you touch on the truth of them at your peril. These are such men as Socrates and Plato, Pericles and Alexander, Caesar and Augustus, Marcus Aurelius and Trajan, Martel and Charlemagne, Edward the Confessor and William of Falaise, St. Louis and Richard and Tancred, Erasmus and Bacon, Galileo and Newton, Voltaire and Rousseau, Harvey and Darwin, Nelson and Wellington. In America, Penn and Franklin, Jefferson and Jackson and Lee. There are men better than these who are not sacrosanct, who may be challenged freely. But these men may not be. Albert Pike has been elevated to this sacrosanct company, though of course to a minor rank. To challenge his rank is to be overwhelmed by a torrent of abuse, and we challenge him completely.

Looks are important to these elevated. Albert Pike looked like Michelangelo's Moses in contrived frontier costume. Who could distrust that big man with the great beard and flowing hair and godly glance?
If you dislike the man and the type, then he was pompous, empty, provincial and temporal, dishonest, and murderous. But if you like the man and the type, then he was impressive, untrammeled, a man of the right place and moment, flexible or sophisticated, and firm.
These are the two sides of the same handful of coins.
He stole (diverted) Indian funds and used them to bribe doubtful Indian leaders. He ordered massacres of women and children (exemplary punitive operations). He lied like a trooper (he was a trooper). He effected assassinations (removal of semi-military obstructions). He forged names to treaties (astute frontier politics). He was part of a weird plot by men of both the North and South to extinguish the Indians whoever should win the war (devotion to the ideal of national growth ) . He personally arranged twelve separate civil wars among the Indians (the removal of the unfit) . After all, those were war years; and he did look like Moses, and perhaps he sounded like him.”
― R.A. Lafferty, Okla Hannali

“It’s in Iowa,” I said. “Oh, so she’s volunteering for the campaign? That’s great.” “Yes, she is, and no, it isn’t. She’s working for Senator Sanders.” “She is not,” Emma said. “You are making that up. Your mom knows Hillary from way back.” “She knows Bernie from way back, too,” I said. “She was the co-chairman of Leninists for Sanders from the first time that he ran for Senate.” “Leninists for Sanders?” “Well, there were only six of them. But they were very vocal.”
― Curtis Edmonds, Snowflake's Chance: The 2016 Campaign Diary of Justin T. Fairchild, Social Justice Warrior

“Except they kept asking me questions like 'What is your biggest source of conflict about the Pope?' Or 'Has the Pope ever tried to suppress your scientific work?' Completely out of left field!
"They didn't want to hear me tell them how much Pope Benedict supported the Vatican Observatory and its scientific work. So, finally, frustrated that they weren't getting the story they wanted out of me, one of them asked, 'Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?'
"What did you answer?"
"Only if she asks!"
"I love it! How did they react?"
"They all got a good laugh, which is what I intended. And then, the next day, they all ran my joke as if it were a straight story, as if I had made some sort of official Vatican pronouncement about aliens.”
― Guy Consolmagno, SJ

“And, since no online trend is complete without a healthy dose of controversy, the bluffer can point out that Google search volumes for ‘veganism’ are outpacing those for ‘vegetarianism’ by almost three to one, and one of the reasons for this is that veganism attracts more naysayers than vegetarianism. It’s seen as more hardcore and less forgiving and/ or practical, which allows opponents to weigh in more heavily than they would do on vegetarianism, which is less proscriptive and therefore less controversial.”
― Boris Starling, Bluffer's Guide To Veganism: Instant Wit and Wisdom

“Can any American child grow up to be president? Probably not, however fond we might be of the idea. Perhaps a better question is: what well-adjusted tyke would want the job?”
― Gene Healy, The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power

“Dragons were a problem sometimes, but they only came on Tuesdays, so you could work around them.”
― Mike Carey

“The police never saw a noun they didn't want to turn into a verb, so it quickly became "to action", as in you action me to undertake a Falcon assessment, I action a Falcon assessment, a Falcon assessment has been actioned and we all action in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine.
This, to review a major inqurity is to review the list of "actions" and their consequences, in the hope that you'll spot something that thirty-odd highly trained and experienced detectives didn't.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Foxglove Summer

“He read the krimis for pure entertainment; they amused him, sometimes to the point of open laughter, with their prolonged and sometimes absurd inaccuracy. None of them, he had noted, was written by an author with the slightest connection with crime, with the result that their portrayal of the life of detectives bore no relation, in Ulf’s view at least, to the reality faced by him and his fellow detectives. Every so often, of course, a real policeman, or possibly a criminal defence lawyer, set out to write a book dealing with crime. These books would usually be rich in detail and accurate enough, but also tended to be clumsily written: policemen and lawyers may be good at detecting criminals or defending them, but that did not make them masters of prose. These were and then books, as Ulf termed them: books in which the construction and then was used with breathless enthusiasm.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Talented Mr. Varg

“The white boys knew they had my attention now, but hesitated -- that's the trouble with being a racist in the white heartlands, you don't get a lot of practical experience.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Foxglove Summer

“When last I checked, you were a sorcerer, not a Jedi."
"You've seen Star Wars?"
"Seen it and denounced it."
"You've denounced Star Wars?"
She looked me straight in the eye and said, "Hollywood should not glorify witches."
"I think you've missed the point..."
"I also denounce Harry Potter."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Because..."
"...because literature, especially children's literature, should not glorify witches."
"Oda, what do you do for fun?"
She thought about it, then said, without a jot of humor, "I denounce things.”
― Kate Griffin, The Midnight Mayor

“A book on wind energy, Our Invisible Future, sat on a small pedestal, next to several titles on climate change. This book must be read by all those who use electricity, pronounced a handwritten placard below the book. Ulf raised an eyebrow. He used electricity, and was well disposed towards green energy, but did everyone have to read this?”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Talented Mr. Varg

“Perhaps he didn’t eat the flesh of mammals, and was anti-American, or in any case anti-Bush – the latter stance gave people carte blanche not to think about anything any more. Anyone who was against Bush had his heart in the right place, and could behave like a boorish asshole towards anyone around him.”.”
― Herman Koch, The Dinner

“Simon, speaking as one sovereign prince to another, you have a lot to learn. You've learned one important lesson already, that a ruler must be willing to use force and shed blood to enforce his rule. You have to learn, too, that a ruler cannot afford to be guided by his fears of what people will say about him. Not even what history will say about him. A ruler's only judge is himself." Bentrik slid the transpex visor of his helmet up and down experimentally, checked the chambers of his pistol and carbine. "All that matters to me is the peace and well-being of Marduk. I'll have to talk it over with ... with my only judge. Well, let's go." The”
― H. Beam Piper, Space Viking

“Man with a crossbow in the proper position at the proper time’s worth a corps of heavy artillery half an hour late and ten miles down the road from where it should be.”
― Gordon R. Dickson

“Suppose it was even as you think,” he went on, even more gently. “Suppose that all you say was a fact, and that our Elders were but greedy tyrants, ourselves abandoned here by their selfish will and set to fulfill a false and prideful purpose. No.” Jamethon’s voice rose. “Let me attest as if it were only for myself. Suppose that you could give me proof that all our Elders lied, that our very Covenant was false. Suppose that you could prove to me”—his face lifted to mine and his voice drove at me—“that all was perversion and falsehood, and nowhere among the Chosen, not even in the house of my father, was there faith or hope! If you could prove to me that no miracle could save me, that no soul stood with me, and that opposed were all the legions of the universe, still I, I alone, Mr. Olyn, would go forward as I have been commanded, to the end of the universe, to the culmination of eternity. For without my faith I am but common earth. But with my faith, there is no power can stay me!”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Soldier, Ask Not

“You know, yeah, it seems to me like there are two kinds of chosen one. There's the kinda who gets chosen for a thing without any say, like someone who gets picked- kings and queens and shit. Then there's the other kind of chosen one; the guy who stands up when everyone else is afraid, when no one else can decide. Guy who chooses to fight, or do the thing that no one else will, 'cause it has to be done, yeah? I mean, most times, that guy's a total shit. And sometimes he's the hero. Seems to me that you're a bit of both.”
― Kate Griffin, The Neon Court

“For himself he tarried only to witness the initiation of a Mistress-Templar according to the Palladian rite, which took place in a Presbyterian Chapel, the Presbyterian persuasion, as he tells us, being one of the broad roads leading to avowed Satanism. The”
― Arthur Edward Waite, Devil-Worship in France or The Question of Lucifer

“But you keep fighting!”
“Of course!” said Child. “I am of God, whatever or whoever else is not. I must testify to Him by placing my body against the enemy while that body lasts; and by protecting those that my small strength may protect, until my personal end. What is it to me that all the peoples of all the worlds choose to march toward the nether pit? What they do in their sins is no concern of mine. Mine only is concern for God, and the way of God’s people of whom I am one. In the end, all those who march pitward will be forgotten; but I and those like me who have lived their faith will be remembered by the Lord—other than that I want nothing and I need nothing.”

Godlun dropped his face into his hands and sat for a moment. When he took his hands away again and raised his head, Hal saw that the skin of his face was drawn and he looked very old.
“It’s all right for you,” he whispered.
“It is fleshly loves that concern thee,” said Child, nearly as softly. “I know, for I remember how it was in the little time I had with my wife; and I remember the children unborn that she and I dreamed of together. It is thy children thou wouldst protect in these dark days to come; and it was thy hope that I could give you reason to think thou couldst do so. But I have no such hope to give. All that thou lovest will perish. The Others will make a foul garden of the worlds of humankind and there will be none to stop them. Turn thee to God, my brother, for nowhere else shalt thou find comfort.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“I was sent a copy of Richard Dawkins' amusing book, The God Delusion, by an anonymous donor, so I feel I should at least try to review it. This isn't easy. I got as far as page 36 before chucking it across the room in disgust. I was in the Boston Tea Party on Park Street in Bristol. I warned the other customers to get out of my line of fire first.”
― Andrew Rilstone, Where Dawkins Went Wrong

“Memos descended fairly regularly from the Commissioner’s office, and they usually concealed an agenda. “Restructuring” was a current buzzword, having replaced “efficiency” and “skills development,” terms that had been the subject of the last two reports that the Department of Sensitive Crimes had been requested to submit. Each of these reports had taken two months to write and had disappeared into the maw of the police department without any sign of ever having been read by anybody. That was almost always the case with departmental reports, Ulf thought: People wrote them and submitted them. They then sat unread on several high-level desks before they were removed for filing. So it was, he suspected, throughout bureaucracies everywhere: people filled in forms and wrote reports that were rarely scrutinised and almost never led to anything happening in the real world.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Talented Mr. Varg

“Why does she [Borowski] rail against other women’s choices? Surely a core libertarian value is neutrality between different conceptions of the good?” Actually, no. I replied: “The core libertarian value is nonaggression. ‘Neutrality between different conceptions of the good’ has nothing to do with libertarianism. If you were truly neutral between different conceptions of the good, you wouldn’t be arguing against Julie’s conception of the good.”
― Thomas E. Woods Jr., Real Dissent: A Libertarian Sets Fire to the Index Card of Allowable Opinion

“Where did that remark come from? Mormonism, as anyone can easily find out, is one of a number of Christian sects which came into being in the USA in the nineteenth century. It differs from mainstream Christianity on certain technical points which Dawkins would at least pretend not to understand. So why write "four if you count Mormonism"? Why not "five if you count Mormonism and Christian Science"? Or "ten if you include Mormonism, Christian Science, Christedelphians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Reformed Judaism, Shi'ite Islam, Strict Baptists, Celtic Orthodox, Unitarians and Quakers?" Does Dawkins think that the Mormons' adoptionist Christology is so far removed from the mainstream as to constitute a separate faith (while the Jehovah's Witnesses' arianism is not?) Or is he playing a numbers game, saying that the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints is so numerous as to count as a religion in its own right, distinct from "Christianity". (But then, why not "Four if you include Catholicism"?) We never find out. Like Melchizidec, it comes from nowhere and it goes nowhere. It popped into Dawkins head and he wrote it down. It makes me doubt whether our author is fully in command of his brief."Four if you include Mormons". Honestly, you might just as well say "Britain consists of three countries: England, Scotland and Wales – or four if you include Tooting Bec.”
― Andrew Rilstone

“(Everyone, I guess, sees their position as the neutral one and everyone else's position as biassed. I wonder why 177 minutes of the Today programme is completely secular; you feel horribly excluded by 3 minutes of Thought for Today. I see a sinister anti-religious bias when David Attenborough goes through a whole series without ever once aying "On the other hand maybe God made it all"; you feel that 30 minutes of hymn singing on Sunday evening amounts to theocratic oppression.)”
― Andrew Rilstone, Where Dawkins Went Wrong

“Actually, it meant a great deal: a very great deal. You don't have to believe that God exists to see that a story in which God takes on human form is a very different story from one in which God creates a messenger and tells that messenger to take on human form. The Passion of the Christ is a different movie depending on whether you think the person being eviscerated is God or just some guy. Athanasius thought that it was God who hung on a cross for the world; Arius thought that it was a created being who was not God. This is not very little; this is very big. Granted, the Creeds put it in terms of Aristotelian theories about "substance" and "essence": but there isn't much sense in complaining that technical documents are written in technical language if you are not prepared to pick up a standard work and look up what the words mean.”
― Andrew Rilstone, Where Dawkins Went Wrong

“Lady Ty looked at Fleet and they both giggled. I hoped that it was the alcohol because I didn’t like the idea of the Goddess of the River Tyburn giggling—it was disturbing on so many levels.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection

“Christians don't think that Dawkins thinks that they think that God really has a beard. "Old man in the sky with a white beard" is a figure of speech – shorthand – which neatly encapsulates various errors which lazy atheists and naive theists sometimes make, for example:
1: They imagine that Christians think that God is a human being of some kind and therefore ask questions like: "What does he eat?"; "If he made the world, what did he stand on?"; "If he doesn't have a beard, how does he shave?" and "How did he evolve?" (Three guesses which of those questions troubles Professor Dawkins.) Christians don't think that God is an old man. They don't even think he is a man. They probably don't even think he's made of atoms.
2: They confuse symbols with representations: they think that when Michelangelo painted God on the Pope's ceiling, he was making an informed guess about what someone would have seen with their eyes if they bumped into God on the Roman metro – as opposed to using pictures to put across theological ideas.
3: They imagine that Christians think that God lives in some particular place in space and time. They may not think that we think that he lives in the sky, but I think that they think that we think that if you had a fast enough spaceship you could eventually track him down. Dawkins doesn't commit himself on the question of God's facial hair; but it is pretty clear that he thinks that God lives in the sky – or at any rate, in some place in the empirical universe.”
― Andrew Rilstone

“I suggested in my last sermon that if Oolon Colluphid had tracked down the "God" who had left a message in five mile high letters of fire on the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains, he still wouldn't have found the person who actually created the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy – namely, Douglas Adams. Dorothy L. Sayers pressed the idea that "God is like an author" quite hard, and C.S. Lewis practically broke it. It's also been used by Mr Grant Morrison and Mr David Sim. But seriously. You "brights" will understand us Christians much better once you've grasped that when we talk about "God", we are thinking of something much less like a fairy and much more like a Douglas.”
― Andrew Rilstone, Where Dawkins Went Wrong

“Use the last report,” Anna suggested. “Simply delete ‘efficiency’ or whatever and insert ‘restructuring.’ That will save you a great deal of time.” Ulf acknowledged the wisdom of this advice. “Restructuring” would go away, just as “efficiency” and “skills development” had gone away. But hoops had to be jumped through in order for this to happen, and Ulf would have to do that.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Talented Mr. Varg

“Slow down. The Taliban were religious, in the sense that in their opinion a being called Allah really designed and created the world and everything in it, including them. They were also a cultus in that they believed that you should pray five times a day, study the Koran, fast during Ramadan, give a tenth of your income to the poor and visit Mecca at least once in your lifetime. It is a matter of record that they had the ancient statues at Bamyan destroyed.

But Professor, who put up the statues? Buddhist monks, that's who. Possibly the monks were not religious, in the sense that they didn't believe in a designer-God but they were certainly part of a cultus and they had lots and lots of supernatural beliefs which you would think were Bad Things. So what you should have said is "Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues. Imagine no ancient statues for the Taliban to blow up." This is absolutely emblematic of your confused attitude. When a religious organisation does something which annoys you, you take it for granted that it was Caused By Religion. But when a religious organisation does something which you quite like you don't think that "religion" had anything to do with it. You hardly spot that there was any religion involved at all.”
― Andrew Rilstone, Where Dawkins Went Wrong

“Oh, good sir,” said Bottom. “I knew as soon as I saw your fool’s motley you would bring skill and grand disaster to our play.”
― Christopher Moore, Shakespeare for Squirrels