rladpeps’s Reviews > Cat’s Cradle > Status Update

“If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.”

“The hand that stocks the drug stores rules the
world. Let us start our Republic with a chain of drug stores, a chain of grocery stores, a chain of gas cham-bers, and a national game. After that, we can write our Constitution.”

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before… He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

“Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why go right ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.”

—> cont.
“And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the hundred lost children of San Lo-renzo, that we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind.”

"I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays. But they are murdered children all the same.”

“And I remembered The Fourteenth Book of Boko-non, which I had read in its entirety the night before. The Fourteenth Book is entitled, ‘What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?’
It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period.
This is it:
‘Nothing.’l

“So I said good-bye to government,
And I gave my reason:
That a really good religion
Is a form of treason.”

“Man is vile, and man makes nothing worth making, knows nothing worth knowing.”

"People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say."