"Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments." - Frederick the Great
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"Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments." - Frederick the Great
"Reasonable persons see very that those [feminine] traits are just the tools for the management of men, and for the use of men for female designs." --Kant, *Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View*
"Anyone who loves the law or sausages should not see either made." - Otto von Bismarck
"The facts themselves are viewed as 'immediate emanations of the world spirit,' and that is why they alone are thought to possess the necessary dignity and profundity, that is why tragic art is supposed to subordinate itself to history! Ridiculous! To history!" --Nietzsche, notebook summer/autumn 1873
"Raise high the black flags, my children. No prisoners. No pity. I will shoot any man I see with pity in him." - Field Marshal Gebhard von Blucher (at Waterloo; attributed)
"Lie there, poor wretch: seduced, you come
To bonds of love that brook no treason.
The man whom Helen has struck dumb
Gropes long ere he regains his reason."
--Goethe, *Faust II* II.1, tr.Ph.Wayne
"You have sworn loyalty to me. You have only one enemy and that is my enemy. In the present social confusion it may come about that I order you to shoot down your own relatives, brothers or parents, but even then you must follow my orders without a murmur." - Kaiser Wilhelm II (speech to Army recruits, 1891)
"Fact holds out blankly, brutally and blindly, against that universal deliquescence of everything into logical relations which the Absolutist Logic demands, and it is the only thing that holds out." --Wm. James, "Absolutism and Empiricism" (1894)
“The foreign policy which the [Weimar Republic] government has pursued since the end of the war rejects the idea of revenge. Its purpose is rather the achievement of a mutual understanding.” - Wilhelm Marx (1927)
"It is difficult to tell a short-sighted man how to get somewhere. Because you cannot say to him: 'Look at that church tower ten miles away and go in that direction.'" --Wittgenstein, notebook fragment 1929
"Prosperity can come through peace alone. The German people are in favor of all possible means to make war impossible. I have seen three wars. A man who has seen three wars never will wish another war. He must be a friend of peace. But I am not a pacifist. All my impressions of war are so bad that I could be for it only under the sternest necessity — the necessity of fighting Bolshevism or of defending one's country." - Paul von Hindenburg (1929)
"A world of qualities without a man has arisen, of experiences without the person who experiences them, and it almost looks as though ideally private experience is a thing of the past, and that the friendly burden of personal responsibility is to dissolve into a system of formulas of possible meanings." --Musil, *Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften* (1930)
"In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that He did not also limit his stupidity." - Konrad Adenauer
“I did not write the script of ‘Nick of Time,’ but I know the writer personally and professionally and I also know that he is a man of stature and good will who would never knowingly have caused as much personal hurt to you as he obviously did with a thoughtless, throw-away line which to him, meant nothing, but which to you must have been heart rending. Please accept my apologies in this and my assurance that it will never happen again on my show or any program in which I have a part. Too often we go along blithely unaware of the myriad meanings of language amongst people. Where to most, a certain line is general, unspecific and quite innocuous — to others it has a very special meaning and can be both damaging and offensive. I’ll be most careful of this in the future and I thank you so very much for calling it to my attention.” --Rod Serling, private correspondance, 1960, quoted in Grams, Jr., *The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic*
(What was the line for which Serling apologized, and its context?)
"A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece." - Ludwig Erhard
Episode "Nick of Time," I think Bill Shatner said "Stop treating me like a retarded child," and some guy wrote in to Rod Serl. saying that was kind of hurtful language. The response by Rod Serl is as above, according to the book cited.
It's the episode where Bill and his bride get hung up on some little fortune-telling machine at some diner. I forgot what happens, but it was all true, at the end!
"I hope that some people see some connection between the two topics in the title. If not, anyway, such connections will be developed in the course of these talks."
--Saul Kripke, lecture I of *Naming and Necessity*, Jan 20 1970
OK, thanks!
"This is the fate of a chancellor of the 'grand coalition': he has no grand coalition; he has a thousand little coalitions, with a thousand small disputes, day after day. " - Kurt Georg Kiesinger
"The majority of Americans now recognized that the Hamiltonians held a Tory ideology and were using the same methods and tactics as the British had used earlier. The friends of order had more in common with the enemies of the Revolution than with most Americans." --Donald Boudreaux, "The Fall and Rise of Puritanical Policy in America" THE JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES 12:1 (SPRING 1996)
"In our modern world, mass hunger, economic stagnation, environmental catastrophe, political instability, and terrorism cannot be quarantined within national borders." - Willy Brandt
"If anybody doubts my loyalty to my country, I'll punch him in the nose, and I don't care how old he is."
--Willy Wyler
"The snail's pace is the normal pace of any democracy." - Helmut Schmidt
"I’m taking back the reins from the classless, spineless, frightened children who dragged Screeching Weasel’s name through the mud with their dishonest, ass-covering press release; and all the cheap shot cowards who kicked me while I was down are getting a horseshoe straight up the ass!"
- Ben Weasel
"Nations with a common currency never went to war against each other. A common currency is more than the money you pay with." - Helmut Kohl
"The reaction a fangirl has to any mention or sighting of the object of her "affection". These reactions include shortness of breath, fainting, highpitched noises, shaking, fierce head shaking as if in the midst of a seizure, wet panties, endless blog posts, etc." --Urban Dictionary, def. "fangirling"
"I am not the German Tony Blair, nor am I the German Bill Clinton. I am Gerhard Schroeder, Chancellor of Germany, responsible for Germany. I don't want to be a copy of anyone." - Gerhard Schroder
"We may perhaps think, looking at the grinning faces of idiots, that they do not really suffer; they do, though, only not in the same place as the more intelligent...Not all suffering need after all evoke the same facial expression. A nobler man will bear himself differently in affliction than I." --Wittgenstein, notebook fragment, 1946, tr. PWinch
"Nobody in Europe will be abandoned. Nobody in Europe will be excluded. Europe only succeeds if we work together." - Angela Merkel
"What did he talk about? Well, the man was capable of spending a whole hour on the question: Why did Beethoven not write a third movement to the Piano Sonata Opus 111?"
--Mann, *Doktor Faustus*
"In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles." - David Ben-Gurion
"But, you know, that town girl was raped last week.
--Darling, you can't rape a townie."
--*Black Christmas* movie (dialogue between some girl and Margot Kidder)
"The State of Israel must, from time to time, prove clearly that it is strong, and able and willing to use force, in a devastating and highly effective way. If it does not prove this, it will be swallowed up, and perhaps wiped off the face of the Earth." - Moshe Sharett
"Life should not be arranged in the most comfortable and tolerable manner possible, but rather in the most rigorous manner possible.... The great instability of things makes it easier for us to learn this lesson. Nothing should be shown mercy, the truth must be stated frankly, no matter what the consequences." Nietzsche, notebook fragment, from first quarter of 1874
"Put three Zionists in a room and they will form four political parties." - Levi Eshkol
"The definiteness and directedness of the conscious mind are extremely important acquisitions which humanity has bought at a very heavy sacrifice, and which in turn have rendered humanity the highest service. Without them science, technology, and civilization would be impossible, for they all presuppose the reliable continuity and directedness of the conscious process. For the statesman, doctor, and engineer as well as for the simplest laborer, these qualities are absolutely indispensable. We may say in general that social worthlessness increases to the degree that these qualities are impaired by the unconscious." -- Jung, "The Transcendent Function" (1916)
"Not being beautiful was a true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome." - Golda Meir
"Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks." Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"
"You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies... We must think differently, look at things in a different way. Peace requires a world of new concepts, new definitions." - Yitzhak Rabin
“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
"I philosophize now like an old woman, who continually is mislaying something and has to look for it; now her glasses, then her keys." -- Wittgenstein, On Certainty §532
“I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
"A bare arm was extended towards him with gracious nonchalance even before he had finished speaking. He pressed the hand respectfully to his lips, and made the mental remark that it was bony." --Conrad, "The Duel"
“Life is a gift that must be given back and joy should arise from its possession. It's too damn short and that's a fact. Hard to accept this earthly procession to final darkness is a journey done, circle completed, work of art sublime, a sweet melodic rhyme. A battle won.”
― Dean Koontz, "The Book Of Counted Sorrows"
"When you have two alternatives, the first thing you have to do is to look for the third that you didn't think about, that doesn't exist." - Shimon Peres
"[I]t dawned upon me that the purloiner of the treasure need not necessarily be a confirmed rogue, that he could even be a man of character, an actor and possibly a victim in the changing scenes of a revolution." --Conrad, "Author's Note" to Nostromo
“Money lost -- little lost. Honour lost -- much lost. Pluck lost -- all lost.”
― E.W. Hornung, Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman
"'Ever done any acting' [Edm Goulding] asked.
'None to speak of.'
'Good. I'm looking for a new face to play the drunken, dissolute brother of Chatterton. Will you make a test for me tomorrow?'"
--David Niven, The Moon's A Balloon
"Peace is the beauty of life. It is sunshine. It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family. It is the advancement of man, the victory of a just cause, the triumph of truth." - Menachem Begin
"I cannot eat these eggs. They are of totally different sizes." -- one of the David Suchet-as-Hercule Poirot movies/TV shows, called "Peril at End House"
"I believe that the will of the people is resolved by a strong leadership. Even in a democratic society, events depend on a strong leadership with a strong power of persuasion, and not on the opinion of the masses." - Yitzhak Shamir
"General Barrios, in a shabby blue tunic and white pegtop trousers falling upon strange red boots, kept his head uncovered and stopped slightly, propping himself up with a thick stick. No! He had earned enough military glory to satisfy any man, he insisted to Mrs. Gould, trying at the same time to put an air of gallantry into his attitude." --Conrad, Nostromo, Part II, Chapt. Four.