Sunday, July 6, 2008 – A Skeptical Bouquet
Why shouldn’t things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together. ~ George Santayana
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which. ~ Douglas Adams
A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life. ~ Robertson Davies
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action. ~ Frank Herbert
He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages. ~ Mark Twain
The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science – along with behavior control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers. ~ Lewis Thomas
Life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true. ~ Luigi Pirandello
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, if afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
What is the use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is most likely to be the true one? ~ George Bernard Shaw
No man in his heart is quite so cynical as a well-bred woman. ~ William Somerset Maugham
I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business. ~ Richard M. Nixon
In politics, an absurdity is not a handicap. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
I appear to be lying at the bottom of a very deep dark hole. That seems to be a familiar concept, what does it remind me of? Ah, I remember – life! ~ Marvin (the paranoid android), in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. ~ Joseph Conrad
The internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life. ~ Andrew Brown
Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. ~ Douglas Adams
Just Above Sunset 