The Quotable Grant

I found this video while surfing YouTube:

Mystified

"When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks."

- Bob Dylan

Love According to Adama

This is one of my favorite quotes from the new Battlestar Galactica. Commander Adama and Chief Tyrol discuss the nature of Love in the episode The Farm:

Adama: Did you love her, Chief?

Tyrol: 'Scuse me?

Adama: Boomer. Did you love her?

Tyrol: Thought I did.

Adama: Well, when you think you love somebody, you love them. That's what love is. Thoughts

Note: The transcription of this dialog was found on the Battlestar Wiki.

Heaven on Earth

"What is love? As far as I can tell, is is passion, admiration, and respect. If you have two, you have enough. If you have all three, you dont have to die to go to heaven."

- William Wharton

Two-Faced?

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"

- Abraham Lincoln

I Just Wish I'd Had This a Couple Months Ago...

From last week's episode of House, It's a Wonderful Lie:

"The notion of picking one time of year to be decent to other people is obscene because it’s actually validating the notion of being miserable wretches the rest of the year."

We're Not Going to Kill... Today.

In the past I've posted quotes on the nature of war by soldiers (primarily Generals Grant and Sherman). While this soldier is fictional in nature (and would prefer to be known as more an explorer anyway) I think his words ring as true as the others:

"Death... destruction, disease, horror, that's what war is all about. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided. You've made it neat and painless. So neat and painless, you've had no reason to stop it... All right. [War is] instinctive. But the instinct can be fought. We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands... But we can stop it! We can admit that we're... killers. But we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill... today!"

-- Captain James Tiberius Kirk, 2267

Absolutely

"If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?"

- Harry Shearer

The Rain

Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.

-- Bob Dylan

The Media

And here I thought the issues I have with reporters and the media in general were of recent origin. Depressingly, they're not and I see no end in sight. But I have to say, I totally understand where ol' Uncle Billy was coming from...

“I think I understand what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers."

...

"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast."

- Major General William Tecumseh Sherman

Coincidence

"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."

- Albert Einstein

Glory?

Sadly these words are as appropriate now as when first written...

"I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation."

--Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, May 1865

Love

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. " --Erica Jong

Stumbling Over the Truth

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. "

--Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

War, what's it good for?

A couple quotes I ran across recently:

"Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace."

-- General Ulysses S. Grant

"There never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword."

-- General Ulysses S. Grant

Holy Cow!

"I'll never forget September sixth nineteen-fifty. I got a letter threatening me, Hank Bauer, Yogi Berra and Johnny Mize. It said if I showed up in uniform against the Red Sox I'd be shot. I turned the letter over to the FBI and told my manager Casey Stengel about it. You know what Casey did? He gave me a different uniform and gave mine to Billy Martin. Can you imagine that! Guess Casey thought it'd be better if Billy got shot."

- "Scooter" Rizzuto [Source: Sport Magazine (December 1961)]

Timing Is Everything

"The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause."
--Mark Twain

The Past

"Even God cannot change the past."
- Agathon (448 BC - 400 BC)

The Truth

"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men
prefer not to hear." - Herbert Agar

What Others Think

What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known,
so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
- Paul Valery