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Steyning's Stirring Quotes |
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Only self-confidence breeds tolerance A politician is someone speaking with great certainty about vastly uncertain issues It's the other way around: organized religion is the existential absurdity It is juvenile to think that anger is admirable, reflecting strength The real tragedy is not hate, as much as the refusal to understand why one is hated Including greed all human ugliness can be brought back to cowardice, thus fear. Religious minorities in the West often clamour for the freedom to be intolerant A strong will connected to a shallow mind invites untold troubles I don’t mind God. I just don’t care for the company He keeps. The XXth Century liberated Western woman, returning man to the bedroom where he belongs The biggest global problem as always is how to dispense the benefits of enlightenment to brutal primitives without getting eaten alive. Like dining with a cobra while teaching it etiquette and table manners, how long will this feast last? The cobra cleverly having learnt to sit down and use knife and fork, of course In its purest form intelligence is the ability to acknowledge one another, perhaps even wagging one's tail Religion is for twelve year olds, and those at one level remaining there, called split-level souls Whereas most teach to fight ignorance, others are only too happy to simply teach ignorance Man is the animal able to turn anything into a religion, including soccer, nationalism and, yes, philosophy... but never humour Rampant life, kills life (If we're so smart, how come there are so many of us?) It is impossible to stop people wanting to believe. It comes from deep fear and insecurity, fantasy a child's warm blanket. What's idiotic is the constant proofs they feel they must come up with, underlining that they're not mad as charged. Setting out looking for fate and claiming you found it, ain't fate! To many charity is little more than relieving themselves against a hydrant, like a small, quick, liquid purge of conscience I have no knowledge of anything to do with myself before I entered existence on this planet, and see no possibility of acquiring any after I leave There exists no Superior morality, or innocents wouldn't be punished with endemic suffering while useless arseholes hit it big and murderers like Franco or Pinochet die peacefully in bed Obstinacy equals backwardness The very cruellest among us are no heroes, but the most frightened An economic depression is when 30% of citizens find they're as disposable as used diapers Rap is rabble babble Firm convictions are terrible, entertaining reasonable doubts the thing If there's nothing new under the sun, then everything becomes a depressing cliché An expert is someone who always eats tuna before going swimming, and maintains Tchaikovsky couldn't possibly have composed the 1812 Suite as he was born in 1840 Too many Third World leaders are clever enough to plunder, but not to see the pain Never Mourn Tomorrow A religious fanatic is someone who knows no beauty and has no doubts Lies enslave In many cases religion is a mild form of insanity, the clergy deeply disturbed yet calculating phantasts, known to be petty, vile and devious We're always at the mercy of the mediocre, with not enough of it coming from far too many of them There can be no clash of civilizations, unless at least one of them isn't Aggression is an expression of impotence, not strength Anger comes from those just bright enough to realize they're too dumb to compete Goodness is awareness Suspicion is a liar's child To a blind man all the world goes naked Courage and honesty lead to wealth; evasion, excuses and lies the cowardice guaranteeing poverty Populism promises to pay the rent. But never yours, my friend! To hate indiscriminately is a measure of one's own tragic shortcoming Atheists don't eat converted rice Irrational fear begets irrational loathing Exaggerated national pride stems from a very dangerous shortage of individual self-esteem (Patria non totus et ubique est) The intolerant will always demand tolerance under laws they categorically reject Enforcers are compensated not to think Immorality is the domain not of the atheist, but of the non-thinker He who lives by the wind, becomes the wind: intermittently influential but on the whole dismissible The battle between good & evil boils down to the conflict between moderns and primitives Letters are pebbles but words bricks, holding up beautiful structures and even music sometimes Behind a woman's tears, lies the greatest human strength I know If God gave us life, He sure has a bewilderingly cruel way of taking it back Besides his own wicked ways, man has brought some order in the situation whereby the sole purpose of bringing him to life, seems to have been to pound the crap out of him Religion is man caressing himself Mars has life ancient fundamentalists left behind Those encouraging suicide are never home when it is their turn The human race is a bit like water: slowly flowing to the lowest point, changing its composition to rise to the top, only to fall again Permanently emerging states are permanently led by intellectual midgets It takes centuries for sense to become common Do not add to life's intimidations Life is like living with a murderer in closed quarters : it should be treated with kidgloves and utmost decorum Condemning the unsung, most prefer those the others applaud It takes two to be decent! It is unwise for sheep to negotiate a non-aggression pact with wolves Can't ban guns? Ban bullets! Some climbers stab the back and step over the body, accuse another, steal, execute, imprison and bomb, and can do all this because, admirably apparently, sustained by their faith... History shows it's impossible for a people to prosper, if the art of compromise hasn't entered its culture Life being meaningless is not nearly as serious as leading one that is pointless Most politicians are brilliant only at getting elected I propose tripppling the minimum wage for necessary but disgusting work. Now this will reduce strife, society at last taking care of its own arse Optimism is despair in disguise Intellect is the ballpark, reason the game. Many have the facility but can or will not play A writers' dream a watering hole with a clock that runs backwards: always time for one more drink, accompanied by hope long lost friends walk in again When writing I create characters I would love to have met, replacing real ones who let me down or who bore me to death The Biggest Lie of all: Editors and Agents look for Originality. After submitting something out of the ordinary, they always react as if sodomized in the lane behind Granny's cottage on a Sunday morning, right before services If time bends, so does truth. There's indelible gravity travelling moral space: What was true a moment ago is no longer quite so. A good writer captures this phenomenon Writing is having the courage to constantly pull the rug out from underneath oneself Graham Greene and Samuel Beckett both suffered from a form of dehydration: their lips aching, dying of thirst yet unable to drink faith's liquid words. Polite Jazz and Tropical Prose suck I feel scandalously betrayed the word Umlaut hasn't one, or that Ravel's Bolero and the word Anagram are nothing of the sort Take the dead straightest steel beam, then order several million putting them end to end to circumvent the globe. Of course they'll have made a perfect circle, proving that absolutely nothing is really straight in the universe and that even the apparently most precise item is not 100% what you think. Such is the truth Show me a culture where honesty is considered ridiculous, where nobody's ever accountable for anything, where anger gets admired as a sign of strength, and I'll show you a place where misery is permanent My sister has a military-industrial complex. She doesn't cross B52s and CEOs My remarkableness goes remarkably unremarked, but may I remind you that even a broken clock... manages to be accurate twice a day Shoppers labour under the illusion they're acquiring something, when usually more is lost than gained
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