Jul 30th, 2010: Day 11053
Who is the Man with the Name that Rhymes ?If the name don't rhyme it ain't mine.
Quotes
The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
Der Krieg? Ich kann das nicht so schrecklich finden! Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik! (The war? I can not find it so terrible! The death of a man: this is a catastrophe. A hundred thousand dead: this is a statistic!)
Lerne lachen ohne zu weinen, Französischer Witz
Something to Say
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
War
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The Human Mind
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
The Call of Cthulhu
The Denial of Death
...The lower animals, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being...The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-files days—that's something else.
The Denial of Death
Abyss
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
Jenseits von Gut und Böse
Interesting Life
The way to an interesting life is to stay on the steep part of the learning curve
Democracy
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Speech in the House of Commons (1947-11-11)
What does not kill you...
Was ihn nicht umbringt, macht ihn starker. (What does not kill him, makes him stronger.)
Ecce Homo (1888)
Chance
Die Leugner des Zufalls. — 'Kein Sieger glaubt an den Zufall.' (Those who deny chance. — 'No victor believes in chance.')
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Poor Richard's Almanac (1735)
