I run a “quotation-a-day” mailing list, based off of my WIST website.
For today’s mailing, I pulled quite a number of quotations, based on all sorts of thoughts and feelings about this particular date.
Assassinate me you may; intimidate me you cannot.
— John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), Defense of Rebels (1798)
What is to give light must endure burning.
— Victor Frankl (1905-1997)
Dangers bring fears, and fears more dangers bring.
— Richard Baxter (1615-1691)
MORE: If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we’d live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all . . . why then perhaps we must stand fast a little — even at the risk of being heroes.
— Robert Bolt (1924-1935), A Man for All Seasons (1960)
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
— Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941), Olmstead v. United States, 277
US 479 (Dissent) (1928)
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.
— Émile-Auguste Chartier (1868-1951)
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
— Confucius (551-479 BC)
The world is a dangerous place to live in, not because of the people that do evil; but because of the people that stand by and let them do it.
— Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
— Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Attributed
He that will not set sail till all dangers are over must never put out to sea.
— Thomas Fuller (1654-1734), Gnomologia, No. 2353 (1732)
It is hard to fight with anger; for what it wants it buys at the price of soul.
— Heraclitus (c.540-c.480 BC)
And how am I to face the odds
Of man’s bedevilment, and God’s?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
— Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936), A Shropshire Lad
Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
— Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968)
What is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.
— Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968)
A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.
— John LeCarre (b. 1931)
This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim.
— James Reston (1909-1995)
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.
— George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), The Devil’s Disciple
For every ten people who are clipping at the branches of evil, you’re lucky to find one who’s hacking at the roots.
— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not, “So, there’s no God after all,” but, “So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”
— C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), A Grief Observed, ch. 1
I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands “Thus saith the Lord,” it lies, and lies dangerously.
— C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), God in the Dock, “Is Progress Possible?”
(1958)
He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
— Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), A Preface to Morals
The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
— Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies.
— Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
One of the most dangerous forms of human error is forgetting what one is trying to achieve.
— Paul Nitze (b. 1907)
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home.
— Terry Pratchett (b. 1948), Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman) (1990)
When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of countries everywhere is in danger.
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), “Fireside Chat” (3 Sep 1939)
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
— George Santayana (1863-1952)
History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.
— Bertie Charles Forbes (1880-1954)
When anger spreads through the breath, guard thy tongue from barking idly.
— Sappho (c. 610-635 BC), Untitled fragment
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure.
— Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
— Mark Twain (1835-1910)
When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.
— Dashell Hammett (1894-1961), The Maltese Falcon (1940)
To be in anger is impiety;
But who is man that is not angry?
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Timon of Athens, III.v.57
We may draw good out of evil; we must not do evil, that good may come.
— Maria Weston Chapman (1806-1885), “How Can I Help to Abolish Slavery,”
speech, New York (1855)
Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.
— C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Weight of Glory, “Membership” (1945)
Don’t cheer, men; those poor devils are dying.
— Jack Phillip (1840-1900), at the Battle of Santiago (1898)
Among life’s perpetually charming questions is whether the truly evil do more harm than the self-righteous and wrong.
— Jon Margolis
Every evil in the bud is easily crushed: as it grows older, it becomes stronger.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)
Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good.
— Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.
— Christopher Dawson (1889-1970), The Judgement of Nations
HAYWOOD: There are those in our own country, too, who today speak of the protection of country, of survival. A decision must be made, in the life of every nation, at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat, when it seems the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient. To look the other way. Only the answer to that is – survival as what?
— Abby Mann (b. 1927), Judgment at Nuremberg (Dir. Stanley Kremer)
(1961)
Yes, evil comes in many forms, whether it be a man-eating cow or Joseph Stalin, but you can’t let the package hide the pudding! Evil is just plain bad! You don’t cotton to it. You gotta smack it in the nose with the rolled-up newspaper of goodness! Bad dog! Bad dog!
— Ben Edlund, The Tick
Everybody was a baby once, Arthur. Oh, sure, maybe not today, or even yesterday. But once! Babies, chum: tiny, dimpled, fleshy mirrors of our us-ness, that we parents hurl into the future, like leathery footballs of hope! And you’ve got to get a good spiral on that baby, or evil will make an interception!
— Ben Edlund, The Tick
BUFFY: I’m gonna give you all a nice, fun, normal evening if I have to kill every person on the face of the Earth to do it.
—Buffy the Vampire Slayer
All that the Devil asks is acquiescence … not struggle, not conflict. Acquiescence.
— Suzanne Massie
KINT: The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
— Christopher McQuarrie (b. 1968), The Usual Suspects (1995)
No man consciously chooses evil because it is evil: he only mistakes it for the happiness he seeks.
— Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature – were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
One does evil enough when one does nothing good.
— German proverb
There is always danger for those who are afraid of it.
— George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Fear is a greater evil than the evil itself.
— St. François de Sales (1567-1622)
One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.
— Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison.
— Milan Kundera (b. 1929), The Unbearable Lightness of Being
No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
— Victor Frankl (1905-1997)
No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
— John Donne (1572-1631), Meditation XVII
Hold to the helm of faith, and mind not the buffeting of untoward circumstances. Be more furious than the fury of misfortune, more audacious than your dangers.
— Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952)
He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.
—Bible, Proverbs 16:32
Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.
— Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658)
Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.
— Robert A. Heinlein (1909-1988)
LONDO: I suppose there’ll be a war now, hmm? All that running around and shooting at one another. You would have thought sooner or later it’d go out of fashion.
— J. Michael Straczynski (b. 1954), Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)
It is not the object of war to annihilate those who have given provocation for it, but to cause them to mend their ways; not to ruin the innocent and guilty alike, but to save both.
— Polybius (203?-120 BC)
The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.
— George S. Patton (1885-1945)
He knew that the essence of war is violence, and that moderation in war is imbecility.
— Thomas Babington Macauley (1800-1859), of John Hampden, English
statesman killed in battle (1643)
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.
— Otto von Bismark (1815-1898)
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
— Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973)
It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.
— Robert E. Lee (1807-1870)
The B-52 has been an effective war machine. It’s killed a lot of people.
[speech in Congress]
The B-52 has been an effective war machine, which has unfortunately killed a
lot of people.
[as edited in the Congressional Record]
— Congressman Bill Young
If a sufficient number of people who wanted to stop war really did gather together, they would first of all begin by making war upon those who disagreed with them. And it is still more certain that they would make war on people who also want to stop wars but in another way.
— Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1873-1949)
Sometimes I think war is God’s way of teaching us geography.
— Paul Rodriguez (b. 1957)
They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist —
— John Sedgwick (1813-1864), Last words to troops during a Civil War
battle
Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war .
— Aristophanes (c.450-c.388 BC)
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
— J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), The Fellowship of the Ring
Peace is not the absence of struggle, it is the absence of uncertainty.
— Anthony Bloom, Metropolitan of Sourozh (b. 1914)
True peace is not merely the absence of tension; It is the presence of justice.
— Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
— Malcolm X (1925-1965) (1965)
It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.
— Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs
Are those that tell of saddest thought.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace:
Goodwill.
— Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.
— William H. Walton
The clinching proof of my reasoning is that I will cut anyone who argues further into dog meat.
— Sir Geoffrey de Tourneville (fl. 14th C) (c. AD 1350)
You don’t promote the cause of peace by talking only to people with whom you agree.
— Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)
The rapprochement of peoples is only possible when differences of culture and outlook are respected and appreciated rather than feared and condemned, when the common bond of human dignity is recognized as the essential bond for a peaceful world.
— J. William Fulbright (1905-1995)
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
— Patrick Henry (1736-1799)
We love peace, but not peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man, than war is destructive to his body. Chains are worse than bayonets.
— Douglas Jerrold (1803-1857)
We who claim to love peace and justice must always be careful that we do not use our righteousness to provoke the violent, and in this way bring about the conflict for which we, too, like other men, are hungering in secret, and with suppressed barbarity.
— Thomas Merton (1915-1968), “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”
If peace cannot be maintained with honor, it is no longer peace.
— Lord John Russell (1792-1878), Letter to Greenrock (19 Sep 1853)
All men desire peace, but few desire the things that make for peace.
— Thomas à Kempis (1379-1471)
Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.
— Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), The Temper of Our Time
Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
— Lillian Hellman (1906-1987)
A brave man can easily bear with contempt, slander, and false accusations from an evil world; but to bear such injustice at the hands of good men, of friends and relations, is a great test of patience.
— St. François de Sales (1567-1622)
If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man — it is the man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.
— James A. Garfield (1831-1881)
Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exists because of their silent consent.
— Bruno Jasienski (1901-1941?)
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
— Henry Lewis Mencken (1880-1956)
That’s what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end.
— Lise Hand, Describing the late Irish journalist Veronica Guerin
Neutral men are the devil’s allies.
— Edwin Hubbel Chapin (1814-1880)
Death is a softer thing by far than tyranny.
— Aeschylus (525-456 BC), Agamemnon, I, 1364
Happy is he who dares courageously to defend what he loves.
— Ovid (43 BC-AD 17)
Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.
— Omar Bradley (1893-1981)
What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
— Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Twilight of the Idols
It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong stumbled or where the doer of the deed could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again. Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.
— Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), “The Strenuous Life” (speech)
It’s not that Good doesn’t triumph over Evil, it’s that the point spread is too small.
— Bob Thaves (b. 1924), Frank & Ernest (1993)
The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
— Max Born (1882-1970)
It is some compensation for great evils that they enforce great lessons.
— Christian Nestell Bovee (1820-1904)
We sometimes learn more from the sight of evil than from an example of good; and it is well to accustom ourselves to profit by the evil which is so common, while that which is good is so rare.
— Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
And thus, in my folly, afore this time often I wondered why, by the great foreseeing wisdom of God, the beginning of sin was not letted; for then, methought, all should have been well…. But Jesus, who in this Vision informed me of all that is needful to me, answered by this word and said, Sin is behovable, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
— Juliana of Norwich (1342-1417)
We had to learn ourselves and furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life but rather what life expected from us! We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.
— Victor Frankl (1905-1997), Man’s Search for Meaning
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions.
— Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees
A soldier came to Hakuin and asked “Is there really a paradise and a hell?”
“Who are you?” inquired Hakuin. “I am a samurai,” the warrior replied.
“You, a samurai!” exclaimed Hakuin. “What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar!”
The soldier became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin continued. “So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably as dull as your head!”
As the soldier drew his sword Hakuin remarked “Here open the gates of hell!”
At these words, the samurai, perceiving the discipline of the master, sheathed his sword and bowed.
“Here open the gates of paradise,” said Hakuin.
— Zen koan
My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths ….
— Harlan Ellison (b. 1934)
When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.
— Chief Aupumut (fl. 18th C.) (1725)
It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our mind as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray-haired. But most of them were boys when they died, they gave up two lives — the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for their county, for us. All we can do is remember.
— Ronald Reagan (b. 1911), Remarks at Veteran’s Day ceremony, Arlington National Cemetery (11 Nov. 1985)
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
— Barry Goldwater (1909-1998), Speech at GOP convention (1964)
G’KAR: By G’Quon I can’t recall the last time I was in a fight like that! No moral ambiguity, no hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces. They were the bad guys, as you say, and we were the good guys! And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor!
— J. Michael Straczynski (b. 1954), Babylon 5, “A Late Delivery from
Avalon” (1996)
Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.
— Mary Harris “Mother” Jones (1860-1930)
You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
— Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
FAITH: When I’m fighting, it’s like the whole world goes away. I only know one thing: that I’m gonna win, and they’re gonna lose. I like that feeling.
BUFFY: Well sure, beats that “dead” feeling you get when they win and you lose.
—Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety.
— Henry Lewis Mencken (1880-1956), In Defense of Women (1923)
The scientific name for an animal that doesn’t either run from or fight its enemies is “lunch.”
— Michael Friedman
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
— Victor Frankl (1905-1997)
The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back.
— Abigail Van Buren (b. 1918)
True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.
— Arthur Ashe (1943-1993)
The hero is known for achievements; the celebrity for well-knownness. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and media. Celebrities are people who make news, but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.
— Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914), Parade Magazine, “Who Are Our Heroes?”
(by Ponchitta Pierce) (6 Aug. 1995)
Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.
— Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
You become a champion by fighting one more round. When things are tough, you fight one more round.
— James Corbett (1866-1933)
If we stop caring about our heroes, we stop caring about what they died for.
— Ralph Harris
It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.
— Herodotus (c.484-c.420 BC)
Virtue is but heroic bravery, to do the thing thought to be true, in spite of all enemies of flesh or spirit, in despite of all temptations or menaces.
— Albert Pike (1809-1891)
Know thyself as the pride of His creation, the link uniting divinity and matter; behold a part of God Himself within thee; remember thine own dignity nor dare descend to evil or meanness.
— Akhenaton (d. 1362 BC)
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
— Cherokee proverb
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
— John Donne (1572-1631)
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
— George Santayana (1863-1952)
For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man. But men fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils.
— Socrates (c.470-399 BC)
For certain is death for the born,
And certain is birth for the dead;
Therefore over the inevitable
Thou shouldst not grieve.
—Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Sec. 27 (500? BC)
Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.
— David Searls
Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
— Sir Rabindranath Tagore (1961-1941)
Why do birds sing in the morning? It’s the triumphant shout: “We got through another night!”
— Enid Bagnold (1889-1981)
The baby rises to its feet, takes a step, is overcome with triumph and joy — and falls flat on its face. It is a pattern for all that is to come! But learn from the bewildered baby. Lurch to your feet again. You’ll make the sofa in the end.
— Pam Brown
SMART GUY 1: The thing that the modern-day pundits fail to realize is that all the socioeconomic and psychological problems inherent in modern society can be solved by the judicious application of way too much beer.
BUFFY: My mother always said beer is evil.
SMART GUY 1: Evil, good — these are moral absolutes that predate the fermentation of malt and fine hops.
—Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Beer Bad”
THE DOCTOR: Would you like a jelly baby?
LEELA: It’s true then! They say the Evil One eats babies.
THE DOCTOR: You mustn’t believe all they say.
—Doctor Who, “The Face of Evil”
PRES. MUFFLEY: You can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!
— Peter George (1924-1996), Doctor Strangelove, with Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern (1964)
Humor is just another defense against the universe.
— Mel Brooks (b. 1926)
One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.
— François Sagan (b. 1935)
The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.
— Sébastien Chamfort (1741-1794), Maxims and Thoughts
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
— George Carlin (b. 1937)