(no subject)

Way cool quote meme, by way of aukestrel:

Go here and find ten quotes, or just think of ten quotes from memory or somewhere else. Then post them, easy as pie.

I sort of collect quotes, so narrowing them down to ten isn't easy. This list by no means represents all of my favourites.

• The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
  
  --Thomas Paine
  
  So much for If You're Not With Me You're With the Terrorists. Oh, Thomas Paine, how I do love you.
  
  
• Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.
  
  --Roland Deschain, from The Gunslinger by Stephen King
  
  Roland, you keep speaking truth whether I want to hear it or not. Thankee-sai.
  
  
• When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical may be madness. To surrender dreams, this may be madness. To seek treasures where there is only trash...Too much sanity may be madness, and maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.
  
  --Miguel De Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha
  
  This book keeps showing up in my life, so I think the universe wants me to read it.
  
  
  
• We look like a geography, but just scratch us and we bleed history.
  
  --Miriam Waddington, on Canada
  
  Definitely one of my top five or so quotes, so ( I will carry on about it. )
  
  
  Canadians on my flist, you may now mock me.
  
  
  
  
• We have a secret in our culture...
  and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong.
  
  --Laura Stavoe Harm
  
  ( small rant thisaway )
  
  
  
• ( The Paradoxical Commandments )
  
  
  Reportedly this quote hung on the wall of Mother Theresa's orphanage, and is often attributed to her. In my own version of Fraser!canon, it's on his wall, too. :D
  
  
• After the last tree has been cut down,
  After the last river has been poisoned,
  After the last fish has been caught
  Only then will you find
  That money cannot be eaten.
  --Cree Prophecy
  
  The prophecy is coming true with abandon, all over the world. We should have listened to the Cree.
  
  
• When one comes to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim on them."
  --Helen Keller
  
  Helen is my hero. I've loved her from a very young age; two of the first books I remember reading were The Story of Helen Keller and Helen Keller's Teacher. I completely obsessed on her when I was little. And that's before I realized that a whole hunk of her life story had been kept from me by the media. Helen was a suffragist and an ardent socialist who actively protested US involvement in World War I, fought for women's rights, and basically spent her whole life in service to other people. She was also very much a woman, and her sexuality and romantic life is also handwaved. It pisses me off that TPTB chose (and still do to a point) to censor such a rich part of her story from the world.
  
  
  
• Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
  --Oscar Wilde.
  
  Despite my Oscar Wilde love, I didn't know about this quote until I heard Tom McLaughlin say it. Oscar had a flair for hiding truth in a humorous epigram, getting people to listen by stealth means.
  
  
  
• And I believe in the future we shall suffer no more
  Maybe not in my lifetime but in yours I feel sure
  --Paul Simon, "The Cool, Cool River"
  
  I could have done an all-Paul Simon quote list and not even touch the hundreds of favourite lyric quotes. I especially love this one because it's so optimisitic. I should sing it to Amelia. :)