Category: Quote of the Day

“Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viking from wanting to go sack a city.” – Jerry Pournelle, in a reply to a reader’s e-mail in Chaos Manor Mail #141, February 19-25, 2001

“A man and his tools make a man and his trade.” Vita Sackville-West, A Saxon Song, in The Independent Vol. 110 (1923); also in Collected Poems (1934)

“Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.” – Zig Ziglar as quoted in Trigger Events – How To Find Your Next Customer (2007) by Alen Majer

“Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger.” – Gordon Dickson, Tactics of Mistake

“Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society” – Aristotle (384-322 BC)

“…And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were …

“Ah Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee: thou shewest lovingkindness unto thousands, and recompensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them: the Great, the Mighty God, the Lord of hosts, is his name, great in counsel, and mighty in work: for thine eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men” – Jeremiah 32:17-19 (KJV)

“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” – William Goldman, in The Princess Bride (1973) and the film The Princess Bride (1987)

“Knowledge isn’t restrained by the limits of Malthus. Information doesn’t need topsoil to grow in, only freedom. Given eager minds and experimentation, it feeds itself like a chain react.” – David Brin, Earth

“It’s said that ‘power corrupts’, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.” – David Brin, The Postman

“In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur, in a lecture at the University of Lille (7 December 1854)

“What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back,—with a hinge in it.” – Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden (1870)

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light: which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.” – 1 Peter 2:9-10 (KJV)