#quotesunday — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #quotesunday, aggregated by home.social.
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"Of course you do. I know you’re not stupid. 😊"
– @larandIn a conversation started by @machias, here:
https://mstdn.social/@machias/116584577892369388 -
"It's not about the shoes, it's what you do in them."
– Michael Jordan
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In his case, a gifted individual, sure. But I'd argue it's absolutely about the shoes they're grifted¹ *and* what they are doing with their grifts.
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"Do you want to use the saline solution in the medicine cabinet?"
– My wife, after I sliced and ate a single birds eye chilli to go with a supermarket minted lamb burger on a burger bun with cheese, ketchup and sweet chilli sauce - and then absent-mindedly stuck my finger up my nose. Right up. As far as it could go.
It's the first time in my life I've intentionally inhaled¹ water through my nose, but it's more pleasant than the alternative I had.
https://www.chilliproject.co.uk/scoville-scale
¹ YKWIM
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"A Dark Age is not just a period in which people no longer know how to do things. The real key is that people no longer remember that certain things can be done at all."
– Jerry Pournelle
(Best known for his science fiction).----
Does anyone remember that people who suggested concepts requiring the ruling elites to accept change weren't well-received? No, of course not, no-one reading this was alive when it happened last.
(The last sentence ignores our current reality).
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"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority."
– Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 13th Marquess of Groppoli, KCVO DL), in a letter to Archbishop Mandell Creighton on April 5, 1887.
Link to my blogpost (*I* am not a writer of letters):
https://bt3.com/2026/04/10/power/ -
"There Ain't No Justice" - also TANJ or tanj. It's an expletive.
It's from Larry Niven's 'Known Space' novels.
I *think* I first came across the phrase in Niven & Pournelle's novel 'Oath Of Fealty', set in the near future in an arcology near Los Angeles. A condition of living there is surrendering one's privacy to and swearing loyalty to the management company.
Not likely to happen anytime soon is it.
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"We are in different time zones. The earliest you understand, the best it is for you to get the best of other people around you."
– Olawale Daniel
Yes, the clocks sprung forward in the early hours of this morning here in the UK (and Europe?). We're now working on summer time!
/me looks out of the window
/me goes meh
Yes, I did forget this year.
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CW: US politics
"Move fast and break things".
– Mark ZuckerbergThis was Facebook's internal motto until 2014, and is equally applicable to the techbro ethos now running the USA.
Move fast:
The USA is the fastest nation in recent times to successfully suppress democracy. (https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116271471337770496)Break things:
Look around at the world, the evidence is everywhere, from the Iran war to its precursors and ongoing effects.Yeah, it's an oversimplification made to restart this hashtag.
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"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
– Attributed to King Henry II of England.The king believed he hadn't enough power, and that Archbishop Thomas Becket had exceeded the authority given by the king - a once-classic conflict between church and monarchy.
The 4 knights who killed Becket had apparently overheard Henry's frustrated outburst and *interpreted* it as a request to terminate.
Isn't it a good thing it'd never happen in the 21st century…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F
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“Violence,” came the retort, “is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
– Salvor Hardin, a character in Foundation, by Isaac Asimov.It is derived from the famous phrase by Samuel Johnson: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" and from the words of Lady Anne Bellamy in H. Rider Haggard's Dawn, “I do not believe in violence; it is the last resource of fools.” Asimov is usually quoted simply with "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
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"Have you ever just thought to yourself that it would have been better if you just hadn't thought at all, because I do that a lot."
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"(War, huh) Good God, y'all
(What is it good for?) Absolutely nothin'
Say it again
(War, huh) Woah, woah, lord, lord
(What is it good for?) Absolutely nothin'
Listen to me"(War) It ain't nothing but a heartbreaker
(War) Friend only to the undertaker, aww!"– A partial lyric of the Vietnam War protest song originally recorded by The Temptations in 1969, and re-recorded in 1970 by Edwin Starr. (Written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong).
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The word "de-escalate" is used here, how odd.
'More RAF jets are being sent to the Middle East amid intense fighting between Israel and Iran, the prime minister has said.
'Sir Keir Starmer said the military aircraft, including Typhoons and air-to-air refuelers, were being sent "for contingency support across the region".
'He said the situation was fast-moving and there were ongoing discussions with allies, adding: "The constant message is de-escalate."'
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Early #QuoteSunday
RIP Bill Atkinson, best known for #Apple Lisa & Mac graphics & HyperCard.
"Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system that enabled non-programmers to make their own interactive media. HyperCard used a metaphor of stacks of cards containing graphics, text, buttons, and links that could take you to another card. … Apple published HyperCard in 1987, six years before Mosaic, the first web browser."
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"Après moi, le déluge."
– King Louis XV of France.English translation of the French, "After me, the flood."
It is generally regarded as a nihilistic expression of indifference to whatever happens after one is gone. The phrase is also often seen as foretelling the French Revolution and the corresponding ruin brought to France.
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A #QuoteSunday for #HHGG on #TowelDay!
"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
#DontPanic and carry a towel today.
Links FYI:
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"If you want me to stop doomscrolling you have to stop producing such compelling doom."
– Thanks to @Mjack
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"Illegitimi non carborundum"
'Dog latin phrase meant to be read as “don’t let the bastards grind you down”, even though a more accurate translation would be “The unlawful are not silicon carbide”'.
– Anonymous.
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"All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible."
– George Santayana, 1926.
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CW: Trump
“Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in May, summing up his 25-year history here. “The money I took out of there was incredible.”
– New York Times, 2016 (the year his personality was described as "audacious").
(Me: Maybe one day we'll learn from history, and do the good things instead of lazily repeating the easy).
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"Real education enhances the dignity of a human being and increases his or her self-respect. If only the real sense of education could be realized by each individual and carried forward in every field of human activity, the world will be so much a better place to live in."
– A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
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"The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra."
– Jimmy Johnson, former American Football coach and sports analyst
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@skullmandible: "We developed the ability to talk to each other and communicate on a scale and fidelity unimaginable at any other point in human history and it drove us absolutely fucking insane in less than my lifetime." #quotesunday
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"For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned."
– George Santayana
Farewell globalisation.
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"Get yourself a new iPhone, we'll pay."
– My family recently, offering it up as a birthday present. (My wife will do the actual paying).My oldest daughter even put together a small presentation to stress how important this is to them, such must have been my outward displays of agonies that I don't *need* one, the XS is fine. (I don't, it is).
Today, Mothers Day in the UK it was mentioned again. So, despite how wrong it feels *today*, I ordered one.
Not my birthday today either.
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"Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!"– Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1819.
*From Wikipedia*:
British political poem … following the Peterloo Massacre of that year. In his call for freedom, it is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent #resistance.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_Anarchy
Prompted by @ianb's post yesterday:
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We watched the very impressive #Oppenheimer movie last night. This, near the end, refers to a scene near the start.
Lewis Strauss: "He turned the scientists against me, one by one, starting with Einstein. I told you about that. Einstein. Einstein by the pond."
Senate Aide: "You did, but you know, sir, since nobody… really knows what they said to each other that day, is it possible they didn't talk about you at all? Is it possible they spoke about something, uh... more important?"
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CW: Trump Zelenskyy televised ambush
"This Is Going to Be Great Television."
– A human-shaped tub of lard who recently assumed the title of the 'Leader of the free world', at the end of a ridiculously petulant televised meet & greet with the President of Ukraine, Vlodymyr Zelenskyy. February 28, 2025.
(I'm using the same criteria as Time Magazine's annual person of the year - an indicator of impact).
Question: does Trump believe he's playing a part like he did on 'The Apprentice'?