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Post by Audio Watchdog on Jan 30, 2018 2:30:30 GMT
Polish Proverb- Not my circus, not my monkeys
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Post by theotherjosh on Feb 20, 2018 15:05:19 GMT
I caught an interview with Fred Rogers from 1984 and it made me think of one of my favorite descriptions of un-ironic goodness and decency.
He was barely more than a boy himself when he learned what he would be fighting for, and fighting against, for the rest of his life. He was in college. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. His name was Fred Rogers. He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a time, and his parents, because they were wealthy, had bought something new for the corner room of their big redbrick house. It was a television. Fred turned it on, and as he says now, with plaintive distaste, “there were people throwing pies at one another.” He was the soft son of overprotective parents, but he believed, right then, that he was strong enough to enter into battle with that—that machine, that medium—and to wrestle with it until it yielded to him, until the ground touched by its blue shadow became hallowed and this thing called television came to be used “for the broadcasting of grace through the land.”
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Post by themeddlingmonk on Feb 20, 2018 19:39:48 GMT
“Wren Parrrtaaaaaay”
~ Phillipa Jackson, 2017
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Mar 25, 2018 23:03:19 GMT
Cameron Kasky- To the leaders, skeptics and cynics who told us to sit down, stay silent and wait your turn: Welcome to the revolution. Either represent the people or get out.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Apr 29, 2018 2:35:12 GMT
George Bernard Shaw- If you want to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh or they’ll kill you.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Jun 24, 2018 15:33:35 GMT
Maya Angelou When people show you who they are, believe them.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Jun 26, 2018 2:52:15 GMT
Harlan Ellison- You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.
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lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
Likes: 5,811
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Post by lidar2 on Jun 26, 2018 10:42:39 GMT
Harlan Ellison- You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant. This thread has now come full circle
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2018 11:18:17 GMT
It's a good quote. I've got another one, from one of Ellison's stories: Edit: Good god, I put this up just a day before he passed away... The prescience on that is frightening.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Jun 26, 2018 13:31:54 GMT
Harlan Ellison- You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant. This thread has now come full circle Heh. Sorry. It was one of those days where that quote kept echoing in my mind. I 1/2 wondered if I had posted it already.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Jun 26, 2018 13:33:48 GMT
It's a good quote. I've got another one, from one of Ellison's stories: Ellison is easily one of my three or favorite favorite writers and, with apologies to Raymond Carver, the great writer of short fiction this country has ever produced.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2018 13:35:56 GMT
It's a good quote. I've got another one, from one of Ellison's stories: Ellison is easily one of my three or favorite favorite writers and, with apologies to Raymond Carver, the great writer of short fiction this country has ever produced. Lest we forget his foreword to the American Target reprints: "I stood my ground, there on the lecture platform at the World Science Fiction Convention, and I repeated the heretical words that had sent them into animal hysterics: "Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains into puree of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!"
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Jun 26, 2018 13:39:06 GMT
Ellison is easily one of my three or favorite favorite writers and, with apologies to Raymond Carver, the great writer of short fiction this country has ever produced. Lest we forget his foreword to the American Target reprints: "I stood my ground, there on the lecture platform at the World Science Fiction Convention, and I repeated the heretical words that had sent them into animal hysterics: "Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains into puree of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!" I think if you look up combative and pugnacious in the dictionary to the side there is a picture of Harlan Ellison.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2018 23:48:44 GMT
Lest we forget his foreword to the American Target reprints: "I stood my ground, there on the lecture platform at the World Science Fiction Convention, and I repeated the heretical words that had sent them into animal hysterics: "Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains into puree of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!" I think if you look up combative and pugnacious in the dictionary to the side there is a picture of Harlan Ellison. *bemused smile* And a sticky note demanding payment for use of his legal image. It feels impossible to tell what a Doctor Who story written by him would look like. His style is just so distinctive and multifaceted. Can't use the word "possibly" or "definitely" in any sense.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2018 5:45:38 GMT
Flicking back through Burning Heart and I found this lovely little quote with Sixie and Peri:
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Post by rran on Jul 20, 2018 14:09:46 GMT
Chaos is a ladder (silly of me-I took note of this fantastic line only on my rewatch)
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Post by theotherjosh on Jul 29, 2018 0:26:08 GMT
We cast this message into the cosmos ... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some – perhaps many – may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe.
-From Jimmy Carter's official statement on the Voyager spacecrafts.
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Post by masterdoctor on Aug 20, 2018 1:57:36 GMT
Stephen Fry during a conversation with Gay Byrne:
Gay Byrne: ... suppose it's all true and you walk up to the pearly gates and you are confronted by God. What would Stephen Fry say to him, her or it?
Stephen Fry: I will basically (it's known as theodicy I think) I'll say, "Bone cancer in children? What's that about? How dare you! How dare you create a world where there is such misery that is not our fault! It's not right. It is utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain. That's what I'd say.
And you think you're going to get in? Oh, but I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to get in on his terms. They're wrong.
Now, if I died and it was Pluto, Hades and if it were the twelve Greek gods, then I'd have more truck with it because the Greeks didn't pretend not to be human in their appetites, and in their capriciousness and their unreasonableness; they didn't present themselves as being all-seeing, all-wise, all-kind, all-munificent; because the god who created this universe (if it was created by God) is, quite clearly, a maniac - utter maniac, totally selfish.
We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him? What kind of god would do that?
Yes, the world is very splendid, but it also has in it insects whose whole life-cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. They eat outwards from the eyes. Why did you do that? Why? Why did you do that to us? You could easily have made a creation where that didn't exist. It is simply not acceptable.
So, you know, atheism is not just about not believing there's a god - but, on the assumption there is one, what kind of god is it? It's perfectly apparent that he is monstrous, utterly monstrous, and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him your life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner - more worth living in my opinion.
Quite moving and well said in all regards.
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Post by theotherjosh on Aug 23, 2018 22:18:57 GMT
From far, from eve and morning And yon twelve-winded sky, The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither: here am I.
Now—for a breath I tarry Nor yet disperse apart— Take my hand quick and tell me, What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer; How shall I help you, say; Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters I take my endless way.
A. E. Housman - A Shropshire Lad
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Aug 25, 2018 18:12:12 GMT
Leonard Bernstein- "To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time."
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