Most profound quotation you have read or heard?

You better get out while the gettin's good before you git got.
-Grandpappy

[edit on 5/11/2009 by Phage]

Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency. -Alhazen

Nobody died when Clinton Lied "Unknown"

A bird in the hand is dead.

Mine isn't so much a quote, but an excerpt from a book. The book, a work of fiction, is ironically enough somewhat of a conspiracy novel, involving a non-government entity that is experimenting with mass mind-control. (Although the "program" that allows the mind-control to work was created due to funding from the government for this exact purpose, the person that made it work just got greedy and decided he would profit from it instead of turning it over to the government).

The book is Night Chills, by Dean Koontz.

He is like a man living through the night before doomsday, with the full knowledge that the sun will go nova in the morning, yet unable to to enjoy the precious pleasures of this world because all his energy is devoted to wishing desperately that the foreseen end, will not, after all, come to pass.

"Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind". Basically, it's made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind."
-- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

"This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away."
-- Jesus

"The path to wisdom begins with a single step. Where people go wrong is ignoring the thousands of other steps that come after it. They decide to become one with the universe and forget to do the things that would give it any kind of meaning."
-- Unknown

"Some of the greater things in life are unseen that's why you close your eyes when you kiss, cry, or dream."
-- Anonymous

"Every day above ground is a good day."

Announcer at a bullfight in CanCun

'Learning through conversation is not only a waste, but stupidity, because learning is the most difficult task a man can undertake.'

Carlos Castenada

"Same thing happened to me when I played Neil Armstrong in Moonshot. They found me in an alley in Burbank trying to re-enter the earth's atmosphere in an old refrigerator box."
Kirk Lazarus: Tropic Thunder.

"Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one."

Albert Einstein

"The kingdom will not come by expectation, to say: see here or see there.

The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the Earth and men do not see it."

Jesus

First they came...

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then... they came for me... And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

"First they came…" is a poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

en.wikipedia.org...

"I was born with nothing and still have most of it left."

"If it ain't broken, don't fix it."

"The best way to keep a secret is not to tell others you've a secret worth keeping."

2 all beef patties,special sauce,lettuce,cheese,pickles,onions on a sesame seed bun.

If history repeats itself then why do we live in the past?

To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
(couldn't find the quotee!)

A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. www.aboutadidam.org...

We often learn Newton's first law of motion in the context of billiard balls on pool tables. But the same law is readily observed in "man as machine". I tend to react to men in the same, limited manner in which I tended to react to my own father. I will continue to do so until something awakens me to what I am doing, enables me to see alternatives, and assists me in establishing those alternatives as part of a new, less restrictive pattern.

But human beings are rather more complex than billiard balls; much is required to overcome the force of habit or the trend of history. Consider dieting as one example of attempting to overcome an addiction (or any other deep pattern) via self-improvement. The mind idealistically embraces the idea of losing weight, usually rallying itself around some new technique for doing that; but the body remains a distinct voice and force all the while. The mind may rule for a period; but, come that moment in front of the chocolate shop, when the delicious smell comes wafting out — the body instantly initiates a coup d'etat, seizing the throne and commencing a food binge that may last days, weeks, or months. When the mind "comes to", it generally is perplexed about the failure of its program. It vastly underestimated (and never was actually in a position to overcome) the force and depth of the pattern it was attempting to address.

A more apt metaphor for "man as machine" than the passive billiard ball is "man as homeostatic system": a pattern of activity which, even when acted on by an outside force, will exert a counter-force, in order to perpetuate the present pattern. It's as though the billiard ball had developed little "legs" that dug into the pool table surface when it sees another pool ball coming, in order to resist the oncoming "hit"; or as though the ball could dodge the oncoming ball. Not so easy to knock that ball in a desired direction any longer, even with an outside force!

Thermostats are examples of systems consciously designed to be homeostatic. They are built to keep the house at a certain temperature homeostatically; a fall below that temperature turns the heater on, while a restoration to the status quo temperature turns the heater off. Just so, upon persisting at a certain weight for a sufficient length of time, the human body establishes that weight as a "set point" which it vigorously works to restore should body weight go lower (or higher).

On the basis of similar observations, thinkers as diverse as Montaigne, Pavlov, Gurdjieff, and Hubert Benoit, concluded that what is possible through self-improvement, or even improvement with the help of other human beings more or less like ourselves, is severely limited.

Necessarily, the help we need for radical change or spiritual maturity, on the one hand must overwhelm our homeostatic system in the manner of a great "Outside Force"; and yet, on the other hand, it must also pull the rug out from beneath deep patterns in the manner of Something at an even greater depth (in accord with the principles of depth psychology). The "Grace of God" is a good name for help which both overwhelms from without and undermines from within.

"God by all accounts seems to be pro death." - David F Wallace

"No matter how good looking she is, some guy, somewhere, will be sick of putting up with her s**t."

Not sure who wrote this but they deserve a prize!!

"What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty, is everything"
H.P. Lovecraft.


[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

"There's no point in worrying about the stuff you can't fix, and there's no point in worrying about the stuff you CAN fix."

-Bo Sheep

Bo was the laid back surfer-dude sheep that was part of the U.S. Acres cartoon that aired with Garfield on Saturday mornings. For some reason that stuck with me since I was a kid. My wife gets irritated with me because I don't get irate or worried about things as much as she thinks I should. =)

I also dig Twain - he had a very unique though pattern. A fascinating fellow.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

-Jimi Hendrix

"You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters."
~Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)