I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.

We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full.

sulla's last name was not actually felix (translation: "happy" or "fortunate"). it was a nickname given to him by the people of rome, for he had attained true happiness: he killed all his enemies in his great purges and then retired peacefully with no one left to exact revenge on him.

needless to say, he killed a lot of people.

however, legend tells of one child he did not kill. when sulla was executing all the families that posed a threat to him, a group of counselors begged sulla not to kill the young grandson of his enemy who was just a small boy.

sulla showed mercy and let the boy live but issued this warning:

Beware of that boy with the loose clothes.

the boy was julius ceaser.

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.

DEMETRIUS
Villain, what hast thou done?

AARON
That which thou canst not undo.

CHIRON
Thou hast undone our mother.

AARON
Villain, I have done thy mother.

two houses both a-skank in skank-tity in fair skantonia where we skank our skank.

This will be a good life. Good enough.

Never confuse movement with action.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man. In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

grace hopper might be the patron saint of computer programmers (among her many achievements she famously coined the word "bug" to describe software errors).

like all great minds, she had a clarity when it came to explaining abstract concepts. here we see her explain a real world implication of the speed of light.

Great art can communicate before it is understood.

Man is wolf to man.

I will not go again to a country that is even more surreal than my paintings.

Don’t just do something, stand there!

If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.

The coming suicide which casts its shadow over Quentin's last day is not a human possibility; not for a second does Quentin envisage the possibility of not killing himself. This suicide is an immobile wall, a thing which he approaches backwards, and which he neither wants to nor can conceive.

...

It is not an undertaking, but a fatality. In losing its element of possibility it ceases to exist in the future. It is already present, and Faulkner's entire art aims at suggesting to us that Quentin's monologues and his last walk are already his suicide. This, I think, explains the following curious paradox: Quentin thinks of his last day in the past, like someone who is remembering. But in that case, since the hero's last thoughts coincide approximately with the bursting of his memory and its annihilation, who is remembering? The inevitable reply is that the novelist's skill consists in the choice of the present moment from which he narrates the past. And Faulkner, like Salacrou in L'Inconnu d'Arras, has chosen the infinitesimal instant of death.

my favorite works are those that use its chosen medium to convey ideas or constructs impossible by other avenues. for this reason, "the sound and the fury" is my favorite work of long-form literature for how it contorts and envelops abstract concepts that only words can present in our thoughts.

this essay by satre explores some of the key aspect of what he calls the "metaphysics" of time in the story and how it marries itself to the narrative beyond a writer's gimmick-- a great companion piece for the book.

the phrase "infinitesimal instant of death" has stuck with me for years.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

I wasn't crying, but I couldn't stop.

my favorite sentence.

there are worse things than 
being alone
but it often takes decades 
to realize this
and most often 
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than 
too late.

We despise the French, we are mortally afraid of the Soviets, we do not believe the British can afford us. So that leaves the Americans.

at the end of the second world war, many of the nazi regime's engineers responsible for the infamously deadly V2 rocket surrendered to the western allies-- particularly to US intelligence.

these rocket engineers, being not ideologically driven, chose the americans as they saw them as their best chance to continue their cutting-edge research. they were not wrong.

the US military accepted them with open arms and were key in the development of cold war missiles.

but that was not the end of their contribution.

one of their key engineers, Wernher von Braun, would go on to lead a brand new agency: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (or otherwise known as NASA) and its manned space flight missions.

Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something!

Nuestra muerte ilumina nuestra vida. Si nuestra muerte carece de sentido, tampoco lo tuvo nuestra vida. Por eso cuando alguien muere de muerte violenta, solemos decir: "se la buscó". Y es cierto, cada quien tiene la muerte que se busca, la muerte que se que se hace. Si la muerte nos traiciona y morimos de mala manera, todos se lamentan: hay que morir como se vive. La muerte es intransferible, como la vida. Si no morimos como vivimos es porque realmente no fue nuestra vida que vivimos: no nos pertenecía como no nos pertenece la mala suerte que nos mata. Dime cómo mueres y te diré quién eres.

It was early in the Seventeenth Century that Francis Bacon remarked on three recent inventions already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder and the printing press. Now the links between the nations first forged by the compass have made us all citizens of the world, the hopes and threats of one becoming the hopes and threats of us all. In that one world's efforts to live together, the evolution of gunpowder to its ultimate limit has warned mankind of the terrible consequences of failure.

And so it is to the printing press-- to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news--that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.

great speech.

Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor.

Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain.

Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up."

Man bursts into tears.

Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci.”

Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only? Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead, but if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!

during the cold war, yugoslavian dictator tito and the soviet leaders were constantly at odds, showing public disdain for each other.

one infamous story tells of soviet leader kruschev (of UN shoe waggling fame) sending tito a barrel full of corn. attached was a letter simply proclaiming that these would be how many soviet soldiers would descend on the country if tito did not relent and submit.

tito responded by sending back a barrel kacamak (corn syrup) to soviet premier, with his own note: "and this is what will happen to them."

Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends. And Renly, that one, he's copper, bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day.