"I have a hawk and it's trained to kill cops"
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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*Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"
I think we are at that point again but with “AI”.
"I look both ways when I cross a one way street, because that's how much faith I have in humanity."
Mrs. Higgins’ body was found in the pantry, bludgeoned with a potato ricer and lying atop a fifty-pound sack of Yukon golds, her favorite for making gnocchi, though some people consider them too moist for this purpose.
-Joel Phillips
The chinese poem "The Story of Mr. Shi Eating Lions"
Shíshì shī shì shǐ shì, shì shǐ, shī shì, shì shí shí shī. Shī sì shì shī. Shǐ shì shè sì, shì shī shì, shǐ shī shì shí shī shī, shì shí shí, shǐ shí shìshì. Shǐ shǐ shì shì shì shì, shì shī shì. Shì shì shì shì.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den
We apologize for the inconvenience.
The end.
Despite all our accomplishments, we all own our existence to a 6 inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.
I found it somewere on the Internet and can Not forget it.
The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizeable proportion of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this.
Life is best when we build bridges between people, not walls.
- Billy Crystal at the funeral/celebration of life ceremony for Muhammad Ali
(He wrote this down in his script for his speech beforehand, so don't... just don't.)
"That's one of the remarkable things about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse"
Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes
"The course of human progress staggers like a drunk"
-- Freeze Up by Operation Ivy (1989)
"It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times...stupid monkey!"
In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence.
"This too shall pass"
If something good happens, it's a cautionary warning to stay humble.
If something bad happens, it's a comforting reminder that things will get better.
I've also heard "Everything ends"
Good point
Tiān gāo, huángdì yuǎn
Heaven is high and the emperor is far away
Is one of my favorite.
Another is the a misattributed quote:
Les hommes ne seront jamais libres tant que le dernier roi ne sera pas étranglé avec les entrailles du dernier prêtre.
Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Though the apparent original is good too.
Je ne veux ni donner ni recevoir de lois.
Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre,
Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois.
I seek neither to rule nor to serve.
And its hands would weave the entrails of the priest,
For the lack of a cord with which to strangle kings.
The second line from the US declaration of indpenedce is a banger too:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
John Brown's:
I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day.
Is also really good.
I seek neither to rule nor to serve.
And its hands would weave the entrails of the priest,
For the lack of a cord with which to strangle kings.
What does that even mean? What thing's hands are we talking aboit by the second line?
It's a truncated quote from Diderot. The full verse is:
J’en atteste les temps ; j’en appelle à tout âge ;
Jamais au public avantage
L’homme n’a franchement sacrifié ses droits ;
S’il osait de son cœur n’écouter que la voix,
Changeant tout à coup de langage,
Il nous dirait, comme l’hôte des bois :
« La nature n’a fait ni serviteur ni maître;
« Je ne veux ni donner ni recevoir de lois. »
Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre,
Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois.
A slightly better translation would be:
I bear witness to the times; I appeal to all ages;
Never, for the public good,
Has man willingly sacrificed his rights;
If he dared to listen only to the voice of his heart,
Suddenly changing his tone,
He would say to us, like the dweller of the woods:
“Nature has created neither servant nor master;
“I wish neither to give nor to receive laws.”
And his hands would tear out the priest’s entrails,
For lack of a cord to strangle kings.
It is the voice of the forest, dweller of the woods being a stand in for anarchists. So the hands strangling kings with priest's entrails are those of the man realizing the importance of rights and freedom. Diderot elaborates across the poem about the character of political order. Declaring that no law or political rule is sacred or natural. Mankind makes sociopolitical structures, they are not natural, and thus nature will gladly unmake them, as a king dying, for example. Essentially, he says that no elevated, supernatural, or godly power exists that will stop the hands of a person who has chosen to defy political oppression. It was extremely controversial in the XVIII century, a liberal cry for revolution against political systems that still stood over the pillars of a god given right of monarchs to rule. It's called Les éleuthéromanes, I'm not gonna try to translate that, but the full text can be found freely.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
- Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Perhaps the best, most succinct explanation of historical materialism.
Full Quote
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.
“ The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” -Teddy Roosevelt
That's a long sentence.
Yeah, I did not plan on that. At first I was going to just put the first sentence, “It is not the critic who counts,” but then I started reading, and on the third sentence I kept reading and not finding a period, which I thought was funny so I shared that.
I’m also now realizing that, while I typically read it, this quote was originally from a speech and not a piece of writing, therefore not technically qualifying for this post at all!
But you know what, it’s what I thought of, and at least I hopped in the comment arena and gave something.
"Black Friday Sale! This Thursday only!".
"In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very unhappy and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
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I can't imagine I've read enough to know that but have always loved this one, from St Augustine, of all people.
Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people, who are in constant danger of becoming all brain, will, or feeling.
The whole poem is amazing.
Spoken, not written:-
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly
This is one of the stupidest, most 14-year-old sentences I've ever heard, and still a lot of people love it :)
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