Obsession with quotes

Post Reply New Topic

Are there any other Aspies out there who have an obsession with quotes?

I have a savant type memory for quotes on the themes of love, loss and freedom, and was wandering if this is common with people on the spectrum and if so for what reason?

I think in pictures but express myself in quotes all the time, I find it fun and I feel it reveals something about myself that I would like to understand better.

Does this resonate with others?

Yes, I wrote about this the other day. I keep quoting from comedies, even when i'm by myself, and then laugh out loud. Sad or what

good to see you the other day benjimanbreeg, maybee we ought to start a new club or something

Yeah, good idea mate.

I am a movie-quote database.

I also like quotes from books I've read or long-dead people worth noting, though I have difficulty memorizing without paraphrasing.

Some of my favorite quotes are some of the signatures for some of you on WP.

Tim

yeah me too Tim

Yeah, just a bit!

I've posted some links to some great collections here:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt49121.html

Damn, dude, you're going to be sorry you asked, I'm gonna FLOOD you!

Denis Diderot:

-Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

-Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

-Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest.

-There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

-Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others. (My personal favourite)

-We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man’s afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.

-To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.

-Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

P.J. O'Rourke

-I've always figured that if God wanted us to go to church a lot He'd have given us bigger behinds to sit on and smaller heads to think with.

-Some people are worried about the difference between right and wrong. I'm worried about the difference between wrong and fun.

-The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it.

-They don't like anyone who isn't Korean, and they don't like each other all that much, either. They're hardheaded, hard-drinking, tough little bastards, "the Irish of Asia".

-Nothing makes an awful secret like a secret Negro... Up North, confess your bloodline freely. There's nothing a Northerner likes better than a black person who is completely white. Do not, however, try this trick with real blacks. They could give a sh*t... (If you travel in very sophisticated circles, you may want to turn Marcus Aurelius into Moses Schmeckle. Racism is very lower-class. Upper-class people are never racists; they're anti-Semites.)

-The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.

-Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

-Remember, your body needs 6 to 8 glasses of fluid daily. Straight up or on the rocks.

-There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

-Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

-Are we disheartened by the breakup of the family? Nobody who ever met my family is.

-Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free— indeed, sanctimonious— way for "progressives" to be racists.

-The observers had a logbook recording the assaults, bombings, and artillery attacks on the area. Each page was ruled in vertical columns: DATE, TIME, LOCATION, DAMAGE, CASUALTIES. The columns headed ACTION TAKEN BY THE UN were completely empty.

-When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Marquis de Sade

-[T]here is a sum of evil equal to the sum of good, the continuing equilibrium of the world requires that there be as many good people as wicked people...

-Why do you complain of your fate when you could so easily change it?

-Nothing we can do outrages Nature directly. Our acts of destruction give her new vigour and feed her energy, but none of our wreckings can weaken her power.

-I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.

-Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell.... Kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.

-Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.

-Sex without pain is like food without taste.

-Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

-To kill a man in a paroxysm of passion is understandable, but to have him killed by someone else after calm and serious meditation and on the pretext of duty honourably discharged is incomprehensible.

Winston Churchill, aka my favourite person ever (my grandfather was base commander of the Army base in Ottawa when Churchill came for a state visit. He was so drunk that my grandfather had to pick him up and carry him out of the plane, down the stairs and plop him into the car. )

-Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.

-In retrospect these years form not only the least agreeable, but the only barren and unhappy period of my life. I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I have been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a sombre grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was an unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, of toil uncheered by fruitation; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony. . . This train of thought must not lead me to exaggerate the character of my school days. . . Harrow was a very good school. . . .Most of the boys were very happy. . . I can only record the fact that, no doubt through my own shortcomings, I was an exception. . . I was on the whole considerably discouraged. . . .All my contemporaries and even younger boys seemed in every way better adapted to the conditions of our little world. They were far better both at the games and at the lessons. It is not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the very beginning of the race.

-What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man … the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with political rights.

-The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.

-It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

-Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

-The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is some one outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; some one strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action.

-We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.

-Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Marlon Brando

-The power and influence of a movie star is curious: I didn't ask for it or take it; people gave it to me. Simply because you're a movie star, people empower you with special rights and privileges.

-There's a line in the picture where he snarls, "Nobody tells me what to do." That's exactly how I've felt all my life.

-I suppose the story of my life is a search for love, but more than that, I have been looking for a way to repair myself from the damages I suffered early on and to define my obligation, if I had any, to myself and my species.

-The more sensitive you are, the more likely you are to be brutalised, develop scabs and never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything because you always feel too much.

Anton LaVey

"Never let it be said that I lived for any cause, but rather took advantage of my impending death."

"What does it matter who wins in the parade of life, when the reviewing stand is filled with corpses."

"When standards of excellence are at their very lowest, don't attempt to provide your best. It might be too good, and will be unappreciated, let alone recognized. Instead, provide something a little bit better than the woefully inferior, and you will be hailed as a great improvement."

"When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace.
When there are too many doctors, there can be no health.
When there are too many lawyers, there can be no law."

"One of the reasons why I hate people so much is because they are basically an insecure, treacherous, dishonest lot. Gossip and soap opera are nothing more than a reflection of their daily lives: filled with sour grapes, nit-picking, belittling, and every manner of envy. No wonder those traits have led to incurable greed. Whether on a grubby little get-something-for-nothing, win-the-lottery level, or on a corporate and political level, there is complete disregard for the lives of the most valuable human beings."

"A comfortable falsehood will always win out over an uncomfortable truth."

"Only a fool mistakes laughter for humor and fashion for style."

"Wit, like style, is not an acquired commodity. One either has it or does not."

Oscar Wilde

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."

"A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. "

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much. "

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. "

"By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. "

"Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative. "

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. "

"If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism. "

"Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. "

Cool.