books & education

BOOKS

“...forty is the end of being young. Well, actually thirty’s the end of being young, forty is where you stop fooling yourself.” –from ‘Roadwork’ by Stephen King

“People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think that they don’t care what people think.” –George Carlin, ‘Napalm and Silly Putt’

“We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we’ll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won’t. And were just learning this fact. So don’t fuck with us.” –Tyler Durden, in ‘Fight Club’ by Chuck Palahniuk

“We’ve got no place in this outfit for good losers. We want tough hombres who will go in there and win!” –Admiral Jonas Ingram, 1926 quoted in ‘Starship Troopers’ by Robert Heinlein

“…All moral problems can be illustrated by one misquotation: ‘Greater love hath no man than a mother cat dying to defend her kittens.’ Once you understand the problem facing the cat and how she solved it, you will then be ready to examine yourself and learn how high up the moral ladder you are capable of climbing.” –‘Starship Troopers’ by Robert A. Heinlein

“Each year we gain a little. You have to keep a sense of proportion.” –‘Starship Troopers’ by Robert Heinlein

“Self-defense sometimes must take the form of ‘Do unto others what they would do unto you but do it first’. ” –‘Friday’ by Robert Heinlein

“Many things in life are difficult to live down, but nothings is more difficult than a name.” –‘A Case of Need’ by Michael Crichton

“It is a commentary on modern man that he must justify his morality on the basis of the molecular mechanisms at work within a single cell of his body.” –on abortion, from ‘A Case of Need’ by Michael Crichton

“All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they’ll tell you will be wrong.” –‘Lost World’ by Michael Crichton

“All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don’t you take it away from yourself.” –‘Lost World’ by Michael Crichton

“Absence of proof is not proof of absence.” –‘Lost World’ by Michael Crichton

“At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating to the cities. In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population had abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities were polluted, the nights became starless.” –‘Contact’ by Carl Sagan

“There are huge advertising budgets only when there’s no difference between the products. If the products really were different, people would buy the one that’s better. Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. A strong country needs smart people.” –‘Contact’ by Carl Sagan

“I mean a transportation system with an average speed of just above stationary is not really a transportation system at all! It’s more like a storage system!”

–commentary on U.S. highways, from ‘Starship Titanic’ by Douglas Adams

“We live in strange times. We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own. Being able to glance out into this bewildering complexity of infinite recursion and say things like, “Oh, hi, Ed! Nice tan. How’s Carol?” involves a great deal of filtering skill for which all conscious entities have to eventually develop a capacity in order to protect themselves from the contemplation of the chaos through which they seethe and tumble. So give your kids a break, okay?” –Extract from Practical Parenting in a Fractally Demented Universe, in ‘Mostly Harmless’ by Douglas Adams

“All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.” –The Guide, from ‘Mostly Harmless’ by Douglas Adams

“Me and organized religion, we don’t understand each other on a philosophical level. Sentimentally, I’m an easy touch, but philosophically, intellectually, I’m not sure. Yeah, I went to Catholic school, and yeah, I had this stuff drummed into me from the very beginning, but in my neighborhood there were too many religions going to take any one of them too seriously. We had Jews. We had Buddhists. We had Muslims. We had a Greek Orthodox church. Each religion had the same basic guidelines: Be good to people; don’t lie; don’t screw around with your neighbor’s wife; don’t hurt anyone unless they’re hurting you, and even then you shouldn’t really hurt them, unless of course they’re really hurting you, at which point you should just tear their fucking face off. These are the general rules, and it’s all basically the same.” –‘Book’ by Whoopi Goldberg

“If you’re gonna fuck up, then fuck up, but cop to it, own it, learn from it, and move on. Take the fucking consequences… If you set a thing in motion, you know it’s gonna come back to bite you in the other end. You just know. Don’t come up with a chickenshit lie, or talk your way out of it, or hire a fancy-ass lawyer to keep justice at the door, because in the end you’ll be found out and you’ll just make it worse. I’m not into this notion that there’s some higher power, keeping score, and that when your day of reckoning comes He will find some way to even things up. That’s bullshit. The only higher power you have to worry about is everyone else. It’s you and me, honey. It’s the rest of us. We’ll catch on sooner or later. We’re not as stupid as you think, and you’re not as smart as you think. Cover your ass and we will find you, and we will make you pay. If not now, then later. But soon. My mother taught me that.” –‘Book’ by Whoopi Goldberg

“While listening to the vivid language of the sermons I was pulled toward emotional belief, but as soon as I went out of the church and saw the bright sunshine and felt the throbbing life of the people in the streets I knew that none of it was true and that nothing would happen.” –‘Black Boy’ by Richard Wright

“Before I had been made to go to church, I had given God’s existence a sort of tacit assent, but after having seen His creatures serve Him at first hand, I had had doubts. My faith, such as it was, was welded to the common realities of life, anchored in the sensations of my body and in what my mind could grasp, and nothing could ever shake this faith, and surely not my fear of an invisible power.” –‘Black Boy’ by Richard Wright

“Some questions are better left unanswered. Curiosity is one of the engines of human achievement, but it’s not much of a survival mechanism if it motivates you to see what the back side of a lion’s teeth look like.” –‘Seize the Night’ by Dean Koontz

“You carry guns in every pocket – drive car like crazy maniac, chase blondes – drink whiskey like it only tea, then surprised when see demons and dragons” –Tommy Phan’s mother, from ‘Tick Tock’ by Dean Koontz

“-But if you know about God, why don’t you tell them? … Why don’t you give them these books about God?

-For the same reason as we don’t give them Othello: they’re old; they’re about a God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now.

-But God doesn’t change.

-Men do though.

-What difference does that make?

-All the difference in the world.” –‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons—that’s philosophy.” –‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley

“…Yeah, I wonder when I’m gonna stop being a kid.” –‘Rumble Fish’ by S.E. Hinton

“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.” –‘Siddhartha’ by Herman Hesse

“Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. Once can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but cannot communicate and teach it.” –‘Siddhartha’ by Herman Hesse

“Most people… are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground. But a few others are like stars which travel one defined path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path.” –‘Siddhartha‘, by Herman Hesse

“You know.. it’s possible to act differently from how one actually feels to get sex, guys.” –Patrick Bateman from ‘American Psycho’

“... I’m standing on a corner scowling at them, but people pass, oblivious, no one pays attention, they don’t even pretend to not pay attention...” –Patrick Bateman from ‘American Psycho’

“We often assume that what we consider to be “reality” is shared by others; however, this assumption is often incorrect.” –‘Sociology In Our Times’ 3^rd Edition

“When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other.” –‘Screwtape Letters’ by C.S. Lewis

“Families keep everything in perspective. You can grow up, get out in the world, become a big success. You can control fortunes, corner the market, forecast financial trends, steer your company into the twenty-first century and beyond, but you go home to your family and you know who you are? You're the kid who got tricked by his brothers into drinking a glass of pee.” –Dennis Miller, ‘Ranting Again’

“God isn’t about reason; God is about faith and belief. God says, ‘Sure, take away the safety net. And when that’s gone, take away the tightrope too.’” –Reverend Martin, from ‘Desperation’ by Stephen King

“In most polls there are always about 5 percent of the people who “don’t know.” What isn’t generally understood is that it’s the same people in every poll.”

–George Carlin, ‘Brain Droppings’

“Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that, apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy. Second is not all that bad.” –George Carlin, ‘Brain Droppings’

“You show me the people who control the money, the land, and the weapons, and I'll show you the people in charge.” –George Carlin, ‘Brain Droppings’

“When blowing out your birthday candles, suppose you wish for one candle to stay lit? Is it possible for your wish to come true?” –George Carlin, ‘Brain Droppings’

“With all the cars, busses, trucks, airplanes, electric motors, gasoline engines, diesel engines, compressors, turbines, drills, fans, pumps, and generators running all the time, shouldn’t the Earth now be making a loud humming sound as it moves around the sun?” –George Carlin, ‘Brain Droppings’

“Some people see things that are and ask, ‘Why’? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’ Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that shit.” –George Carlin, ‘Brain Droppings’

“There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do no do something about the unpleasant ones.” –‘A Wrinkle In Time’ by Madeleine L’Engle

“See, see, this is what I need. I need to know secrets and have secrets and keep secrets. I need to be confided in.” –‘Vox’ by Nicholson Baker

“Most people rely on custom and not on their own intelligence.”

–‘Reflections of Fieldwork in Morocco‘ by Paul Rabinow

“Oh, life was an ocean of misery. There was no way to get out of the suffering except death. But he wouldn't do that, not because he was a coward but because he had to take care of his family. It took more courage to live than to die.” –‘In the Pond’ by Ha Jin

“True courage is doing the thing you fear most. There can be no courage unless you are scared. But to succeed in battle, you must move beyond fear.” –‘The Trench’ by Steve Alten

“There’s a place in most of us where the rain is pretty much constant, the shadows are always long, and the woods are full of monsters. It is good to have a voice in which the terrors of such a place can be articulated and its geography partly described, without denying the sunshine and clarity that fills so much of our ordinary lives.” –‘The Importance of Being Bachman’ from ‘Roadwork’ by Stephen King

EDUCATION

“We are anonymous cogs in a very large state machine.” –Dr Roe, ANTH 251

“Just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu.” –Brother McCauley, highschool teacher, on the topic of women

“Don’t confuse motion with progress.” –Physics TA Omar

“If you cannot understand me then you cannot understand anyone else. I am the best… in the house.” –Dr Hsiao, Ordinary Differential Equations

“…And you say ‘Dr Fou, are you trying to kill me?’ and I say ‘…calm down’.”

–Dr Fou, Physics 208

“Don’t be so sure of yourselves. God! You’re young!” –professor, from ‘Road Rules Semester at Sea’

“I can’t repeat it any more. If I repeat it any more… I’ll become a crazy man.”

–Dr. Fou, Physics 208 during his nth time stressing the importance of reason over memorization

“Here is the data for Group 2 and Group 3. Group 1 Data was destroyed in a freak accident…” –Steve, our Strength of Materials lab TA

“You care if you live or don’t live. You don’t care how many times you die.”

–Dr. Bhattacharya, STAT450

“At a funeral we don’t laugh, or if we do laugh we make sure nobody sees us.” –Professor Argothy, Intro to Sociology

“All animals are pets, even the ones that can kill you.” –Dr. Hall, Intro to Philosophy

“You don’t want to look stupid on paper.” –Dr. Okhine, college professor

“Our job as religion teachers is to stir up a thirst for God – a thirst for purpose – a thirst for some ideal.” –Dr. Robert Englert, highschool teacher

“The hardest thing to repair is a bad reputation.” –Dr. Allen, Water and Wastewater Quality

“Everything I do has a reason. I never give you anything garbage.” –Dr. Hsaio, Ordinary Differential Equations

“Lakes can die.” –Pei Chiu, Environmental Engineering Processes

“This could be the moment that changes your life.” –Mr. Sheehan, highschool teacher

“It’s one thing to be sued for killing someone. It’s another thing to feel sorry about it.” –Dr. Bonk, college professor

“It takes a real man to wear pink.” –Mr. Harrison, highschool teacher

“You can only use this to get women. You can’t use this to buy pigs.”

–Dr. Roe, Socio Anth 101, on traditional currency

“What he has to understand is that I'm the testor and he's the testee.”

–Brother James, highschool teacher

“No man is an island. I mean he's at least a peninsula.”

–Bob Muir, Construction Methods & Management

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