Splash quotes

“If to call a man a wolf is to put him in a special light, we must not forget that the metaphor makes the wolf seem more human than he otherwise would.”

—Max Black, Metaphor (1965)

Previous Splash Quotes

November 2024: ^^^
October 2024: “There’s a war going on. The battlefield’s in the mind, and the prize is the soul. So be careful.” :— Prince, Don’t Be Fooled By The Internet (1999, of course)
September: “Its pain, its outrage, its perennial sense of injustice was tempered by a sad resignation taught by the centuries. For a Sicilian, life was never fair.”— Brian Glanville on the face of Salvatore “Totò” Schillaci, 1964-2024
August 2024: “As some psychiatrist once put it, we all build castles in the air. The problems come when we try to live in them.”— Neil Postman
July 2024: “When the DBS flags up nothing, these people aren’t squeaky clean. They just haven’t been caught.” —Scarlett Roberts, Red Rehabilitation
June 2024: “For to a folysshe demaunde behoueth a folysshe ansuere.” — William Caxton, Aesop’s Fables, 1484
May 2024: “Your adjectives can pick a lot of fights that you don’t want or need.” — Timothy Burke
April 2024: “Shakespeare is known in our house as the gentleman who pays the rent.” — Judy Dench
February 2024: “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.” — Anton Chekhov
January 2024: You asked me what’s my pleasure:/A movie or a measure?/I’ll have a cup of tea/And tell you of my dreaming./— Blondie, Dreaming (1979)
November 2023: “I know it’s a wonderful metaphor, but what it means, I’m unable to say.” — Werner Herzog, on Fitzcarraldo.
October 2023: “Go for a business that any idiot can run – because sooner or later any idiot probably is going to be running it.” — Peter Lynch
September 2023: “As long as there are sheep, there will be shearing.” — Serbian proverb
August 2023: “The cat sat on the mat” is not a story. “The cat sat on the dog’s mat” is a story. — John Le Carré, New York Times, 1977
July 2023: “Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depressions in the world consciousness.” — Dr. Louis Judd, The Anatomy of Atavism (via Cat People (1942))
May 2023: “You’d be on the skids/if it weren’t for your job at the garage/you could own the whole world.” — Debbie Harry misheard, Picture This (1978).
April 2023: I’m going down in a blaze of glory —/I never drew first, but I drew first blood: I’m no one’s son/Call me, “Young Gun”. —Jon Bon Jovi, (1990)
April 2023: “There are no new good ideas, only new bad ones.” — Allen Farrington
March 2023: “What can be expected of a man who has spent twenty years of his life in making heads for pins?” — de Tocqueville
February 2023: “We should mistrust ourselves most when we are certain.” — J. K. Rowling
January 2023: “The game is rigged. But you cannot lose if you do not play.” — Marla Daniels, The Wire (2002)
January 2023: “Oh, no: the movie’s kickass. But, dude: your song would be the hard rockin’ cherry on the top of the mountain.” — Jack Black, plea to Led Zeppelin, on behalf of the producers of School of Rock.
January 2023:“What is wrong with our civilization can be said with one word — unreality. We are in no danger either from the vices or the virtues of vikings; we are in danger of forgetting all facts, good and bad, in a haze of high-minded phraseology.” — G. K. Chesterton
December 2022: “Premium mediocrity is not clueless, tasteless consumption of mediocrity under the mistaken impression that it is actual luxury consumption. Maya Millennial is aware that what she is consuming is mediocre at its core, and only “premium” in some peripheral (and importantly, cheap, such as French-for-no-reason branding) ways. But she consumes it anyway.” — Venkatesh Rao, The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial (2017)
November 2022: “One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
October 2022: “Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens” — Schiller, The Maid of Orleans, III, 6
September 2022: “Don’t give up on your dreams. Have a lie-in.” —Grafitti, Parkland Walk, North London, 2022
August 2022: “Unorthodox? Unorthodox? That’s not unorthodox, no. I thought it was beautiful. But, then, there you go.” — J. M. Hendrix, 1969
April 2022: “People get so hung up on specifics. They miss out on seeing the whole thing.” — Miller, Repo Man, 1984.
March 2022: “It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.” — Cormac McCarthy
February 2022: “What people mean by the word technology is stuff that doesn't really work yet” —Danny Hillis
November 2021: “It is almost a metaphysical question who is the servant of whom—at least until it comes time to eat.” — James C. Scott, Against the Grain (2017)
October 2021: “The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar; now that’s my idea of a good time.” — Frank Zappa.
September 2021: “What? You search? You wish to multiply yourself by ten, by a hundred? You seek followers? Seek zeroes!” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
August 2021: “I’m tethered to the logic of homo sapiens/Can’t take my eyes from the great salvation/Of bullshit faith.” — David Bowie, Quicksand, 1971
July 2021: “For honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar.” — As You Like It, III, iii
April 2021: “When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.” — Pablo Picasso
March 2021: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” — Inigo Montoya
March 2021: “My work always tried to unite the truth with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.”— Hermann Weyl
December 2020: “Sometimes I doubt your commitment to SparkleMotion” — Kitty Farmer, in Donnie Darko
October 2020: “Space is big. Really big.” — Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
September 2020: “Smokey, this is not ’Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.” — Walter, The Big Lebowski
May 2020: “May God us keep From Single vision & Newtons sleep” — William Blake
Jan 2020: “... the information entropy of a binary random variable that is 0 or 1 with equal probability...”