Quotes4study

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

Albert Einstein

It plainly appears that your praises are follies, by those which are crazy, as the privilege of the uncondemned.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.

George Carlin

I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.

J. D. Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye

If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.

Hunter S. Thompson (recent death

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Walt Whitman

The world's crazy, when it comes to beauty.

Richard Bach

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Apple Inc.

Don't order any of the faerie food," said Jace, looking at her over the top of his menu. "It tends to make humans a little crazy. One minute you're munching a faerie plum, the next minute you're running naked down Madison Avenue with antlers on your head. Not," he added hastily, "that this has ever happened to me.

Cassandra Clare

You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

Ray Bradbury

There was only one catch and that was Catch22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask, and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

Joseph Heller

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.

J.D. Salinger

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

Charles Bukowski

Of a thoroughly crazy and defective artist we may indeed say he has everything from himself; but of an excellent one, never.

_Goethe._

>Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that one.

Black Elk (Crazy Horse died on this date in 1877; his birth date is unknown

You have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.

Ken Kesey

It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak the truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be something more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests. It might be crazy to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has been part of our tradition for most of our history — free culture. If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon.

Lawrence Lessig

maybe devilment was catching. Maybe crazy was a cold you caught.

Cynthia Bond

They didn’t agree on much. In fact, they didn’t agree on anything. They fought all the time and challenged each other ever day. But despite their differences, they had one important thing in common. They were crazy about each other.

Nicholas Sparks

Everyone is a little crazy. The only difference between us and them is that they hide it better.

Michelle Hodkin

Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity a total embrace of the entire Kosmos a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?

Ken Wilber

The stoical exemption which philosophy affects to give us over the pains and vexations of human life is as imaginary as the state of mystical quietism and perfection aimed at by some crazy enthusiast.

_Scott._

I'm happy. Which often looks like crazy.

David Henry Hwang

I think it's crazy how you're in love with all those raven boys.

Maggie Stiefvater

What we say is the truth is what everybody accepts … Psychiatry: it's the latest religion. We decide what's right and wrong. We decide who's crazy or not. I'm in trouble here. I'm losing my faith.

Madeleine Stowe as "Dr. Kathryn Railly" in Twelve Monkeys (born 18 August 1958

That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.

J.D. Salinger

A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. The "taken for granted" is the test of sanity... In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.

Lawrence Lessig (born 3 June 1961

If you're a leader, you don't push wet spaghetti, you pull it. The U.S. Army still has to learn that. The British understand it. Patton understood it. I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes.

Bill Mauldin

Deliramenta doctrin?=--The crazy absurdities of learned men.

Law.

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.

Niels Bohr

[Louis Kelso’s] formula sounds like Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. The whole theory sounds crazy. But, then, one may recall, they said all that of Copernicus too. [January 20, 1972.]

Kilpatrick, James J.

It’s crazy that we think today is just a normal day to do whatever we want with. To those of us who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money,” James writes, “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (4:13–14).

Francis Chan

make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.

Jon Krakauer

Everyone is crazy in their own way, depending how you look at it.

Jessica Sorensen

(on Paradigm shifts): 1. It’s crazy! 2. It may be possible — so what? 3. I said it was a good idea all along. 4. I thought of it first. The Aharonov-Bohm effect, predicted in 1959, required nearly 30 years after its 1960 demonstration by Chambers until it was begrudgingly accepted. Mayer, who discovered the modern thermodynamic notion of conservation of energy related to work, was hounded and chastised so severely that he suffered a breakdown. Years later, he was lionized for the same effort Wegener, a German meteorologist, was made a laughing stock and his name became a pseudonym for “utter fool,” because he advanced the concept of continental drift in 1912. In the 1960s the evidence for continental drift became overwhelming, and today it is widely taught and part of the standard science curriculum. Gauss, the great mathematician, worked out nonlinear geometry but kept it firmly hidden for 30 years, because he knew that if he published it, his peers would destroy him. In the 1930s Goddard was ridiculed and called “moon-mad Goddard” because he predicted his rocketry would carry men to the moon. Years later when the Nazi fired V-1 and V-2 rockets against London, those rockets used the gyroscopic stabilization and many other features discovered and pioneered by Goddard. And as everyone knows, rocketry did indeed carry men to the moon. Science has a long and unsavory history of severely punishing innovation and new thinking. In the modern world such scientific suppression of innovation is uncalled-for, but it is still very much the rule rather than the exception. [In “Space Drive: A Fantasy That Could Become Reality,” Nov./Dec. 1994, p. 38.]

Clarke, Arthur C.

Maybe I was crazy to consider it, but I’d always hoped that if I were a good enough girl, if I did everything right, if I said the right things or said nothing at all—I thought my parents would change their minds. I thought they would finally listen when I tried to talk. I thought they would give me a chance. I thought they might finally love me. I always had that stupid hope.

Tahereh Mafi

You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named "Bush", "Dick", and "Colin." Need I say more?

Chris Rock

Being crazy isn't enough.

Dr. Seuss

I dare to hope Adam is trying to reach out to me. I’m crazy enough to consider the possibility.

Tahereh Mafi

All people, whatever they are doing, no matter how crazy or irrational it seems… it is how they need to act—from their perspective.

Nikki Sex

A very great vision is needed, and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.

Crazy Horse

Are you crazy! We wouldn’t last out there on the streets. You can’t even walk. How do you propose to get out?” “She’ll give us up.” “Who?” “That woman—Rahab.” “Why would you say a thing like that?” Othniel asked with astonishment. “She’s saved our lives.” “She’s a harlot. She sells herself for money. You think she wouldn’t sell us?” Othniel was disgusted. “I don’t know what she is. She may be a harlot, I don’t know. But she’s not going to give us up. She’s an honest woman. Can’t you see that in her face?” “No, I don’t believe it.” “Then you’re a fool! I know you’re smarter than I am, Ardon, but you don’t know much about people. If she was going to give us up, she would have done so already.

Gilbert Morris

"The medium is the massage."

        -- Crazy Nigel

Fortune Cookie

Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix.  Everyone knows power

tools aren't soluble in alcohol...

        -- Crazy Nigel

Fortune Cookie

I see where we are starting to pay some attention to our neigbors to

the south.  We could never understand why Mexico wasn't just crazy about

us; for we have always had their good will, and oil and minerals, at heart.

        -- The Best of Will Rogers

Fortune Cookie

Take your dying with some seriousness, however.  Laughing on the way to

your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,

and they'll call you crazy.

        -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"

Fortune Cookie

If an average person on the subway turns to you, like an ancient mariner,

and starts telling you her tale, you turn away or nod and hope she stops,

not just because you fear she might be crazy.  If she tells her tale on

camera, you might listen.  Watching strangers on television , even

responding to them from a studio audience, we're disengaged -- voyeurs

collaborating with exhibitionists in rituals of sham community.  Never

have so many known so much about people for whom they cared so little.

        -- Wendy Kaminer commenting on testimonial television

           in "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional".

Fortune Cookie

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?

        -- Ursula K. LeGuin

Fortune Cookie

Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance.

Fortune Cookie

That's always the way when you discover something new; everyone thinks

you're crazy.

        -- Evelyn E. Smith

Fortune Cookie

    "Well, it's garish, ugly, and derelicts have used it for a toilet.

The rides are dilapidated to the point of being lethal, and could easily

maim or kill innocent little children."

    "Oh, so you don't like it?"

    "Don't like it?  I'm CRAZY for it."

        -- The Killing Joke

Fortune Cookie

Step back, unbelievers!

Or the rain will never come.

Somebody keep the fire burning, someone come and beat the drum.

You may think I'm crazy, you may think that I'm insane,

But I swear to you, before this day is out,

    you folks are gonna see some rain!

Fortune Cookie

When you have 200 programmers trying to write code for one

product, like Win95 or NT, what you get is a multipule personality

program.  By definition, the real problem is that these programs are

psychotic by nature and make people crazy when they use them.

        -- Joan Brewer on alt.destroy.microsoft

Fortune Cookie

Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.

Fortune Cookie

Sometimes when I get up in the morning, I feel very peculiar.  I feel

like I've just got to bite a cat!  I feel like if I don't bite a cat

before sundown, I'll go crazy!  But then I just take a deep breath and

forget about it.  That's what is known as real maturity.

        -- Snoopy

Fortune Cookie

You may be right, I may be crazy,

But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for!

        -- Billy Joel

Fortune Cookie

<Mercury> You don't have to be crazy to be a member of the project, but

          you will be.. <=:]

Fortune Cookie

It takes all kinds to fill the freeways.

        -- Crazy Charlie

Fortune Cookie

All my friends and I are crazy.  That's the only thing that keeps us sane.

Fortune Cookie

"Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix.  Everyone knows power tools aren't

soluble in alcohol..."

        -- Crazy Nigel

Fortune Cookie

Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized

that like most books, it had too many words.  The plot was the same one that

all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but

James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive

women.  There, that's it: 24 words.  But the guy who wrote the book took

*thousands* of words to say it.

    Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic

Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  It's about these two brothers who kill their father.

Or maybe only one of them kills the father.  It's impossible to tell because

what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages.  If all Russians talk

as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a

major world power.

    I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise

the question of whether there is a God.  So why didn't he just come right

out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."

    Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:

* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize

  nature and will kill you.

* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.

        -- Dave Barry

Fortune Cookie

<posix> this guy _is_ crazy</p>

<stargazer> posix: from the looks of Enlightenment he's on LSD

<posix> LSD is nothing compared to what this guy's on..

        -- Seen on #Unix

Fortune Cookie

Animals can be driven crazy by putting too many in too small a pen.

Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.

        -- Lazarus Long

Fortune Cookie

We were so poor we couldn't afford a watchdog.  If we heard a noise at night,

we'd bark ourselves.

        -- Crazy Jimmy

Fortune Cookie

    In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,

Junior, what are you up to?"

    "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the

rabbit.

    "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!  No one

will publish such rubbish!"

    "Well, follow me and I'll show you."

    They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the

rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face.  Comes along a

wolf.  "Hello, little buddy, what are we doing these days?"

    "I'm writing the 2'nd chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour

wolves."

    "Are you crazy?  Where's your academic honesty?"

    "Come with me and I'll show you."

    As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face

and a diploma in his paw.  Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave

and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge

lion, sitting, picking his teeth and belching, next to some furry, bloody

remnants of the wolf and the fox.

    The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are

important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts.

Fortune Cookie

Hmm...  Which would do a better job at driving physicists crazy?  Travel

faster than light, or a floating-point boolean value?

        -- Michael Mol

Fortune Cookie

Another greeting card category consists of those persons who send out

photographs of their families every year.  In the same mail that brought the

greetings from Marcia and Philip, my friend found such a conversation piece.

"My God, Lida is enormous!" she exclaimed.  I don't know why women want to

record each year, for two or three hundred people to see, the ravages wrought

upon them, their mates, and their progeny by the artillery of time, but

between five and seven per cent of Christmas cards, at a rough estimate, are

family groups, and even the most charitable recipient studies them for little

signs of dissolution or derangement.  Nothing cheers a woman more, I am afraid,

than the proof that another woman is letting herself go, or has lost control

of her figure, or is clearly driving her husband crazy, or is obviously

drinking more than is good for her, or still doesn't know what to wear.

Middle-aged husbands in such photographs are often described as looking

"young enough to be her son," but they don't always escape so easily, and a

couple opening envelopes in the season of mercy and good will sometimes handle

a male friend or acquaintance rather sharply.  "Good Lord!" the wife will say.

"Frank looks like a sex-crazed shotgun slayer, doesn't he?"  "Not to me," the

husband may reply.  "to me he looks more like a Wilkes-Barre dentist who is

being sought by the police in connection with the disappearance of a choir

singer."

        -- James Thurber, "Merry Christmas"

Fortune Cookie

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this

big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around --

nobody big, I mean -- except me.  And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy</p>

cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go

over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're

going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That's all I'd do

all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye.  I know it;  I know it's crazy,

but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.  I know it's crazy.

        -- J. D. Salinger, "Catcher in the Rye"

Fortune Cookie

Potahto' Pictures Productions Presents:

    SPUD ROGERS OF THE 25TH CENTURY: Story of an Air Force potato that's

left in a rarely used chow hall for over two centuries and wakes up in a world

populated by soybean created imitations under the evil Dick Tater.  Thanks to

him, the soy-potatoes learn that being a 'tater is where it's at.  Memorable

line, "'Cause I'm just a stud spud!"

    FRIDAY THE 13TH DINER SERIES: Crazed potato who was left in a

fryer too long and was charbroiled carelessly returns to wreak havoc on

unsuspecting, would-be teen camp cooks.  Scenes include a girl being stuffed

with chives and Fleischman's Margarine and a boy served up on a side dish

with beets and dressing.  Definitely not for the squeamish, or those on

diets that are driving them crazy.

    FRIDAY THE 13TH DINER II,III,IV,V,VI: Much, much more of the same.

Except with sour cream.

Fortune Cookie

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