Quotes are a unique enough medium of expression that I'm interested in viewing quotes that people have found collectable, emotionally impactful, useful, memorable, or otherwise noteworthy - perhaps others are similarly interested. To clarify, these need not be even remotely related to rationality. I'm hijacking the mandates traditionally used for the Rationality Quotes thread, with a few modifications:
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.
- Do not repeat quotes found in a Rationality Quotes thread.
- If possible, try to post sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Note that this can be helpful, but is not mandatory - I would much prefer a quote with only a name to no quote at all.
Please post any meta discussion in the top-level comment named "Meta".
I've always loved the initial exchange between Gregory and Syme in "The Man Who Was Thursday".
Context: Gregory is an anarchist poet, Syme is claiming to be a poet of respectability, which Gregory maintains is impossible.
....The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway."
"So it is," said Mr. Syme.
"Nonsense!" said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else attempted paradox. "Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!"
"It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare... (read more)
As the ancient saying goes, "just because two of you are arguing, does not mean that one of you is right."
This one should help you empathize with other people more.
-Neil Gaiman
This seems like typical mind fallacy. Especially since the quote comes from a writer, who is used to having lots of worlds in his head and may be especially prone to making unwarranted assumptions that his mind is thus typical.
Benjamin Disraeli, source, on the speeches of Lord Stanley. I often think of this quote regarding the effectiveness (or otherwise) of different kinds of rhetoric.
For context, Prince Rupert was a cavalry commander whose charges were extremely effect... (read more)
-Richard Hamming, You and Your Research
The same critical concept in two different disciplines:
"Of several responses made to the same situation, those which are accompanied or closely followed by satisfaction to the animal will, other things being equal, be more firmly connected with the situation, so that, when it recurs, they will be more likely to recur; those which are accompanied or closely followed by discomfort to the animal will, other things being equal, have their connections with that situation weakened, so that, when it recurs, they will be less likely to occur. The greater the ... (read more)
-Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
~ W. H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book
But no option for "I can see that this is trash and, though at present I like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to discard it."?
Meta: How is this supposed to be different from the existing rationality quotes thread?
Meta
-Rainbow Dash, lyrics to Sinking Ships, a song from Bittersweet, a fan-made episode of MLP:FiM.