text:
Vices

A Vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, or degrading in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhealthy habit.

Quotes

 * At court, far from regarding ambition as a sin, people regard it as a virtue, or if it passes for a vice, then it is regarded as the vice of great souls, and the vices of great souls are preferred to the virtues of the simple and the small.
 * Louis Bourdaloue, as quoted in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 137

 * Every other vice hath some pleasure annexed to it, or will admit of some excuse, but envy wants both.
 * Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

 * The vices of which we are full we carefully hide from others, and we flatter ourselves with the notion that they are small and trivial; we sometimes even embrace them as virtues.
 * John Calvin, Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, pg. 32

 * O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee?
 * Cicero, Tusc. Quæst, Book V. 2. 5. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 596-97.

 * I can not believe that this is any bona fide effort to suppress immorality. There are too many signs about it which compel to the sorrowful conclusion that there has grown up among us a Society, whose original aim may have been to suppress vice, but which has now fallen under control of persons with other aims. It would appear that to these the circulation of many thousands of a book they call vicious is of little importance compared with making a sensation, and parading their own spotlessness before the public; and beyond this, it is to be feared that a still baser influence has been at work to degrade this association of (originally, no doubt) well-meaning, though weak-minded people. There is money in it. A good deal of patronage and wealth has gone to it in the past, and its agents are highly paid; and if this stream of money and patronage is to continue to flow and gladden the host of agents, they must keep up a show of activity. They must always be attitudinising as purifiers of society. If the nests of crime and vice are trampled out, and the funds begin to fall low, they must try and make their subscribers think there are nests where there are none; and, knowing well how unpopular Freethinkers are, how few friends they have in high places, they found among them a book which repeated the details of ordinary physiological and medical books—a book whose pages, with all their faults, are nowhere of biblical impurity. It must have brought their secretaries, and their lawyers, and their secret-service agents, a golden Pactolus from orthodox purses to thus prove that the society might do injury to Freethinkers under cover of attacking immorality. The old privilege of the orthodox to imprison their opponents—the privilege so loved, but lost—must seem about to come back again, when it has been decided that facts familiar in the libraries of medicine and science cannot be printed by Freethinkers in a form accessible to the people without imprisonment. They know that many of these Freethinkers value their freedom highly enough to go to gaol for it, and they are, no doubt, hoping for more victims and a flourishing business with plenty of vice to suppress.
 * Conway, Moncure D. (1878). “Liberty and Morality: A Discourse given at the South Place Chapel, Finsbury”. Freethought Publishing Co; pp.11-12

 * Study to sever pleasure from vice.
 * Descartes, Discourse on Method, J. Veitch, trans. (1899), part 3, p. 32

 * You must master the vices. You know that if a thing is worth doing it's worth doing well. If, however, a thing is not worth doing then it's worth doing fabulously, amazingly, with grace, style and panache.”
 * Isla Dewar Women Talking Dirty

 * There are no vices more dangerous than those which simulate virtue.
 * Erasmus, The Handbook of the Christian Soldier (1501), as translated by Charles Fantazzi, in The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 146

 * To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.
 * Horace, Epistles, Book I, epistle 1, line 41

 * No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does not take advantage of this assumed resemblance.
 * Jean de La Bruyère, Characters, H. Van Laun, trans. (London: 1885) “Of the Affections,” #72

 * The vices are very justly man's executioners.
 * Joseph de Maistre, Considerations on France (1796), ch. X

 * We must carefully teach children to detest vices for what they consist in; we must teach them their natural ugliness, so that they flee them not only in their deeds but in their minds: the very thought of them should be hateful, whatever mask they hide behind.
 * Montaigne, Essays, as translated by M. A. Screech, p. 124

 * God commands (people) to maintain justice, kindness, and proper relations with their relatives. He forbids them to commit indecency, sin, and rebellion.
 * Quran, 16:90

 * L’hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.
 * Hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue.
 * François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, L. Tancock trans., #218

 * Aliena vitia in oculis habemus, a tergo nostra sunt.
 * The vices of others we have before our eyes, our own are behind our backs.
 * Seneca the Younger, in Latin Quotations (New York: 2005), p. 7

 * The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
 * Elizabeth Taylor, as quoted in The Seven Deadly Sins (2000) by Steven Schwartz, p. 23.

 * I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.
 * Mark Twain, "Answers to Correspondents", The Californian, 17 June 1865. Reprinted in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches (1867).

title: Vices


text:
Virtue

Virtue (Latin: virtus, Ancient Greek: ἀρετή "arete") is moral excellence. A virtue is a trait or quality that is deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. In other words, it is a behavior that shows high moral standards: doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong.

A

 * Virtue is the mistress of all things. Virtue is the master of all things.
 * John Adams, Journal entry (6 August 1796).

 * Virtue’s true reward is happiness itself, for which the virtuous work, whereas if they worked for honor, it would no longer be virtue, but ambition.
 * Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica.

 * Virtue is the health of the soul.
 * Ariston of Chios, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, fragment 359.

 * If the acts that are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately. The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them. ... He must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and ... his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character.
 * Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1105a28

 * Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean ... it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.
 * Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book II, Ch. 6.

 * Virtue ... is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme.
 * Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1107a, as translated by W. D. Ross, in The Basic Works of Aristotle (1941), p. 959.

 * If he [Anthony] heard of a good man anywhere, like the prudent bee, he went forth and sought him, nor turned back to his own palace until he had seen him; and he returned, having got from the good man as it were supplies for his journey in the way of virtue.
 * Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of Anthony of Egypt § 3 Readings in World Christian History (2013), pp. 131-144

 * He subjected himself in sincerity to the good men whom he visited, and learned thoroughly where each surpassed him in zeal and discipline. He observed the graciousness of one; the unceasing prayer of another; he took knowledge of another's freedom from anger and another's loving-kindness; he gave heed to one as he watched, to another as he studied; one he admired for his endurance, another for his fasting and sleeping on the ground; the meekness of one and the long-suffering of another he watched with care, while he took note of the piety towards Christ and the mutual love which animated all. Thus filled, he returned to his own place of discipline, and henceforth would strive to unite the qualities of each, and was eager to show in himself the virtues of all.
 * Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of Anthony of Egypt § 4

B

 * When Heracles was quite a young man and was nearly of the age at which you yourselves are now, while he was deliberating which of the two roads he should take, the one leading through toils to virtue, or the easiest, two women approached him, and these were Virtue and Vice. Now at once, although they were silent, the difference between them was evident from their appearance. For the one had been decked out for beauty through the art of toiletry, and was overflowing with voluptuousness, and she was leading a whole swarm of pleasures in her train; now these things she displayed, and promising still more than these she tried to draw Heracles to her. But the other was withered and squalid, and had an intense look, and spoke quite differently; for she promised nothing dissolute or pleasant, but countless sweating toils and labours and dangers through every land and sea. But the prize to be won by these was to become a god, as the narrative of Prodicus expressed it; and it was this second woman that Heracles in the end followed.
 * Basil of Caesarea, On Greek Literature, Loeb Classical Library, volume 270, p. 399

 * He whose mind is satisfied with virtue that has been achieved, Who never thinks to stir himself And take a meditation subject up, Contented with mere virtuousness, Nor striving for a higher state— His virtue bears the appellation Of that partaking of stagnation.
 * Buddhaghoṣa, The Path of Purification, 1:39, p. 18

 * Virtue will have greater claims To love, than rank with vice combin'd.
 * Lord Byron, “To E,” Poetical Works, Volume 1

C

 * Virtue consisted in avoiding scandal and venereal disease.
 * Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, Life in Edwardian England (1969).

 * O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life.
 * Cicero, Tusc. Quæst, Book V. 2. 5. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 596-97.

 * A difficult form of virtue is to try in your own life to obey what you believe to be God's will.
 * John Duke Coleridge, Reg. v. Ramsey (1883), 1 CabaM and Ellis's Q. B. D. Rep. 145; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 244.

 * Persecution is a very easy form of virtue.
 * John Duke Coleridge, Reg. v. Ramsey (1883), 1 Cababd and Ellis's Q. B. D. Rep. 145; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 244.

 * To be able to practise five things everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue ... gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.
 * Confucius, Analects, fifth century B.C.

 * To gain a reputation for virtue, grieve over those you injure.
 * Mason Cooley, City Aphorisms, Fourth Selection (1987).

 * Villainy wears many masks, none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.
 * Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) in the film, Sleepy Hollow (1999).

D

 * Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.
 * Diogenes of Sinope Stobaeus, iv. 31c. 88

 * How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.
 * W. E. B. Du Bois, The Ordeal of Mansart (1957), p. 275

E

 * Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
 * Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 59

 * We really seek intelligence not for the answers it may suggest to the problems of life, but because we believe it is life,—not for aid in making the will of God prevail, but because we believe it is the will of God. We love it, as we love virtue, for its own sake, and we believe it is only virtue’s other and more precise name.
 * John Erskine, The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent (1915), pp. 26-27

F

 * That which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man, that which constitutes human goodness, human nobleness, is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness; it is self-sacrifice; it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantage, remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right.
 * James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects (1907), p. 19

 * The cruel man is of misanthropic temperament, and is a man of moods, oscillating from quiet brooding to sudden explosions. If a man like this does not fight this unhappy provision of his soul during his youth, under no circumstances could he a void becoming furious - and foolish. There are those who would leave it up to God, but to ensure justice on the earth, and not fob it off to the Divinity, it is mandatory that people know both virtue and its benefits, since the virtues lead to unity among them, not the war of all against all. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to conserve them, and show that crime can only return misfortunes and destruction, including of the criminal himself. Who is the last victim of his crimes.
 * Frederick II of Prussia, Anti-Machiavel Chapter VIII

G

 * Only Virtue is sufficient unto herself. She makes us love the living and remember the dead.
 * Baltasar Gracián. In Maxim 300, The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647).

H

 * The ideal incentives to virtuous energy are a sort of moon to the moral world. Their borrowed light is but a dimmer substitute for the life-giving rays of religion.
 * , in Julius Charles Hare and Augustus William Hare, Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan and Co., 1871), p. 11.

 * A command can express no more than an ought or a shall, because it is a universal, but it does not express an ‘is’; and this at once makes plain its deficiency. Against such commands Jesus sets virtue, i.e., a loving disposition, which makes the content of the command superfluous and destroys its form as a command, because that form implies an opposition between a commander and something resisting the command.
 * G. W. F. Hegel, "The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate"

 * Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam, Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis.
 * He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
 * Horace, Epistles. Bk. i, epis. 2. l.

J

 * "I know, of course, nothing about vice; but I have known virtue when it was very tiresome." "Ah, then it was a poor affair. It was poor virtue. The best virtue is never tiresome." Miss Vivian looked at him a little, with her fine discriminating eye. "What a dreadful thing to have to think any virtue poor!"
 * Henry James, in Confidence (1879), Ch. VI. The speakers are Angela Vivian and Bernard Longueville.

 * The appetites weaken a person's virtue because they are like shoots burgeoning about a tree, sapping its strength, and causing it to be fruitless.
 * John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, as translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD (ICS Publications: 1991), Book 1, Chapter 10, Section 2

 * Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Virtue is doing it.
 * David Starr Jordan, "Ideals of Stanford", quoted in The Land of Sunshine: A Southern California Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 1. (Los Angeles, June 1898), p. 11.

K

 * Some of the most virtuous men are murderers by the fact that they stick to their own principles. Hitler was a virtuous man in the context of his own principles. He initiated a pretty dirty hour as far as humanity was concerned, but the idea is that he did it for his own reasons. They were mad reasons, but he felt that he was sticking to his principles. So even an insane man may have an insane code of ethics.
 * Jack Kirby, "Jack Kirby interview", Train of Thought #5, (1971).

L

 * Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.
 * John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) Sec. 70.

 * To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
 * John Locke, Letter to Anthony Collins (29 October 1703)

M

 * Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is not, as Kant was later to think, to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues.
 * Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981), p. 149.

 * A virtuous youth and frugal manhood always create a Pisgah for the veteran in righteousness, from which he may calmly survey the stars, and read his " title clear to mansions in the skies," while yet in the flesh he can soar on the wings of meditation above the clouds, and catch glimpses of the heavenly world that lies in the placid and everlasting orient before him.
 * Elias Lyman Magoon, Proverbs for the People (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1849), Ch. 5, pp. 71–72.

 * Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.
 * Horace Mann, Thoughts (1867).

 * Everybody makes fun of virtue, which by now has, as its primary meaning, an affection of prudery practiced by hypocrites and the impotent.
 * Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948).

 * Let this great maxim be my virtue’s guide,— In part she is to blame that has been tried: He comes too near that comes to be denied.
 * Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), The Lady’s Resolve (1713).

 * Virtue is not a chemical product, as Taine once described it: it is a historic product, like language and literature; and this means that if we cease to care about it, cease to cultivate it, cease to transmit its funded values, a large part of it will become meaningless, like a dead language to which we have lost the key. That, I submit, is what has happened in our own lifetime.
 * Lewis Mumford, Values for Survival (1946)

N

 * Between two vices, virtue does not always dwell, but often, but all too often only weakness and lame impotence.
 * Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “David Strauss,” § 1.11, cited in W. Kauffman, Nietzsche, p. 136.

P

 * Virtue is infinitely various. There is no situation in which a rational being is placed, from that of the best instructed Christian down to the condition of the rudest barbarian, which affords not room for moral agency; for the acquisition, exercise, and display of voluntary qualities, good and bad. Health and sickness, enjoyment and suffering, riches and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, power and subjection, liberty and bondage, civilisation and barbarity, have all their offices and duties, all serve for the formation of character: for when we speak of a state of trial, it must be remembered, that characters are not only tried, or proved, or detected, but that they are generated also, and formed, by circumstances. The best dispositions may subsist under the most depressed, the most afflicted fortunes.
 * William Paley Natural Theology Ch. 26 : The Goodness of the Deity.

 * Aristotle and the other classics observed that democracy was constantly prone to overestimate those virtues (manly courage, patriotism, piety) that were within the reach of the poor majority, while neglecting those virtues or excellences requiring unusual capacity, education, leisure, and broad political experience.
 * Thomas L. Pangle, Introduction to The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (Chicago: 1989), p. xix.

 * We can never enter upon the path to virtue unless we have hope as our guide and companion.
 * Letter to Demetrias by Pelagius as translated by B. Rees, in Readings in World Christian History (2013), pp. 206-210

 * What need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue, whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions?
 * Philo, Every Good Man is Free, 68.

 * Those who prefer idleness to labor, not only prevent the growths but also wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labor, do as the husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to heaven, saplings ever blooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness.
 * Philo, Every Good Man is Free, 69.

 * Virtue itself does not have the same characteristics for all; we see good and evil change according to opinions and usages.
 * , Book of Laws, Book 1, Chapter 1, as translated by John Opsopaus, Ph.D.

 * Why do we assert that virtue is unteachable, and thus make it non-existent?
 * Plutarch, “Can virtue be taught”, Moralia, W. Helmbold, trans. (1939), vol. 6

Q

 * God commands (people) to maintain justice, kindness, and proper relations with their relatives. He forbids them to commit indecency, sin, and rebellion.
 * Quran, 16:90

R

 * Men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompts them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honor. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue.
 * François Rabelais, Gargantua, Chapter 57

 * As the saints and prophets were often forced to practise long vigils and fastings and prayers before their ecstasies would fall upon them and their visions would appear, so Virtue in its purest and most exalted form can only be acquired by means of severe and long continued culture of the mind. Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience; but the conscience itself will be defective. … To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall.
 * William Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man (1872), p. 540.

S

 * People who are eccentric enough to be quite seriously virtuous understand each other everywhere, discover each other easily, and form a silent opposition to the ruling immorality that happens to pass for morality.
 * Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 414.

 * The paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.
 * Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian (1818), Vol. II, Ch. 28

 * Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab (1813), Book 3, lines 176-180

 * Ipsa quidem virtus sibimet pulcherrima merces.
 * Virtue is indeed its own noblest reward.
 * Silius Italicus, Punica, Book XIII, line 663

 * In the memory of virtue is immortality,
 * because it is known both by God and by mortals.
 * When it is present, people imitate it,
 * and they long for it when it has gone;
 * throughout all time it marches, crowned in triumph.
 * Wisdom of Solomon 4:1-2 NRSV

 * Unde clare intelligimus, quantum illi a vera virtutis aestimatione aberrant, qui pro virtute et optimis actionibus, tanquam pro summa servitute, summis praemiis a Deo decorari exspectant, quasi ipsa virtus Deique servitus non esset ipsa felicitas et summa libertas.
 * We may thus clearly understand, how far astray from a true estimate of virtue are those who expect to be decorated by God with high rewards for their virtue, and their best actions, as for having endured the direst slavery; as if virtue and the service of God were not in itself happiness and perfect freedom.
 * Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, Part 2, Prop. 49, Scholium (Dover 1955 p. 126)

T

 * The tragedy of virtue is that the more obvious, boring, unoriginal, and sermonizing the proverb, the harder it is to implement.
 * Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010) Ethics, p. 65.

 * The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
 * Elizabeth Taylor, as quoted in The Seven Deadly Sins (2000) by Steven Schwartz, p. 23.

 * Virtue cannot be separated into male and female. ... The difference is one of bodies not of souls.
 * Theodoret as cited in The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (2012), p. 106.

 * I wanted to damage every man in the place, and every woman--and not in their bodies or in their estate, but in their vanity — the place where feeble and foolish people are most vulnerable. So I disguised myself and came back and studied you. You were easy game. You had an old and lofty reputation for honesty, and naturally you were proud of it — it was your treasure of treasures, the very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and vigilantly kept yourselves and your children out of temptation, I knew how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.
 * Mark Twain, "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg", ch. III, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900).

 * Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.
 * Nikola Tesla, "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy, with Special Reference to Harvesting the Sun's Energy", Century Illustrated Magazine (June 1900)

V

 * La vertu suppose la liberté, comme le transport d’un fardeau suppose la force active. Dans la contrainte point de vertu, et sans vertu point de religion. Rends-moi esclave, je n’en serai pas meilleur. Le souverain même n’a aucun droit d’employer la contrainte pour amener les hommes à la religion, qui suppose essentiellement choix et liberté. Ma pensée n’est pas plus soumise à l’autorité que la maladie ou la santé.
 * Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion.  Make a slave of me, and I shall be no better for it.  Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty.  My thought is no more subject to authority than is sickness or health.
 * Voltaire, "Canon Law: Ecclesiastical Ministry," Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1771).

W

 * A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle; and that, almost, every man is more or less, under its influence. Motives of public virtue may for a time, or in particular instances, actuate men to the observance of a conduct purely disinterested; but they are not of themselves sufficient to produce a persevering conformity to the refined dictates and obligations of social duty. Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is in vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account—the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it, and we must, in a great measure, ch⟨ange⟩ the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. ⟨No⟩ institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these ma⟨xims,⟩ can succeed.
 * George Washington to a Continental Congress Camp Committee, 29 January 1778

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

 * Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert's Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

 * Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience, and revelation.
 * James Waddel Alexander, p. 611.

 * We cannot have right virtue without right conditions.
 * Henry Ward Beecher, p. 611.

 * Virtue is not a mushroom, that springeth up of itself in one night when we are asleep, or regard it not; but a delicate plant, that groweth slowly and tenderly, needing much pains to cultivate it, much care to guard it, much time to mature it, in our untoward soil, in this world's unkindly weather.
 * Isaac Barrow, p. 612.

 * No state of virtue is complete, however total the virtue, save as it is won by a conflict with evil, and fortified by the struggles of a resolute and even bitter experience.
 * Horace Bushnell, p. 612.

 * What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's cross, and in the power of His resurrection.
 * Frederick William Robertson, p. 612.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Virtue


text:
Teresa de Lauretis

Teresa de Lauretis (born 1938) is an Italian literary and film theorist and critic.

Quotes

 * The hero [of a narrative] must be male, regardless of the gender of the text-image, because the obstacle, whatever its personification, is morphologically female....The hero, the mythical subject, is constructed as human being and as male; he is the active principle of culture, the establisher of distinction, the creator of differences. Female is what is not susceptible to transformation, to life or death; she (it) is an element of plot-space, a topos, a resistance, matrix and matter."
 * de Lauretis, Teresa (1984). "Desire in Narrative", Alice Doesn't, p.118-119. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253203163.

title: Teresa de Lauretis


text:
Rael Dornfest

Rael Dornfest is a computer programmer and author, and used to be Chief Technology Officer at O'Reilly Media.

Quotes

 * The difference between a hacker and consumer is a consumer says, "I wish it would work this way." A hacker says, "I've got a screwdriver and a few minutes."
 * Boston Globe, Everyday Hackers, April 19, 2004.

title: Rael Dornfest


text:
New musicology

New musicology:

Quotes

 * Most people have music in the center of their lives. I believe my work sheds light on how music affects us and why it is so influential." from http://web.archive.org/20030225083736/www.ucla.edu/spotlight/archive/html_2001_2002/fac0502_mcclalry.html

 * Rather than protecting music as a sublimely meaningless activity that has managed to escape social signification, I insist on treating it as a medium that participates in social formation by influencing the ways we perceive our feelings, our bodies, our desires, our very subjectivities—even if it does so surreptitiously, without most of us knowning how. It is too important a cultural force to be shrouded by mystified notions of Romantic transcendence.
 * Susan McClary (1994). "Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert's Music", Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology. ISBN 0415907527.

 * It is important to remember that there really is very little resembling criticism of any sort in musicology.
 * Susan McClary in Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality(1991), p. 19-20. ISBN 0816618984

 * Tonality itself—with its process of instilling expectations and subsequently withholding promised fulfillment until climax—is the principal musical means during the period from 1600 to 1900 for arousing and channeling desire."
 * McClary, Susan (1991). Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.  ISBN 0816618984.

 * The point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony unleashes one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of music.... The point is not to hold up Beethoven as exceptionally monstrous. The Ninth Symphony is probably our most compelling articulation in music of the contradictory impulses that have organized patriarchal culture since the Enlightenment.  Moreover, within the parameters of his own musical compositions, he may be heard as enacting a critique of narrative obligations that is … devestating."
 * McClary, Susan (1991). Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, p. 128-129. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.  ISBN 0816618984.

 * "For me … the notion of an intimate relationship between music and society functions not as a distant goal but as a starting point of great immediacy, and not as an hypothesis but as an assumption. It functions as an idea about a relationship which in turn allows the examination of that relationship from many points of view and its exploration in many directions.  It is an idea that generates studies the goal of which (or at least one important goal of which) is to articulate something essential about why any particular music is the way it is in particular, that is, to achieve insight into the character of its identity."
 * Rose Rosengard Subotnick (1987). "On grounding Chopin", Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance, and Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  ISBN 0521379776.

 * Considering how readily musicologists criticize one another — witness the merciless footnotes (and reviews) of so many books and articles — the innocent bystander must find it strange that they remain unwilling to venture judgments about the quality of the music around which they work... But it is hard to see what can be the purpose of musicology if not to advise people on what to hear and how to hear it. Separating out the good, the bad and the indifferent, and helping listeners enjoy the best, is surely the least we can offer society in return for our keep.
 * Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, in "The good, the bad and the boring" in Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music (1997) ISBN 0198165404

title: New musicology


text:
Harlan Ellison

Harlan Jay Ellison (27 May 1934 – 28 June 2018) was an American author (mostly of speculative fiction) and media critic.

Quotes

 * You’re so far out you’d have to masquerade to get back in.
 * Deal from the Bottom (1960)

 * Now he had form and substance. He had become a personality, something they had filtered out of the system many decades ago. But there it was, and there he was, a very definitely imposing personality. In certain circles — middle-class circles — it was thought disgusting. Vulgar ostentation. Anarchistic. Shameful.
 * "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" (1965)

 * Where did he get jelly beans? That's another good question. More than likely it will never be answered to your complete satisfaction. But then, how many questions ever are?
 * "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" (1965)

 * HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.
 * "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967)

 * Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled.
 * Title of book (1968)

 * Art was not reality—it was only the appearance of reality.
 * Silent in Gehenna (1971), reprinted in Jerry Pournelle (ed.) 2020 Vision (1974), p. 73

 * And thus I arrive at the foundation of my theory about art as a vehicle for dissent: the fury and purity of the creator’s need to say something motivates the work, but he forms it from logic and craft and honesty and when the propaganda value has faded into last week’s imperative, the art remains behind and stands on its own merits.
 * Dreamers on the Barricades (1971), in Robin Scott Wilson (ed.), Clarion (pp. 44-45)

 * Christmas is an awfulness that compares favorably with the great London plague and fire of 1665-66. No one escapes the feelings of mortal dejection, inadequacy, frustration, loneliness, guilt and pity. No one escapes feeling used by society, by religion, by friends and relatives, by the utterly artificial responsibilities of extending false greetings, sending banal cards, reciprocating unsolicited gifts, going to dull parties, putting up with acquaintances and family one avoids all the rest of the year...in short, of being brutalized by a 'holiday' that has lost virtually all of its original meanings and has become a merchandising ploy for color TV set manufacturers and ravagers of the woodlands.
 * "No Offense Intended, But Fuck Xmas!" (1972) The Harlan Ellison Hornbook

 * My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration and ignoble deaths; that there is security in personal strength; that you can fight City Hall and win; that any action is better than no action, even if it's the wrong action; that you never reach glory or self-fulfillment unless you're willing to risk everything, dare anything, put yourself dead on the line every time; and that once one becomes strong or rich or potent or powerful it is the responsibility of the strong to help the weak become strong.
 * The Harlan Ellison Hornbook, (9 August 1973)

 * Heaven began to run at the edges.
 * "Hitler Painted Roses" (1977)

 * They did it wrong, Doc. They made mistakes. And they'll keep it this way, just because everyone wants to believe it. They don't want to know the truth, Doc. It's easier for everyone this way. If enough people believe the fantasy, well, then it becomes the reality. But we know, Doc. We know who belongs where, don't we?
 * "Hitler Painted Roses" (1977)

 * "Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to purée of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!" Auditorium monitors moved in, truncheons ready to club down anyone foolish enough to try jumping the lecture platform; and finally there was relative silence. And I heard scattered voices screaming from the back of the room, "Who? And I said, "Yes. Who!"
 * Recalling an address to science-fiction fans, in his Introduction to Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977) by Terrance Dicks, p. vii

 * Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver.
 * IguanaCon Guest of Honor speech, Phoenix, Arizona, (1978)

 * "Hey, gang!" I squeaked in my terrifically accurate Mickey voice. "Everybody ready to shoot the ultimate Disney flick? The film that rips the lid off the goody two-shoes hypocrisy that lies sweltering beneath the surface of G-rated true-life adventures? Okay, you guys, let's get that hand-held Arriflex right down there between Minnie's legs! I wanna see closeups of quivering labia!"
 * The Three Most Important Things in Life (1978)

 * Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ's sakes! … We were sitting around one night... who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said "This bullshit's got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get money." He says, "I want to get rich". And somebody said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become Elmer Gantry! You'll make a fortune!" He says, "I'm going to do it."
 * "The Real Harlan Ellison" in Wings (November-December 1978) p. 32

 * I used to think that television could be potentially the most powerful medium for the dissemination of knowledge that the world has ever known, it could be a very rich and rewarding thing if handled properly and that the problem was in the execution. I've now come, after ten years in the business, five years of which was as a television critic, to taking the very extreme view point. I think television itself is bad. The idea of television, the act of watching television kills the imagination. It's not like radio, with radio you had to listen, had to make things, you had to build things in your mind. Movies do that. Television is something else again. Television lays it all out there in a very prescribed way and the bare minimum of imagination on the part of the viewer is needed and I really fear for all of us.
 * Interview in 1979, quoted in The Online Copywriter's Handbook (2002) by Robert W. Bly, p. 19

 * What he wrote was this: The great tragedy of my life is that in my search for the Holy Grail everyone calls True Love, I see myself as Zorro, a romantic and mysterious highwayman — and the women I desire see me as Porky Pig.
 * Grail (1981)

 * I talk about the things people have always talked about in stories: pain, hate, truth, courage, destiny, friendship, responsibility, growing old, growing up, falling in love, all of these things. What I try to write about are the darkest things in the soul, the mortal dreads. I try to go into those places in me that contain the cauldrous. I want to dip up the fire, and I want to put it on paper. The closer I get to the burning core of my being, the things which are most painful to me, the better is my work. … It is a love/hate relationship I have with the human race. I am an elitist, and I feel that my responsibility is to drag the human race along with me — that I will never pander to, or speak down to, or play the safe game. Because my immortal soul will be lost.
 * As quoted in Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, & Other Fields (1982) by Ann Evory

 * Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.
 * Paladin of the Lost Hour (1985)

 * You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the fucking game.
 * Interview with Gary K. Wolfe (28 July 1987), quoted in Harlan Ellison : The Edge of Forever (2002), by Ellen Weil and Gary K. Wolfe
 * Borrowing a common scientific joke expressing the laws of thermodynamics.

 * For a brief time I was here; and for a brief time I mattered.
 * His entire afterword to The Essential Ellison (1987)
 * Also quoted in the death announcement made by his publicist (28 June 2018).

 * He was just Ron and I kinda liked him, mostly because he wrote well, and I never felt he took all that Scientology nonsense seriously but knew how to make a good buck, and he liked me, and... well, he was a friend who died.
 * Introduction to Angry Candy (1988)

 * Did you have one of those days today, like a nail in the foot? Did the pterodactyl corpse dropped by the ghost of your mother from the spectral Hindenburg forever circling the Earth come smashing through the lid of your glass coffin? Did the New York strip steak you attacked at dinner suddenly show a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, and did it snap off the end of your fork, the last solid-gold fork from the set Anastasia pressed into your hands as they took her away to be shot? Is the slab under your apartment building moaning that it cannot stand the weight on its back a moment longer, and is the building stretching and creaking? Did a good friend betray you today, or did that good friend merely keep silent and fail to come to your aid? Are you holding the razor at your throat this very instant? Take heart, comfort is at hand. This is the hour that stretches. Djam karet. We are the cavalry. We're here. Put away the pills. We'll get you through this bloody night. Next time, it'll be your turn to help us.
 * "Eidolons" (1988)

 * All writers in some insane place believe that to write is a holy chore — that what one wishes to do is speak to one’s time, to make a difference, to say: "I was here. I was a force for good in some way."
 * Statement in an interview of 1990, as quoted in "Harlan Ellison dies at 84; acclaimed science fiction writer was known for combative style" in The Los Angeles Times (28 June 2018)

Alfred E. van Vogt has been awarded the Grand Master trophy of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is not the to first person to receive this singular accolade…given only to those whose right to possess it is beyond argument or mitigation. Were we in 1946 or even 1956, van Vogt would have already been able to hold the award aloft. Had SFWA existed then and had the greatest living sf authors been polled as to who was the most fecund, the most intriguing, the mast innovative the most influential of their number, Isaac and Arthur and Cyril and Hank Kuttner and Ron Hubbard would all have pointed to the same man, and Bob Heinlein would've given him a thumbs-up. '''Van Vogt was the pinnacle, the source of power and ideas; the writer to beat. Because he embodied in his astonishing novels and assorted stories what we always say is of prime importance to us in this genre-the much vaunted Sense of Wonder. Van Vogt was the wellspring of wonder.''' … That's how important he was. … And then came the dark years during which the man was shamefully agented and overlooked; and even the brightest star loses its piercing light if observed through the thickening mists of time and flawed memory. Now it is lifetimes later, and the great award has, at last, been presented. To some, less charitable than I, something could be said about a day late and a dollar short, but not I. I am here to sing the Talent Electric, and it is better now than never. He is the Grand Master, A.E. can Vogt, weaver of a thousand ideas per plot-line, creator of alien thoughts and impossible dreams that rival the best ever built by our kind. This dear, gentlemanly writer whose stories can still kill you with a concept or warm you with a character, now joins the special pantheon.
 * Even the brightest star shines dimly when observed from too far away. And human memory is notoriously unreliable. And we live in ugly times when all respect for that which has gone before suffers crib death beneath the weight of youthful arrogance and ignorance. But a great nobility has at last, been recognized and lauded. Someone less charitable than I might suggest the honor could have been better appreciated had it not been so tardy, naming its race with a foe that blots joy and destroys short-term memory. But I sing the Talent Electric, and like aft the dark smudges of history, everything but the honor and die achievement remains for the myth-makers.
 * In recognition of van Vogt receiving the Grand Master designation in 1996, in The Nebula Awards Vol. 31, as quoted in SF Authors Remember A.E. van Vogt (2000)

The ultimate tragic impropriety visited on as good a man as ever lived. '''A gentle. soft spoken man who was filled with ideas and humor and courtesy and kindness. Not even those who were not aficionados of Van's writing could muster a harsh word about him as a human being. He was as he remains now, quietly and purposefully, a gentleman.''' But make no mistake about this: the last few decades for him were marred by the perfidious and even mean spirited and sometimes criminal acts of poltroons and self-aggrandizing mountebanks and piss-ants into whose clutches he fell just before the thug Alzheimer got him. … I came late to the friendship with Van and Lydia. Perhaps only twenty-five or so years. But the friendship continues, and at least I was able to make enough noise to get Van the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award, which was presented to him in full ceremony during one of the last moments when he was cogent and clearheaded enough understand that finally, as last, dragged kicking and screaming to honor him, the generation that learned from what he did and what he had created had, at last, fessed up to his importance. Naturally, others took credit for his getting the award. They postured and spewed all the right platitudes. Some of them were the same ones who had said to me — during the five years it took to get them to act honorably — "we'd have given it to him sooner if you hadn't made such a fuss." Yeah. Sure. And pandas'll fly out of my ass.
 * Alfred E. van Vogt, since the appearance of his first two stories — "Black Destroyer" and "Discord in Scarlet" (Astounding Science Fiction, July and December 1939) the most memorable debut in the long history of the genre — has been a giant. The words seminal and germinal leap to mind. Sadly, at this juncture. the words tragedy and farewell also insinuate themselves. … Van is still with us, as I write this, in June of 1999, slightly less than fifty years since I first encountered van Vogt prose in a January 1950 issue of Startling Stories, but Van is gone. He is no longer with us. … Because the great and fecund mind of A.E. van Vogt has fallen into the clutches of that pulp thriller demon, Alzheimer's. Van is gone. … Anyone's demise or vanishment is in some small way tragic but the word "tragedy" requires greater measure for its use. … Van' s great mind now gone. Tragedy.
 * In his introduction "Van is Here, But Van is Gone" to Futures Past: The Best Short Fiction of A. E. van Vogt (July 1999)

 * NO ONE GETS OUT OF CHILDHOOD ALIVE. It's not the first time I've said that. But among the few worthy bon mots I've gotten off in sixty-seven years, that and possibly one other may be the only considerations eligible for carving on my tombstone. (The other one is the one entrepreneurs have misappropriated to emboss on buttons and bumper stickers: The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. (I don't so much mind that they pirated it, but what does honk me off is that they never get it right. They render it dull and imbecile by phrasing it thus: "The two most common things in the universe are..." (Not things, you insensate gobbets of ambulatory giraffe dung, elements! Elements is funny, things is imprecise and semi-guttural. Things! Geezus, when will the goyim learn they don't know how to tell a joke.
 * Introduction to Blast Off : Rockets, Robots, Ray Guns, and Rarities from the Golden Age of Space Toys (2001) by S. Mark Young, Steve Duin, Mike Richardson, p. 6; the quote on hydrogen and stupidity is said to have originated with an essay of his in the 1960s, and is often misattributed to Frank Zappa, who made similar remarks in The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989): "Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe."

 * I don't own a computer, or a modem, or anything like that; I still work on a manual typewriter, by choice, and to those who consider me a Luddite I say: Fuck you and yo mama. I operate at the level of technology that best suits my needs. And I type at 120 words per minute — two fingers — I make no mistakes, and my manuscripts are real. You can pick them up and hold them. My typewriter doesn't dump its memory — I don't lose a book.
 * "Being Analog: Every Last Goddamn Thing in the World According to Harlan Ellison"

 * Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that’s horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it’s nothing. It’s just bibble-babble. It’s like a fart in a wind tunnel, folks.
 * Commentary on Sci-Fi Channel's Sci-Fi Buzz

 * Art is not supposed to be easier! There are a lot of things in life that are supposed to be easier. Ridding the world of heart attacks, making the roads smoother, making old people more comfortable in the winter, but not Art. Art should always be tough. Art should demand something of you. Art should involve foot-pounds of energy being expended. It's not supposed to be easier, and those who want it easier should not be artists. They should be out selling public relations copy.
 * "Gutenberg in a Flying Saucer"

 * He had writer's block once. It was the worst ten minutes of his life.
 * About Isaac Asimov – quoted in Page Fright : Foibles and Fetishes of Famous Writers (2009) by Harry Bruce
 * Variant: Most writers hate to write, and will grasp any excuse to do something else … There are exceptions. Isaac Asimov actually was never happier than sitting at a keyboard — first, his old typewriter; then, the TRS-80; and later, a more conventional PC. But then, Isaac was unusual, and his experience with writer's block was the worst 10 minutes of his life.
 * Jerry Pournelle, in "Chaos Manor: Is there an Upgrade in your future?" in Dr. Dobb's Journal : Software Tools For The Professional Programmer (2005), Vol. 30, Issues 374-379, p. 9

 * The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.
 * Voices of Vision: Creators of Science Fiction and Fantasy, page 182

 * Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times ALREADY – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.
 * As quoted in ''Quit Your Day Job!: How to Sleep Late, Do What You Enjoy, and Make a Ton of ... (2004) by James D. Denney, p. 124

 * If I had to pick a religion, I'd pick Buddhism. Buddhism is a kindly religion. It says you got a chance... it's got humor, it's got wisdom, it says to be nice to each other. All the rest of them have gods that want to beat the crap out of you if you defy the rules.
 * Interviewed by J. Michael Straczynski Clue book for the computer version of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

 * And my mother said—and I remember this as if it were yesterday—my mother with a washcloth in her hand and me standing at the sink, she said, "You must have said something to get them angry." And it was an icicle just jammed into my chest. That my own mother—and with cause! It was not as if I was the greatest kid in the world. I was a troublemaker! I was a brat! I was a big-mouth pain in the ass! But that my own mother would not understand—at that moment I had what, now at age seventy-two I understand, was an enormous epiphany, which is: I really cannot support it, I cannot bear it, when people laugh at me.
 * Dreams with Sharp Teeth (2008) (documentary), at about 28:10.
 * About being beaten up by bullies as a child.

Deathbird Stories (1975)

 * Page numbers from the mass market paperback edition, published by Dell, catalogue# 1737, first printing, September 1976
 * See Harlan Ellison's Internet Science Fiction Database page for original publication details
 * Italics and ellipses as in the book. Bold face added for emphasis.

 * Gods can do anything. They fear nothing: they are gods. But there is one rule, one Seal of Solomon that can confound a god, and to which all gods pay service, to the letter: When belief in a god dies, the god dies. When the last acolyte renounces his faith and turns to another deity, the god ceases to be.
 * Introduction: Oblations at Alien Altars (p. 13)

 * Posing the question: does the god of love use underarm deodorant, vaginal spray and fluoride toothpaste?
 * Epigram for On the Downhill Side (p. 53)

 * I’m afraid I felt a straight pin of jealousy. Perfection does that to me.
 * On the Downhill Side (p. 55)

 * These are the sounds in the night: First, the sound of darkness, lapping at the edges of a sea of movement, itself called silence. Then, second, the fingertip-sensed sound of the cyclical movement of the universe as it gnaws its way through the dust-film called Time. And last, the animal sounds of two people making love. The moist sounds of two bodies in concert.
 * The Face of Helene Bournouw (p. 182)

 * There comes a point in the downward slide of the human condition when a man ceases to be a man. He may still walk erect, but it is principally a matter of skeletal arrangement, not ethics.
 * The Place with No Name (p. 213)

 * This is a test. Take notes. This will count as 3/4 of your final grade. Hints: remember, in chess, kings cancel each other out and cannot occupy adjacent squares, are therefore all-powerful and totally powerless, cannot affect each other, produce stalemate. Hinduism is a polytheistic religion; the sect of Atman worships the divine spark of life within Man; in effect saying, "Thou art God." Provisos of equal time are not served by one viewpoint having media access to two hundred million people in prime time while opposing viewpoints are provided with a soapbox on the corner. Not everyone tells the truth. Operational note: these sections may be taken out of numerical sequence: rearrange to suit yourself for optimum clarity. Turn over your test papers and begin.
 * The Deathbird (p. 314; first lines)

Shatterday (1980)

 * Page numbers from the mass market paperback edition, published by Berkley Books, ISBN 0-425-05370-9, in October 1982
 * See Harlan Ellison's Internet Science Fiction Database page for original publication details
 * All italics and ellipses as in the book. Bold face added for emphasis.

 * Frequently I will say something about the human condition that seems perfectly rational and proper to me, because I know we all share the same thoughts. Invariably, some feep in the audience will attempt to pillory me with a stunning accusation, “You only said that to shock!” My response is always the same: “You bet your ass, slushface. Of course I said it to shock you (or wrote it to shock you). I don’t know how you perceive my mission as a writer, but for me it is not a responsibility to reaffirm your concretized myths and provincial prejudices. It is not my job to lull you with a false sense of the rightness of the universe. This wonderful and terrible occupation of recreating the world in a different way, each time fresh and strange, is an act of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. I stir the soup. I inconvenience you. I make your nose run and your eyeballs water. I spend my life and miles of visceral material in a glorious and painful series of midnight raids against complacency. It is my lot to wake with anger every morning, to lie down at night even angrier. All in pursuit of one truth that lies at the core of every jot of fiction ever written: we are all in the same skin…but for the time it takes to read the stories I merely have the mouth.”
 * Introduction: Mortal Dreads (p. xviii)

 * You are not alone. We are all the same, all in this fragile skin, suffering the ugliness of simply being human, or prey to the same mortal dreads. When I lecture I try to say this, to say most of the fears you invent—atomic war, multinational conspiracies, assassination paranoias, fear of ethnic types, flying saucers from Mars—those are all bullshit. I inveigh against illogical beliefs and say that the mortal dreads are the ones that drive you to crazy beliefs in Scientology, est, the power of dope, hatred of elitism and intellectual pursuits, astrology, messiahs like Sun Myung Moon or Jim Jones, fundamentalist religions. I try to tell you that fear is okay if you understand that what you fear is the same for everyone. Not the bogus oogie-boogie scares of Dan O’Bannon and Ridley Scott’s Alien, slavering creatures in the darkness that want to pierce your flesh with scorpion stinger tails and ripping jaws, but the fear of Gregor Samsa waking to discover he isn’t who he was when he went to bed; the fear of Pip in the graveyard; the fear of Huck finding his dead father on the abandoned houseboat. The fears to which we are all heir to simply because we are tiny creatures in the universe that is neither benign nor malign…it is simply enormous and unaware of us save as part of the chain of life.
 * Introduction: Mortal Dreads (pp. xxi-xxii)

 * The Real World exists utterly in the Now; in a present time that seems to find the dearly remembered Past abhorrent, unbearable. And so, as this story contends, the Present tries to eradicate the Past. Please note that a distinction is drawn between change and eradication this is not one of those embalmed adorations of nostalgic sentimentality. It merely suggests for your consideration that there are treasures of the Past that we seem too quickly brutally ready to dump down the incinerator of Progress. At what cost, it suggests, do we pursue the goal of being au courant?
 * Introduction to Jeffty is Five (p. 2)

 * I think love and sex are separate and only vaguely similar. Like the word bear and the word bare. You can get in trouble mistaking one for the other.
 * Introduction to How's the Night Life on Cissalda? (pp. 26-27)

 * I don’t believe there is such a thing as “divine retribution.” The universe is neither malign nor benign. It’s just there, and it’s too busy keeping itself together to balance the scales when some feep has jerked you around. I am a strong adherent of the philosophy that one must seek retribution oneself.
 * Introduction to The Man Who Was Heavily into Revenge (p. 76)

 * There are four billion people in the world. A world that has grown so complex and uncaring with systems and brutalization of individuals because of the inertia produced by those systems’ perpetuation of self, that merely to live is to be assaulted daily by circumstances.
 * The Man Who Was Heavily into Revenge (p. 86)

 * There was Art, and there was survival, and sometimes they were mutually exclusive.
 * Shoppe Keeper (p. 111)

 * He didn’t even like being referred to as an “author.” He once told me the difference, as he saw it, between an author and a writer. “An author [he said] is what you put on your passport, because in Europe they think a writer is a newspaperman. An author is somebody who gets his name on the spine of leatherbound volumes that are never read; a writer is someone who gets hemorrhoids from sitting on his ass all his life…writing.”
 * All the Lies That Are My Life (p. 116)

 * He stopped and spun on her. “Do you think I’m a virgin? I’m not a virgin.” His vehemence pulled her back from the edge of boldness. “No, of course you’re not. I never thought such a thing.” Then she said, “Well…I am.” “Sorry,” he said, because he didn’t know the right thing to say, if there was a right thing. “Not your fault,” she said. Which was the right thing to say.
 * Count the Clock That Tells the Time (p. 192)

 * “No one should ever be judged heartless because he tended to his own personal survival,” she said.
 * Alive and Well and on a Friendless Voyage (p. 217)

 * Before I proceed, let me reiterate: I do not write diary. A writer cannibalizes his own life and memories, yes, that is true. All we have to work with is what we know and what we dream. But nothing is more boring than kvetching in fiction. Thinly disguised personal reminiscence is not fiction. Those who, in the past, have identified me with everything that goes down in my stories have assumed I am a murderer, a transvestite, a cannibal, a sexist, a feminist, a racist, an egalitarian, an elitist, a vegetarian, an esthete, a commoner, a psychopath, a pacifist, a pederast, a womanizer, a layabout and a workaholic. Despite the fact that I have never used drugs, there is a large segment of my readership that swears I’m a heavy doper.
 * Introduction to All the Birds Come Home to Roost (p. 223)

 * When you’re alone, as a writer is alone, locked in single combat with the imagination, allies are rare and special.
 * Introduction to All the Birds Come Home to Roost (p. 226)

 * Carefully avoiding her gaze, he said, “What is this, Jerri? Christ, isn’t there enough crap in the world without detouring to find a fresh supply?” He said it softly, because he had said I love you to her for two years, excluding the final seven months when he had said fuck off, never realizing they were the same phrase.
 * All the Birds Come Home to Roost (p. 233)

 * There are no rules. Those who are in power make up the rules. So those out of favor are bound to break them.
 * The Executioner of the Malformed Children (p. 267; quoting José Ber Gelbard)

Delusion for a Dragon Slayer (1966)

"I—" started Griffin, but the wizard cut him off with a blink. "No, listen, please, because after this, all the magic stops, and you have to do it alone. “You create your own Heaven, and you have the opportunity to live in it, but you have to do it on your own terms, the highest terms of which you are capable. So sail this ship through the straits, navigate the shoals, find the island, overcome the foam-devil that guards the girl, win her love, and you’ve played the game on your own terms."
 * "Heaven is what you mix all the days of your life, but you call it dreams. You have one chance to buy your Heaven with all the intents and ethics of your life. That is why everyone considers Heaven such a lovely place. Because it is dreams, special dreams, in which you exist. What you have to do is live up to them."

The darkness grew darker.
 * Griffin stood silently, watching the waterfall, sensing more than he saw, understanding more than even his senses could tell him. This was, indeed, the Heaven of his dreams, a place to spend the rest of forever, with the wind and the water and the world another place, another level of sensing, another bad dream conjured many long times before. This was reality, an only reality for a man whose existence had been not quite bad, merely insufficient, tenable but hardly enriching. For a man who had lived a life of not quite enough, this was all there ever could be of goodness and brilliance and light. Griffin moved toward the falls.

Griffin stumbled away from her, hearing the shrieks of men needlessly drowned by his vanity, hearing the voiceless accusation of the devil proclaiming cowardice, hearing the orgasm-condemnation of lust that was never love, of brute desire that was never affection, and realizing at last that these were the real substances of his nature, the true faces of his sins, the marks in the ledger of a life he had never led, yet had worshipped silently at an altar of evil. All these thoughts, as the guardian of Heaven, the keeper at the gate, the claimer of souls, the weigher of balances, advanced on him through the night.
 * Empty winds howled down out of the tundras of his soul. This was the charnel house of his finest fantasies. The burial ground of his forever. The garbage dump, the slain meat, the putrefying reality of his dreams and his Heaven.

And they all agreed that the expression on the face was not one of happiness. There were many possible explanations for that expression, but no one would have said terror, for it was not terror. They would not have said helplessness, for it was not that, either. They might have settled on a pathetic sense of loss, had their sensibilities run that deep, but none of them would have felt that the expression said, with great finality: a man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but only, only if he is worthy of those dreams.
 * When they dug the body out of the alley, it made even the hardened construction workers and emergency squad cops ill. Not one bone was left unbroken. The very flesh seemed to have been masticated as if by a nation of cannibal dogs. Even so, the three inured excavators who finally used winding sheets and shovels to bring the shapeless mess up from its five-foot grave agreed that it was incredible, totally past belief, that the head and face were untouched.
 * This last line has often been paraphrased: "You can live in your dreams, but only if you are worthy of them."

Autograph profile (2010)

 * Quotes from a student question and answer session reported in Autograph Magazine (2 January 2010)

 * It is my hope that all of you who walk down the street with an iPod plugged into your head are hit by a Seven Santini Brothers moving van. I look down on a lot of you … not because you’re not terrific people, but because you’re not stupid, you’re ignorant. Big difference. Ignorance is never having seen a film by Akira Kurosawa. It’s not knowing who Guy de Maupassant is. …By the way if I miss, during the evening, saying something offensive to you, insulting your sexual proclivity, your physical disability, your race, your religion, your sex, anything, please, raise your hand. I’ll get to you, I promise. I’ll say something really nasty.

 * I’ve been on my own since I was 13. I grew up having to use my wits. My parents were not wealthy. We weren’t poor, but we had a lot of meals with noodles. I was born during the Depression. My parents died pretty much penniless. Every dollar I’ve ever made I earned myself. I don’t believe in luck. Louis Pasteur said, "Chance favors the prepared mind." The smarter you are, the more you know, the better. I was the only Jew in town and I was my generation’s Bart Simpson. I knew the world could be mine.

 * I go to bed angry every night, I wake up angry every morning. There are certain injustices in this life you’ve got to do something about. You can’t just say that you can’t fight it, or it’s too much trouble, or that you don’t have the time or the effort, or that you can’t win. Forget all that. Fight them all! I fight them all because you never know which one is the big one. You never know which you give up and then it will come back and bite you in the ass. You never look away from a mountain lion, you lock eyes and you don’t let him get behind you.

Misattributed

 * If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
 * Don Marquis, as quoted in Kiplinger's Personal Finance, Vol. 12, No. 2 (February 1958), p. 48; this has sometimes been attributed to Ellison, as well as to George Bernard Shaw.

Quotes about Ellison

 * Harlan is a giant among men in courage, pugnacity, loquacity, wit, charm, intelligence — indeed in everything but height.
 * Isaac Asimov in the introduction to  Dangerous Visions (1967) edited by Ellison

 * Harlan Ellison was a major influence, particularly his short story collection Dangerous Visions.
 * 1997 interview in Conversations with Octavia Butler

 * I had one very good teacher who is also a writer, Harlan Ellison. He gave me a lot of help and a hard push or two when I needed them. It so happens that he writes a lot of fantasy and science fiction and was able to give me the kind of help I wouldn't have received from some English teacher.
 * 1980 interview in Conversations with Octavia Butler

 * I remember getting into Harlan Ellison's class and at one point having him say, science fiction fans read too much science fiction; and he was no doubt right, but as an adolescent that was all I read except for school work.
 * 1990 interview in Conversations with Octavia Butler

 * I was in classes sometimes where I was the only Black person and tend to either get ignored or get petted on the head a lot. Neither is in the slightest useful so I was eager to get away from that and Harlan was not interested in doing either.
 * 1994 interview in Conversations with Octavia Butler

 * He was demonstrating to the world the writing was a craft, that it was not an act of magic.
 * Neil Gaiman, Introduction to A Calendar of Tales in Trigger Warning (2015), ISBN 978-0-06-305204-8, p. xxiv

 * Ellison was immensely talented, immensely argumentative and immensely controversial, all in equal measure. … Loved or loathed, he was undeniably one of the great figures in science fiction.
 * John Scalzi, as quoted in "Harlan Ellison dies at 84; acclaimed science fiction writer was known for combative style" in The Los Angeles Times (28 June 2018)

 * He is…colorful, intrusive, abrasive, irritating, hilarious, illogical, inconsistent, unpredictable, and one hell of a writer.
 * Theodore Sturgeon, in his introduction to "I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream"

title: Harlan Ellison


text:
Larry Ellison

Lawrence J. Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is the CEO and founder, Oracle Corporation.

Quotes

 * When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal.
 * Smithsonian Institution Oral and Visual Histories, Oral History Interview with Lawrence Ellison (24 October 1995).

 * I hate the PC, with a passion.
 * Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996), 47"00.

 * It's Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead
 * article in The Wall Street Journal (5 March 1998).

 * If the Internet turns out not to be the future of computing, we're toast. But if it is, we're golden.
 * Statement in 1999, as quoted in "Oracle's Talking: Should You Be Listening?" by Jeff Sweat in Information Week (7 February 2000).

 * Twenty minutes compared to never, that's a lot. Our customer, the Central Intelligence Agency, would get very upset [if] somebody looks in their database.
 * As quoted in "Ellison: Oracle remains unbreakable" CNN (21 January 2002).

 * If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not disruptive at all – you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. … We don't have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source.
 * Financial Times interview (18 April 2006).

 * The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?
 * Referring to the term "cloud computing" in his Oracle OpenWorld 2008 speech, as quoted in "Oracle's Ellison nails cloud computing" at cnet (26 September 2008).

 * Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.
 * On the previous managers of Sun after Oracles take-over, in "Special Report: Can that guy in Ironman 2 whip IBM in real life?" Reuters (12 May 2010).

 * Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure.
 * Evan Elite : Lesson #4: Break Through That Wall.

 * So remember this graduates: when people start saying you're crazy, you just might be on to the most important innovation of your life.
 * Ellison's 2016 graduation speech to the University of Southern California, in relation to creating the first relational database

title: Larry Ellison


text:
User:Piotrus

I spend most of wiki related time on Wikipedia. see here for more info about me.

But I do love quotes and I will be checking WQ more and more often! --Piotrus 11:17, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." --Francis Bacon

title: User:Piotrus