Things I Didn't Say

Many Quotations, Few Epigrams

Women, Gender Love, Sex, Marriage Gods, Religions Etc.

Women, Gender

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.: Equal Rights Amendment (first proposed in 1923, possibly 3 states away from ratification)
Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.: Susan B. Anthony
From all that has been said, it is apparent that we cannot speak of inferiority and superiority, but only of specific differences in aptitudes and personality between the sexes. These differences are largely the result of cultural and other experiential factors... the overlapping in all psychologocal characteristics is such that we need to consider men and women as individuals, rather than in terms of group stereotypes.: Anna Anastasi, Differential Psychology
The first thing that strikes the careless observer is that women are unlike men. They are the "opposite sex"—(though why "opposite" I do not know; what is the "neighbouring sex"?). But the fundamental thing is that women are more like men than anything else in the world.: Dorothy Sayers, The Human-Not-Quite-Human
Men are the enemy in much the same way that some crazed boy in uniform was the enemy of another like him in most respects except the uniform. One possible tactic is to try to get the uniforms off.: Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch
No doubt exists that research on the abilities of females has made progress from the Victorian age when scientists argued that if women used their brains excessively, they would impair their fertility by draining off blood cells needed to support their menstrual cycle.: Sally M. Reis, We Can't Change What We Don't Recognize: Understanding the Special Needs of Gifted Females
When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexually.: Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
The man regards her as a receptacle into which he has emptied his sperm, a kind of human spittoon, and turns from her in disgust.: Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch
Because the number of birth-giving machines and devices is fixed, all we can ask for is for them to do their best per head.: Hakuo Yanagisawa, Health Minister of Japan (2007)
If it's testosterone the public wants in a president, as an endocrinologist I can't recommend a 70-year-old man in the White House. They should get a 16-year-old boy instead. It seems the only thing the public doesn't want to see in a president is estrogen.: Estelle R. Ramey
The younger girls interrupted each other with their questions and tumbled forward to see, touch and smell everything. The older girls, the ninth-graders, were different. They hung back. They didn't touch plants or shout out questions. They stood primly to the side, looking bored and even a little disgusted by the enthusiasm of their younger classmates. My friend asked herself, What's happened to these girls? What's gone wrong? She told me, "I wanted to shake them, to say, 'Wake up, come back. Is anybody home at your house?' ": Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia
She was twelve years old when she told Eddie Willers that she would run the railroad when they grew up. She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought—and never worried about it again.: Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
That's sexism, that is. Going around giving people girly presents just because they're a girl.: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens
Man's biological function is to do; woman's is to be.: Robert Graves, Real Women
We don't ask what a woman does—we ask whom she belongs to.: George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
Kinder, Kuche, Kirche [Children, Cooking, Church]: Nazi slogan regarding woman's role
If we have come to think that the nursery and the kitchen are the natural sphere of woman, we have done so exactly as English children come to think that a cage is the natural sphere of a parrot—because they have never seen one anywhere else.: George Bernard Shaw, The Womanly Woman
When he found Marie Bashkirtseff's account of herself utterly incompatible with the account of a woman's mind given to him by his ideal, he was confronted with the dilemma that either Marie was not a woman or else his ideal did not correspond to nature. He actually accepted the former alternative... "Marie," he said, "was artist, musician, wit, philosopher, student--anything you like but a natural woman with a heart to love, and a soul to find its supreme satisfaction in sacrifice for lover or for child.": George Bernard Shaw, The Womanly Woman
We are out to glorify war: The only health-giver of the world! Militarism! Patriotism! The Destructive Arm of the Anarchist! Ideas that kill! Contempt for women!: Filippo Marinetti, Futurist Manifesto
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex.: Valerie Solanas The SCUM Manifesto
Let it all hang out. Let it seem bitchy, catty, dykey, frustrated, crazy, Solanasesque, nutty, frigid, ridiculous, bitter, embarrassing, man-hating, libelous, pure, unfair, envious, intuitive, low-down, stupid, petty, liberating. We are the women that men have warned us about.: Robin Morgan, Goodbye to All That
No, I'm no one's wife but, oh, I love my life...: Chicago the Musical
In any case, it seems quite frequent that when there is a woman on a programming team, she assumes the role of "team-mother"... There have been at least several teams where one of the women was openly referred to as the "team-mother" or "den-mother," and there is the persistent joke in computer circles which defines "software" as "a girl programmer.": Gerald M. Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming (1971)
One of the classic status symbols from which programming managers are not exempt is the secretary or the administrative assistant. The difference between these two titles is that secretaries are always female, and administrative assistants may be of either gender. The prettiest secretary may be a status symbol—though an ugly one may be taken as indicating that one's status is so high that one rates a competent secretary.: Gerald M. Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming (1971)
Her modesty as to her writing, her vanity as to her person, her fears for her safety all seem to hint that what was said a short time ago about there being no change in Orlando the man and Orlando the woman, was ceasing to be altogether true. She was becoming a little more modest, as women are, of her brains, and a little more vain, as women are, of her person. Certain susceptibilities were asserting themselves, and others were diminishing. The change of clothes had, some philosophers will say, much to do with it. Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world's view of us. For example, when Captain Bartolus saw Orlando's skirt, he had an awning stretched for her immediately, pressed her to take another slice of beef, and invited her to go ashore with him in the long boat. These compliments would certainly not have been paid her had her skirts, instead of flowing, been cut tight to her legs in the fashion of breeches. And when we were paid compliments, it behoves us to make some return. Orlando curtseyed; she complied; she flattered the good man's humours as she would not have done had his neat breeches been a woman's skirts, and his braided coat a woman's satin bodice. Thus, there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hears, our brains, our tongues to their liking... The man has his hand free to seize his sword; the woman must use hers to keep the satins from slipping from her shoulders. The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking. The woman takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even of suspicion. Had they both worn the same clothes, it is possible that their outlook might have been the same too.: Virginia Woolf, Orlando
... but the truth is that when we write of a woman, everything is out of place—culminations and perorations; the accent never falls where it does with a man...: Virginia Woolf, Orlando
virago, noun 1. a loud, overbearing woman: termagant 2. a woman of great stature, strength, and courage: Merriam-Webster Dictionary
husband, noun 1. a male partner in marriage 2. British : manager, steward 3. a frugal manager: Merriam-Webster Dictionary
More speculatively, Hayden urges that "female body odors may at times constitute a major handicap under primitive hunting conditions that generally require approaches to within 25 m of the prey.": Goodman, Griffin, Estioko-Griffin, Grove, The Compatibility of Hunting and Mothering Among the Agta Hunter-Gatherers of the Philippines
If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for thirty days because they get infections and they don't have upper body strength. I mean, some do, but they're relatively rare. On the other hand, men are basically little piglets, you drop them in the ditch, they roll around in it, doesn't matter, you know. These things are very real. On the other hand, if combat means being on an Aegis-class cruiser managing the computer controls for twelve ships and their rockets, a female may be again dramatically better than a male who gets very, very frustrated sitting in a chair all the time because males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.: Newt Gingrich
The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it.: Susan B. Anthony

I suppose that's really what so many American women are complaining about these days: They find their lives short on story and overburdened with epilogue.: Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick
Once immersed in the very pressing and particular problems of domesticity, many women feel frustrated and far apart from the great issues and stirring debate for which their education has given them understanding and relish. Once they wrote poetry. Now it's the laundry list. Once they discussed art and philosophy until late in the night. Now they are so tired they fall asleep as soon as the dishes are finished. There is, often, a sense of contraction, of closing horizons and lost opportunities. They had hoped to play their part in the crises of the age. But what they do is wash the diapers. The point is that whether we talk of Africa, Islam or Asia, women "never had it so good" as you. In short, far from the vocation of marriage and motherhood leading you away from the great issues of our day, it brings you back to their very center and places upon you an infinitely deeper and more intimate responsibility than that borne by the majority of those who hit the headlines and make the news and live in such a turmoil of great issues that they end by being totally unable to distinguish which issues are really great.: Adlai Stevenson, Smith College Commencement (1955)

Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because—without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called "feminine"—we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery which is not true praise.: Charlotte Brönte, Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell in Wuthering Heights
I have read about sixteen pages of your manuscript and it made me—smile. It is clever, well observed, honest; it stands on its own feet up to a point, and yet it is so typically feminine, by which I mean derivative and steeped in personal resentment.: Albert Einstein in a letter to a young girl, Ideas and Opinions

Church authorities of the fifteenth century, ever on the alert for the malevolence of the devil, used a popular handbook on the identification and treatment of witches, the Malleus Maleficarum, in searching out evil in the form of women. "What else is woman," says this medieval antisubversive activities manual, "but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature painted with fair colors?"... By mid-nineteenth century, the "evil of nature" had turned into an object of scorn, and Schopenhauer's indictment of women as "that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race," denied women even their beauty, their "fair colors", along with their intellectual capacity.: Betty Roszak, The Human Continuum
Do you not know that you are each an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of your lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway; you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You so carelessly destroyed man, God's image. On account of your desert, even the Son of God had to die.: Tertullian

Love, Sex, Marriage

Chaps sometimes wanted to marry me, and I don't know a worse bargain. Available sex against not being allowed to fart in bed.: Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
Good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere.: Elvis Costello, New Lace Sleeves
I can't tell you how many people presume that I deal in a "new etiquette" that is required because of "the new sex." The new what? I know that it is widely believed that sex was invented in 1960 by two students from Berkeley—one of whom got a B-plus in life skills; the other being a graduate student whose degree was held up while the professors tried to duplicate the research—and that it only somewhat later caught on elsewhere. But I know that sex has been with us for some time, because it just so happens that I am actually a direct descendant, on both sides of my family, from people who practiced it. The only innovation of modern times seems to be discussing one's personal dissatisfactions with it at the dinner table.: Judith Martin, Common Courtesy: In Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem that Baffled Mr. Jefferson
You know, love is a happy time all throughout the universe. It's when the male part of the species goes to the female part of the species and says, "Hey, you want to go on a date?" And then she would say "Why, yes, I'd like to go on a date," if you're lucky. And then you go to a restaurant, and she gets something called a salad, and then he gets a big piece of beef, that he eats. And that to me, ladies and gentlemen, is love. Kinda makes you cry, doesn't it?: Brak

Gods, Religions

Yes, reason has been a part of organized religion, ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake.: Jon Stewart, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.: St. Augustine
Zanna (Arabic) Guesswork. Term used in the Koran for pointless theological speculation.: Karen Armstrong, A History of God
Puritanism did have a positive dimension: it gave people pride in their work, which had hitherto been experienced as a slavery but which was now seen as a "calling.": Karen Armstrong, A History of God
Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.: Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
A revolution, what does that prove? That God is hard up. He makes a coup d'etat, because there is a solution of continuity between the present and the future, and because he, God, is unable to join the two ends. In fact, that confirms me in my conjectures about the condition of Jehovah's fortune; and to see so much discomfort above and below, so much rascality and odiousness and stinginess and distress in the heavens and on the earth, from the bird which has not a grain of millet to me who have not a hundred thousand livres of income, to see human destiny, which is very much worn out, and even royal destiny, which shows the warp, witness the Prince of Conde hung, to see winter, which is nothing but a rent in the zenith through which the wind blows, to see so many tatters even in the brand new purple of the morning on the tops of the hills, to see the dew drops, those false pearls, to see the frost, that paste, to see humanity ripped, and events patched, and so many spots on the sun, and so many holes in the moon, to see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. He keeps up appearances, it is true, but I feel the pinch.: Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
Aquinas lists five "proofs" for God's existence that would become immensely important in the Catholic world and would also be used by Protestants: Aristotle's argument for a Prime Mover. A similar "proof" which maintains that there cannot be an infinite series of causes: there must have been a beginning. The argument from contingency, propounded by Ibn Sina, which demands the existence of a "Necessary Being." Aristotle's argument from the Philosophy that the hierarchy of excellence in the world implies a Perfection that is the best of all. The argument from design, which maintains that the order and purpose that we see in the universe cannot simply be the result of chance.: Karen Armstrong, A History of God
Axiom 1. (Dichotomy) A property is positive if and only if its negation is negative. Axiom 2. (Closure) A property is positive if it necessarily contains a positive property. Theorem 1. A positive property is logically consistent (i.e., possibly it has some instance.) Definition. Something is God-like if and only if it possesses all positive properties. Axiom 3. Being God-like is a positive property. Axiom 4. Being a positive property is (logical, hence) necessary. Definition. A property P is the essence of x if and only if x has P and P is necessarily minimal. Theorem 2. If x is God-like, then being God-like is the essence of x. Definition. NE(x): x necessarily exists if it has an essential property. Axiom 5. Being NE is God-like. Theorem 3. Necessarily there is some x such that x is God-like.: Kurt Godel, Mathematical Proof of God's Existence
If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard." Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid.: Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (NRSV)
As the siege continued, famine in Samaria became so great that a donkey's head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and one-fourth of a kab of dove's dung for five shekels of silver. Now as the king of Israel was walking on the city wall, a woman cried out to him, "Help, my lord king!" He said, "No! Let the Lord help you. How can I help you? From the threshing floor or from the wine press?" But then the king asked her, "What is your complaint?" She answered, "This woman said to me, 'Give up your son; we will eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.' So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, 'Give up your son and we will eat him.' But she has hidden her son.": 2 Kings 6:25-29 (NRSV)
[Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, "Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!" When he turned around and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.: 2 Kings 2:23-24 (NRSV)
At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his officials and all the Egyptians; and there was a loud cry in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.: Exodus 12:29-30 (NRSV)
That slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating.: Luke 12:47-48 (NRSV)
Moses became angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. Moses said to them, "Have you allowed all the women to live? These women here, on Balaam's advice, made the Israelites act treacherously against the Lord in the affair of Peor, so that the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves.": Numbers 31:14-18 (NRSV)
Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, and Sarai said to Abram, "You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, "May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!" But Abram said to Sarai, "Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please." Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, "Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?" She said, "I am running away from my mistress Sarai." The angel of the Lord said to her, "Return to your mistress, and submit to her.": Genesis 16:1-9 (NRSV)
While they were enjoying themselves, the men of the city, a perverse lot, surrounded the house, and started pounding on the door. They said to the old man, the master of the house, "Bring out the man who came into your house, so that we may have intercourse with him." And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, "No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing. Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them; but against this man do not do such a vile thing." But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine, and put her out to them. They wantonly raped her, and abused her all through the night until the morning. And as the dawn began to break, they let her go. As morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man's house where her master was, until it was light. In the morning her master got up, opened the doors of the house, and when he went out to go on his way, there was his concubine lying at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. "Get up," he said to her, "we are going." But there was no answer. Then he put her on the donkey; and the man set out for his home. When he had entered his house, he took a knife, and grasping his concubine he cut iher into twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel.: Judges 19:22-29 (NRSV)
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and say: No one of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the food of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or one who has a broken foot or a broken hand, or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles.: Leviticus 21:16-20 (NRSV)
What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge—he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil—he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor—he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire—he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy—all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was—that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love—he was not man.: Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

There is a story that one day a pagan had approached [Rabbi] Hillel and told him that he would be willing to convert to Judaism if the Master could recite the whole of the Torah to him while he stood on one leg. Hillel replied: "Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you. That is the whole of the Torah: go and learn it.": Karen Armstrong, A History of God
"In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.": Matthew 7:12 (NRSV)
Say: "We believe in God and in that which had been bestowed from on high upon us, and in that which has been bestowed upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, and that which has been vouchsafed to Moses and Jesus, and that which has been vouchsafed to all the [other] prophets by their Sustainer: we make no distinction between any of them. And it is unto him that we surrender ourselves.": Koran 2:135-36

High levels of organic atheism are strongly correlated with high levels of societal health, such as low homicide rates, low poverty rates, low infant mortality rates, and low illiteracy rates, as well as high levels of educational attainment, per capita income, and gender equality. Most nations characterized by high degrees of individual and societal security have the highest rates of organic atheism, and conversely, nations characterized by low degrees of individual and societal security have the lowest rates of organic atheism. In some societies, particularly Europe, atheism is growing. However, throughout much of the world—particularly nations with high birth rates—atheism is barely discernable.: Phil Zuckerman, Atheism: Contemporary Numbers and Patterns
Carl Sagan was certainly no believer, but he once told me, "An atheist has to know a lot more than I know.": Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post (2007)
Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.: >Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

What was God doing before He created the world? Was he creating hell for people who asked such questions?: Stephen Hawking
The account of Creation, Calvin believed, was an example of balbutive (baby talk), which accommodated complex and mysterious processes to the mentality of simple people so that everybody could have faith in God.: Karen Armstrong, A History of God
Finally, almost as an afterthought, Marduk created humanity. He seized Kingu (the oafish consort of Tiamat, created by her after the defeat of Apsu), slew him and shaped the first man by mixing the divine blood with the dust.: Karen Armstrong, A History of God
Person man, person man Hit on the head with a frying pan Lives his life in a garbage can Person man Is he depressed or is he a mess? Does he feel totally worthless? Who came up with person man? Degraded man, person man: They Might Be Giants
The Buggre Alle This Bible was also noteworthy for having twenty-seven verses in the third chapter of Genesis, instead of the more usual twenty-four. They followed verse 24, which in the King James version reads: "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life," and read: ²⁵ And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee? ²⁶ And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next. ²⁷ And the Lord did not ask him again.: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens
Then the Lord God said, "See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.": Genesis 3:22 (NRSV), emphasis mine

Etc.

The implantation of goat testicles in a grown man, the implantation of goat testicles in place of ovaries in a woman—I mean, this is nutsy!: Diane Rehm, The Diane Rehm Show (2008)
Let heaven and nature sin. Let heaven and nature sing. Let heaven, let heaven and nature sing.: Church bulletin from Christ United Methodist Church, Marietta, Ohio (Christmas Eve, 2004-2005)
If your pain is not relived, call your doctor.: Discharge instructions from Doctor's Community Hospital, Lanham, Maryland
What is "stressed" spelled backwards? (For answer see page 203.): Carlean Johnson, Six Ingredients or Less: Slow Cooker
M&Ms—the little candy that melts your heart, but not in your hands.: NBC anchor, Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade (2005)
You cannot prevent others from having their own interests. But you can eat their cake while they are absent from the room.: Judith Martin
War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests: by war the issue is left to chance, and the tacit assumption that the best man will win is not at all justified. It might equally be argued that the worst, the most unscrupulous man will win, although history will continue the absurd game by finding him after all the best man.: Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch
It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a "public".: George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
The natural desire of good men is knowledge. I know that many will call this a useless work, and they will be those of whom Demetrius said that he took no more account of the wind that produced the words in their mouths than of the wind that came out of their hinder parts...: Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, ed. Edward MacCurdy
Lo some who can call themselves nothing more than a passage for food, producers of dung, fillers up of privies, for of them nothing else appears in the world, nor is there any virtue in their work, for nothing of them remains but full privies.: Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, ed. Edward MacCurdy
It was funny in a painful way. God had given him the desire to be a great Natural Philosopher—then put him on earth in the midst of Newton, Hooke, and Leibniz.: Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver
We are empiricists—we scorn the Scholastic way of memorizing old books and rejecting what is new—and that is good. But in pinning our hopes on the Philosophick Mercury we have decided in advance what it is that we seek to discover, and that is never right.: Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver
Not evil, but longing for that which is better, more often directs the steps of the erring. Not evil, but goodness more often allures the feeling mind unused to reason.: Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
"It is a great mistake," he said, "to think that anybody is either an angel or a devil." When Dorothy expressed an opinion that with some people angelic tendencies were predominant, and with others diabolic tendencies, he assented; but declared that it was not always easy to tell the one tendency from the other.: Anthony Trollope, He Knew He Was Right
Good God, it is easy to be kind, the difficulty is to be just.: Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
Don't ever get angry at a man for stating the truth.: Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
This is obviously a man who does not know women to any real depth. If you see what I am saying.: Rachel Manteuffel
It's hard to work in groups when you're omnipotent.: Q, Star Trek
On the other hand, it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a biquadrate [fourth power] into two biquadrates, or generally any power except a square into two powers with the same exponent. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this which however the margin is not large enough to contain.: Fermat, in the margin of Diophantus
The very fabric of life now, she thought as she rose, is magic. In the eighteenth century, we knew how everything was done; but here I rise through the air; I listen to voices in America; I see men flying—but how it's done, I can't even begin to wonder. So my belief in magic returns.: Virginia Woolf, Orlando
She said he proposed something on their wedding night that even her own brother wouldn't have suggested.: James Thurber
Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.: Mark Twain

So then he tried saying the grass is green and the sky is blue and so to propitiate the austere spirit of poetry whom still, though at a great distance, he could not help reverencing. "The sky is blue," he said, "the grass is green." Looking up, he saw that, on the contrary, the sky is like the veils which a thousand Madonnas have let fall from their hair; and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing the embraces of hairy satyrs from enchanted woods. "Upon my word," he said (for he had fallen into the bad habit of speaking aloud), "I don't see that one's more true than another. Both are utterly false." And he despaired of being able to solve the problem of what poetry is and what truth is and fell into a deep dejection.: Virginia Woolf, Orlando
The barking of a thousand dogs sounded in her ears. Carriage wheels rushed ceaselessly in a circle round her. Leaves sighed overhead. Now and again a braided skirt and a pair of tight scarlet trousers crossed the grass within a few steps of her. Once a gigantic rubber ball bounced on the newspaper. Violets, oranges, reds, and blues broke through the interstices of the leaves and sparkled in the emerald on her finger. She was distracted between the two. She looked at the paper and looked up; she looked at the sky and looked down. Life? Literature? One to be made into the other? But how monstrously difficult!: Virginia Woolf, Orlando
[S]he would take Aldrich['s Logic] out into the fields, and then look off her book towards the sky, where the lark was twinkling, or to the reeds and bushes by the river, from which the waterfowl rustled forth on its anxious, awkward flight—with a startled sense that the relation between Aldrich and this living world was extremely remote for her.: George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Axiom 1.	(Dichotomy) A property is positive if and only if its negation is negative.
Axiom 2.	(Closure) A property is positive if it necessarily contains a positive property.
Theorem 1.	A positive property is logically consistent (i.e., possibly it has some instance.)
Definition.	Something is God-like if and only if it possesses all positive properties.
Axiom 3.	Being God-like is a positive property.
Axiom 4.	Being a positive property is (logical, hence) necessary.
Definition.	A property P is the essence of x if and only if x has P and P is necessarily minimal.
Theorem 2.	If x is God-like, then being God-like is the essence of x.
Definition.	NE(x): x necessarily exists if it has an essential property.
Axiom 5.	Being NE is God-like.
Theorem 3.	Necessarily there is some x such that x is God-like.