Ah yes the spin

Rhythm and flavor, brother/sister. Give the author a break.

Err, yeah, I get the meme and it’s quite true in its own way…

BUT… This research team REALLY need an ethics committee. A heavy handed one.

Brillant. Unlawful, but brilliant.

This, my friend, is a very nice duck

Also from H2G2, behold the majestic : " -Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what’s actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, “Hang the sense of it,” and keep yourself busy. I’d far rather be happy than right any day.

-And are you?

-Ah. No. Well that’s where it all falls down, of course "

I like it even better in the movie, Bill Nighy embodies this sentence perfectly.

Came for the second, stayed for the first

Hmmm. I’ll try to remember this one, thank you, that’s a real gift.

A life lesson I’ll learn one day. Trying my best though, but it’ll take time. Thanks for sharing.

I like it. Remember where it’s from?

Love this one. Used to teach students in political science about the horrible thing that “political ventiloquism” is.

I suppose it’s less about the quote origin and more about what we make it to mean :)

Recently, I learned about a historical quote, from French PM Daladier on his way back from Munich where he knew he gave everything to Hitler.

He got out his plane, expecting to be lynched or thrown oranges at, and people, when he realized people were praising him as a herald of “peace”, let out this magnificent “Ah… what a bunch of idiots”.

It’s beautiful and I can understand why it sticks… Thanks for letting us know!!

Oh and there’s also this one ftom H2G2 :

Slartibartfast: Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what’s actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, “Hang the sense of it,” and keep yourself busy. I’d much rather be happy than right any day. Arthur Dent: And are you? Slartibartfast: Ah, no. [laughs, snorts] Slartibartfast: Well, that’s where it all falls down, of course

Hmm, you’re right. I first read this sentence for the first time as an epigraph for a violently anti-patriotic, individualistic, fantastic and oniric book which gave me this impression. After a bit of digging, I still think there’s something of my interpretation in the original material (a lettre from Vaché to Aragon from the battlefield), but it’s also a dadaist piece, so not so easy to decipher, in which he wishes for the death of his own generals, somehow talks about killing Germans while wearing a monocle and, all of them soldiers, French and German, being slowly decerebrated. He was fighting and killing although he was still against the war, seemed to be borderline self-destructing, dandy, rebelling, talking multiple times about how war changed him for the worse in both his mind and his body, crippled for life too. He died at 23 from an opium overdose.

So there is certainly more to it. Indeed, he doesn’t say what I implied and seemed to be such a complicated person he might have wrote the quote while thinking it is a good thing, but I suppose my interpretation isn’t totally absurd.

More info :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Vaché

Oh, yeah. There’s another one like this for me, a very short poem I read when I was a teenager :

“Ah, what are they dreaming…? Those who say, say, say… Yesterday I was there, today I was here”

That’s so lovely!

And yet, a WWI soldier uttered that phrase. I suppose he did not share this view of WW1. Or he couldn’t have wrote that.