real shabby dee

“We’re all trying to help you. We’ve petitioned the governor, but he doesn’t want to appear soft on people who’ve been falsely imprisoned.” — Leela, Futurama

“I had the misfortune to be nourished by the dreams and visions of Great Americans — the poets and the seers. Some other breed of men has won out. The world which is in the making fills me with dread. . . . It is a world suited for monomaniacs obsessed with the idea of progress – but a false progress, a progress that stinks. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful. The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in the world. Whatever does not lend itself to being bought and sold, whether in the realm of things, ideas, principles, dreams or hopes, is debarred. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker is a fool, the artist the escapist, the man of vision a criminal.” — Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

Svetlana Kirilenko: That’s the trouble with you Americans. You expect nothing bad ever to happen. When the rest of the world expect only bad to happen. And they are not disappointed.

“Oh, the smell of those barbecues. It’s like, you should just put my nose in a saddle. ‘Mmm, whose saddle is this?’ ‘That’s Uncle Taint’s.’ ‘How long’s he been ridin’, Tex?’ ‘Oh, pert near three days.’ ‘Well, let’s eat, . . . buddy.’” — Killface

“Men are making speeches . . . all over the country, but each expresses only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stands on truth. They are merely banded together as usual, one leaning on another and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.” — Henry David Thoreau

“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ‘What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.’ The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ‘What is the tortoise standing on?’ ‘You’re very clever, young man, very clever,’ said the old lady. ‘But it’s turtles all the way down!’” — Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” — Albert Einstein

“Injustice boils in men’s hearts as does steel in its cauldron, ready to pour forth, white hot, in the fullness of time.” — Mother Jones

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong–faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.” — Bene Gesserit proverb

“Kindness is just love with its work boots on.” — Shelley from “The House Bunny”

Going through some boxes, I found a Buy for Less ad I saved from 1998. The full page ad begins with “Happy Easter from Buy for Less,” with a very prominent “Give Thanks for He Is Risen” filling the middle. At the bottom surrounding “Easter Greetings” are “WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO LIMITED QUANTITIES. ALL LIMITS ARE PER FAMILY” and “NOT LIABLE FOR TYPOGRAPHICAL OR PICTORIAL ERRORS.” Nice way to cover all the bases.