Possible "pull quotes" for upcoming Superiors books

[tHEhERETIC]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

"And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong,
I'm right.
Where I belong, I'm right.
Where I belong."

-- "Fixing a Hole," Lennon/McCartney

And the whole fact of Lennon/McCartney and how that writing partnership worked, and when it didn't, is probably a thesis by some enterprising Malphan Soldier.

Although it wouldn't surprise me for a minute if it was an actual thesis by an actual grad student.

[Captain-Captain]

Be obscure clearly.
E. B. White

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

Be obscure clearly.
E. B. White

Jean, I assume?

[robkelk]

(One might notice a theme in this set of quotations...)

Saminga or the Archangel of Death

“Don't ask me how I am! I understand nothing more.”
– last words of Hans Christian Andersen

“I want nothing but death.”
– last words of Jane Austen

“Die, I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.”
– last words of John Barrymore

“How slow my death agony is.”
– last words of Sarah Bernhardt

“I think I'll sleep now.”
– last words of George Washington Carver

“Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking towards me, without hurrying.”
– last words of Jean Cocteau

“Dammit... Don't you dare ask God to help me.”
– last words of Joan Crawford

“I am not the least afraid to die.”
– last words of Charles Darwin

“But how the devil do you think this could harm me?”
– last words of Denis Diderot

“Now why did I do that?”
– last words of General William Erskine

“If any of you have a message for the Devil, give it to me, for I am about to meet him!”
– last words of Lavinia Fisher (hanged for murder on February 18, 1820)

“I've had a hell of a lot of fun and I've enjoyed every minute of it.”
– last words of Errol Flynn

“You can stop now; I'm already dead.”
– last words of Abigail Folger (to the members of the Manson "Family" that were stabbing her)

“A dying man can do nothing easily.”
– last words of Benjamin Franklin

“Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.”
– last words of Che Guevara

“Only you have ever understood me. ... And you got it wrong.”
– last words of Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (to his favorite student)

“One never knows the ending. One has to die to know exactly what happens after death, although Catholics have their hopes.”
– last words of Alfred Hitchcock

“I have to set my pillows one more night, when will this end already?”
– last words of Washington Irving

“I'll be in Hell before you start breakfast! Let her rip!”
– last words of Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum

“I'd rather be skiing than doing what I'm doing.”
– last words of Stan Laurel

“Don't let me die, I have got so much to do.”
– last words of Huey Long

“Die, my dear? Why, that's the last thing I'll do!”
– last words of Groucho Marx

“Tomorrow, I shall no longer be here.”
– last words of Nostradamus

“Aw, no one's gonna shoot at me.”
– last words of Lee Harvey Oswald

“Every damn fool thing you do in this life you pay for.”
– last words of Edith Piaf

“Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink any more.”
– last words of Pablo Picasso

“Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
– last words of George Bernard Shaw

“I believe we should adjourn this meeting to another place.”
– last words of Adam Smith

“I'm begging you, let me work!”
– last words of Osamu Tezuka

“Don't pull down the blinds. I feel fine. I want the sunlight to greet me!”
– last words of Rudolph Valentino

“I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”
– last words of Leonardo da Vinci

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”
– last words of Oscar Wilde

“Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.”
– last blog post of Robert Anton Wilson

“Brothers! Brothers, please! This is a house of peace!”
– last words of Malcolm X

“Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!”
– last words of Karl Marx


(source for all these)

[robkelk]

(Some people spend too much time surfing TVTropes. I spend too much time surfing Wikiquotes...)

Jean

“A learning experience is one of those things that say, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.’”
– Douglas Adams, interview in The Daily Nexus (5 April 2000)

“If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.”
– Douglas Adams, quoted by Richard Dawkins

“The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome.”
– Douglas Adams, quoted by Richard Dawkins

“Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
– Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”
– Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”
– Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“I am fascinated by religion. (That's a completely different thing from believing in it!)”
– Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”
– Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt


Jordi

“We talked about how easy it was to make the mistake of anthropomorphizing animals, and projecting our own feelings and perceptions on to them, where they were inappropriate and didn’t fit. We simply had no idea what it was like being an extremely large lizard, and neither for that matter did the lizard, because it was not self-conscious about being an extremely large lizard, it just got on with the business of being one. To react with revulsion to its behavior was to make the mistake of applying criteria that are only appropriate to the business of being human.”
– Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“I watched the gorilla’s eyes again, wise and knowing eyes, and wondered about this business of trying to teach apes language. Our language. Why? There are many members of our own species who live in and with the forest and know it and understand it. We don’t listen to them. What is there to suggest we would listen to anything an ape could tell us? Or that it would be able to tell us of its life in a language that hasn’t been born of that life? I thought, maybe it is not that they have yet to gain a language, it is that we have lost one.”
– Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See


Janus

“I didn't notice I was being set upon by a pickpocket, which I am glad of, because I like to work only with professionals.”
– Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

[robkelk]

(I thought that I’d find at least one quote for each active Superior without a writeup in this man’s work. Alas, I couldn’t find one for Janus in a quick scan of the Wikiquotes page... and the only one I found for Christopher is one that Rocket Man has already posted. But I’ll leave it in anyway, because I found the source for it.)

(And the forum says the list is too long for one post, so... Archangels in this post, Demon Princes in the next one.)


Christopher

“Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein


Jean

“How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?”
– “Doctor Pinero,” in Life-Line, by Robert A. Heinlein

“One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.”
– “Doctor Pinero,” in Life-Line, by Robert A. Heinlein

“The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100

“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, The Rolling Stones

“There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit — Will Travel

“When I don’t understand, I have an unbearable itch to know why.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit — Will Travel

“One can lead a child to knowledge, but one cannot make him think.”
– Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois (Ret.), in Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

“May it please milord Hero, the world is not what we wish it to be. It is what it is. No, I have over-assumed. Perhaps it is indeed what we wish it to be. Either way, it is what it is.”
– Star, Empress of the Twenty Universes, in Glory Road, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, the small fraction who do think mostly can’t do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion – in the long run these are the only people who count.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

“What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what ‘the stars foretell,’ avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable ‘verdict of history’ – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

“The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it – once you can honestly say, ‘I don’t know,’ then it becomes possible to get at the truth.”
– Gwen Novak, in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, by Robert A. Heinlein


Jordi

“How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset

“There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who ‘love Nature’ while deploring the ‘artificialities’ with which ‘Man has spoiled “Nature.”’ The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of ‘Nature’ — but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the Naturist reveals his hatred for his own race — i.e., his own self-hatred.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, The Pragmatics of Patriotism


Marc

“‘Value’ has no meaning other than in relationship to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human – ‘market value’ is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible.”
– Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois (Ret.), in Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

“$100 placed at 7 percent interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase to more than $100,000,000 — by which time it will be worth nothing.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein


Novalis

“I believe in my townspeople. You can knock on any door in our town say, ‘I’m hungry,’ and you will be fed. Our town is no exception; I’ve found the same ready charity everywhere. For the one who says, ‘To heck with you – I got mine,’ there are a hundred, a thousand, who will say, ‘Sure, pal, sit down.’”
– Robert A. Heinlein, on the radio program This I Believe, 1952

“I had taken a partner once before – but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, The Door Into Summer

“Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit — Will Travel

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
– Jubal Harshaw, in Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy — in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naïve, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as ‘empty,’ ‘meaningless,’ or ‘dishonest,’ and scorn to use them. No matter how ‘pure’ their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

“The more you love, the more you can love — and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

[robkelk]

Baal

“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that ‘violence never solves anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”
– Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois (Ret.), in Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

“There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.”
– Sergeant Charles Zim, in Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

“There are a dozen different ways of delivering destruction in impersonal wholesale, via ships or missiles of one sort or another, catastrophes so widespread, so unselective that the war is over because that nation or planet has ceased to exist. What we do is entirely different. We make war as personal as a punch in the nose.”
– Juan Rico, in Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

“A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

“It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein


Beleth

“I always get the shakes before a drop. I’ve had the injections, of course, and hypnotic preparation, and it stands to reason that I can’t really be afraid. The ship’s psychiatrist has checked my brain waves and asked me silly questions while I was asleep and he tells me that it isn’t fear, it isn’t anything important -- it’s just like the trembling of an eager race horse in the starting gate. I couldn’t say about that; I’ve never been a race horse. But the fact is: I’m scared silly, every time.”
– Juan Rico, in Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Remind me to write a popular article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.”
– Jubal Harshaw, in Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein


Belial

“Mike is like the first man to discover fire. Fire was there all along – after he showed them how, anybody could use it... anybody with sense enough not to get burned with it.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“I felt smothered and discovered that I had been holding my breath. So I gasped — and regretted it. Over a fire pit that vast there is blistering gas and smoke and carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and something that may be Satan’s halitosis, but not enough oxygen to matter.”
– Alex, in Job: A Comedy of Justice, by Robert A. Heinlein


Furfur

“That old saw about ‘to understand all is to forgive all’ is a lot of tripe. Some things, the more you understand the more you loathe them.”
– Juan Rico, in Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

“A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein


Kronos

“My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity... and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it.”
– Jubal Harshaw, in Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein

“I know, as the prime lesson of my profession, that good intentions are the source of more folly than all other causes put together.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road

“In a mature society, ‘civil servant’ is semantically equal to ‘civil master.’”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

“I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day.”
– Richard Ames, in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, by Robert A. Heinlein


Malphas

“Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong — but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star

“Our hymn book was loaded with such arrogance – mindless, conceited, self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us and us alone, and what hell everybody else was going to catch come Judgment Day.”
– Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“To claim to ‘respect’ and even to ‘love’ the great mass with their yaps at one end and smelly feet at the other requires the fatuous, uncritical, saccharine, blind, sentimental slobbishness found in some nursery supervisors, most spaniel dogs, and all missionaries.”
– Rufo, in Glory Road, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws – always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up.”
– Manny O’Kelly, in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein

“Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.”
– Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein


Saminga or the Archangel of Death

“The death rate is the same for us as for anybody ... one person, one death, sooner or later.”
– Captain Helen Walker, in Tunnel in the Sky, by Robert A. Heinlein

[Phoenix42]

@rob: you definitely have too much time on your hands... :)

Awesome stuff, I particularly liked the Douglas Adams quotes for Jean. I was going to add the quote about technology from the Salmon of Doubt myself, it's just perfect. Immediately prior to that quote, there's another one that I think is worth mentioning: "Here's how to tell if something is useful and does stuff or if it is just technology - technology usually comes with a manual."
(It's paraphrased, I don't have the book handy right now - but I think that on principle, all of Vapula's gadgets should come with a handbook :) )

An afterthought - some of Heinlein's quotes that you attribute to Baal may actually fit very nicely to Michael, too - especially in the are of freedom etc. - Just a thought.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Phoenix42

@rob: you definitely have too much time on your hands... :)

Yeah, I know. At least I'm putting it to some use... 8)

Originally Posted by Phoenix42

An afterthought - some of Heinlein's quotes that you attribute to Baal may actually fit very nicely to Michael, too - especially in the are of freedom etc. - Just a thought.

That they could... but Michael already has a writeup.

[Rocket Man]

One great science fiction writer deserves another ...

Beleth
"There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves."
--Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

Janus
"Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down."
Ray Bradbury, Brown Daily Herald, March 24, 1955

"Life is like underwear, should be changed twice a day. "
Ray Bradbury, A Graveyard for Lunatics

"Stuff your eyes with wonder . . . live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories."
--Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Jean
"People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it."
Ray Bradbury, Beyond 1984

Novalis
"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."
-- Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

"At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love."
--Ray Bradbury