Quotes about monster page 6
“It's proof that open-source can breed monsters just like the commercial pros.”
Doug McIlroy (1932) American computer scientist, mathematician, engineer, and programmer
Doug McIlroy (2013). In their own words: Unix pioneers remember the good times http://www.networkworld.com/article/2168942/servers/in-their-own-words--unix-pioneers-remember-the-good-times.html <br class="br">Context: I don't know the counts of Unix and Linux servers. I do know that my heart sinks whenever I look under the hood in Linux. It is has been so overfed by loving hands. Over 240 system calls! Gigabytes of source! A C compiler with a 250-page user manual (not counting the language definition)! A simple page turner, 'less,' has over 40 options and 60 commands! It's proof that open-source can breed monsters just like the commercial pros. Miraculously, though, this monster works.
“I will set a Wednesday-term to the monster.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer
On confronting the Siren-Zo of Sireneca, in Ch. 4
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: "'Monday and Tuesday and Monday and Tuesday and Monday and Tuesday,' so the poor slaves had to sing in their labor for the puca. And finally a great savior broke the charm. 'And Wednesday too' he said, and then it was all over with."
"Roadstrum is the great savior who breaks the charm," Roadstrum announced. "I will set a Wednesday-term to the monster. But there are other elements in this…"
Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist
The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
Context: They both spoke nobly at the end, they kept faith with their vows for each other. They left a great heritage of love, devotion, faith, and courage — all done with the sure intention that holy Anarchy should be glorified through their sacrifice and that the time would come that no human being should be humiliated or be made abject. Near the end of their ordeal Vanzetti said that if it had not been for "these thing" he might have lived out his life talking at street corners to scorning men. He might have died unmarked, unknown, a failure. "Now, we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler — all! That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph."
This is not new — all the history of our world is pocked with it. It is very grand and noble in words and grand, noble souls have died for it — it is worth weeping for. But it doesn't work out so well. In order to annihilate the criminal State, they have become criminals. The State goes on without end in one form or another, built securely on the base of destruction. Nietzsche said: "The State is the coldest of all cold monsters," and the revolutions which destroy or weaken at least one monster bring to birth and growth another.
“It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.”
Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers
Beautiful Losers (1966)
Context: What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.
Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler
I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)
Context: I view the traditional two parties as in some ways very evil. They've become monsters that are out of control. The two parties don't have in mind what's best for Minnesota. The only things that are important to them are their own agendas and their pork. Government's become just a battle of power between the two parties. But now that Minnesota has a governor who truly comes from the private sector, a lot of light's going to be shed on how the system is unfair to people outside the two parties.
George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian
Around the Cragged Hill : A Personal and Political Philosophy (1994), p. 143
Context: We are, if territory and population be looked at together, one of the great countries of the world — a monster country, one might say, along with others such as China, India, the recent Soviet Union, and Brazil. And there is a real question as to whether "bigness" in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.
Margaret Atwood book Morning in the Burned House
Morning in the Burned House (1995), The Loneliness of the Military Historian
Context: Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that can be finally buried.
Finish one off, and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.
Brutality wins frequently,
and large outcomes have turned on the invention
of a mechanical device, viz. radar.
True, valour sometimes counts for something,
as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right —
though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition,
is decided by the winner.
Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades
and burst like paper bags of guts
to save their comrades.
I can admire that.
But rats and cholera have won many wars.
Those, and potatoes,
or the absence of them.
Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz
Ch 1
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Homo
Context: He had never seen a "Fallout," and he hoped he'd never see one. A consistent description of the monster had not survived, but Francis had heard the legends. He crossed himself and backed away from the hole. Tradition told that the Beatus Leibowitz himself had encountered a Fallout, and had been possessed by it for many months before the exorcism which accompanied his Baptism drove the fiend away.
Brother Francis visualized a Fallout as half-salamander, because, according to tradition, the thing was born in the Flame Deluge, and as half-incubus who despoiled virgins in their sleep, for, were not the monsters of the world still called "children of the Fallout"? That the demon was capable of inflicting all the woes which descended upon Job was recorded fact, if not an article of creed.
“An awful misshapen monster, huge, his eyelight lost.”
Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book III, Line 658 (tr. Mandelbaum); of Polyphemus.
“We're sleeping underneath the bed to scare
The monsters out”
St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter
"The Bed"
Actor (2009)
Context: We're sleeping underneath the bed to scare
The monsters out
With our dear daddy's Smith and Wesson. We've got to teach them all a lesson.
Paul F. Tompkins (1968) American actor
Context: This [ the Chick-fil-A same-sex marriage controversy] is the perfect American conundrum because it's like: “Ah, you know, we should be moving forward as a country, but also— I want to eat just so much trash, like a garbage monster, as much as I can.”...
Now that you know this shit, don't eat that fuckin' sandwich anymore! It's that simple! You can't get it out of your mind, you know it, you know it, you'll always know it! You can't stop knowing it.
And really— don't fuckin' eat Chick-fil-A! What are you doing?— it's garbage! Treat yourself better. Even if you're not going to treat other people who don't have the same rights as you better, treat yourself better than that.
Brian W. Aldiss book Outside
Outside (1955)
Context: "There's a way outside. We're — we've got to find out what we are." His voice rose to an hysterical pitch. He was shaking Calvin again. "We must find out what's wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment — or we're all monsters!"
“Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life.”
Albert Camus book Reflections on the Guillotine
Reflections on the Guillotine (1957)
Context: Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date on which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life.
“The sleep of reason produces monsters.”
Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)
1790s
William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist
Book V, Chapter 13
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)
Lucy Parsons (1853–1942) American communist anarchist labor organizer
"Southern Lynching" (April 1892)
Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer
The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor, p. 458
The Visitor (2002)
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India
June 1940 speech. (Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Publications Division Government of India, 1999), vol. 78, p. 349. https://www.gandhiservefoundation.org/about-mahatma-gandhi/collected-works-of-mahatma-gandhi/ <br class="br">1940s
John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)
Independence Day address (1821)
Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America
2010s, 2019, October, Statement on the Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
Speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work (March 12, 1957), 1st pocket edition, pp. 26-27
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (The Little Red Book)
Charles Stross The Laundry Files
Source: The Laundry Files, The Fuller Memorandum (2010), Chapter 5, “Lost in Committee” (p. 77)
J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)
Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Perils of Over-population, pp. 149–150
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India
Letter to Hitler. 24 December 1940. Quoted from Koenraad Elst: Return of the Swastika (2007). (Also in https://web.archive.org/web/20100310135408/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/gandhihitler.html) <br class="br">1940s
Annie Dillard (1945) American writer
" The Force That Drives the Flower https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1973/11/the-force-that-drives-the-flower/308963/", The Atlantic, Nov. 1973
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman
Letter to Richard Burke (c. 10 October 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 30
1780s
Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator
The Beast of Property (1884)
Steve Perry book The Man Who Never Missed
Source: The Man Who Never Missed (1985), Chapter 14 (p. 124)
Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter
However, at times I come across works of mine which are soundly done and really in my style, and at such moments I find great solace. But no more of that. Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters?
Quote in a letter, 20 Nov. 1883; as quoted in Painting Outside the lines, Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, ed. David W. Galenson, Harvard University Press, 30 Jun 2009, p. 84
1880's
Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer
Gennaro Gattuso, 2012 http://www.acmilan.com/pt/news/breaking_news_show/19502 <br class="br">From former and current footballers
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Priest
Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
What if you're wrong about the great Juju at the bottom of the sea? <br class="br">Answering audience questions after a reading of The God Delusion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmskXXetcg, Randolph-Macon Woman's College, <br class="br">Posed question: "This is probably going to be the most simplest one for you to answer, but: What if you're wrong?"
China Miéville book The 9th Technique
The 9th Technique (p. 101)
Short Fiction, Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)
Liu Xiao Ling Tong (1959) Chinese actor
(zh-CN) 我不希望下一次再有小朋友问我,孙悟空到底交了几个妖精女朋友。<br><br>Source: 六小龄童:不希望再被问孙悟空有几个妖精女友, 羊城晚报, 搜狐新闻, 2016-01-04, 2019-01-30 http://news.sohu.com/20160104/n433369454.shtml,
Liu Xiao Ling Tong (1959) Chinese actor
(zh-CN) 孙悟空怎么能跟女妖谈恋爱呢?要恶搞,回去恶搞你爷爷奶奶去,别恶搞《西游记》!
Source: [六小龄童:要恶搞,就去恶搞你爷爷奶奶!, http://book.people.com.cn/GB/69360/5535778.html, People's Daily Online, 11 January 2019, 29 March 2007]
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author
The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Fame
Georg Forster book A Voyage Round the World
Book III, ch. II, Account of our stay at Tanna, and departure from the New Hebrides.
A Voyage Round the World (1777)
“Someday, he thought, I would like to meet a monster who looked like a monster.”
Ira Levin book The Boys from Brazil
The Boys from Brazil (1976)
“It’s a shame everyone is so afraid of sharks but we love our monsters.”
Source: Sean Daly Live at Shark Con-Julie Andersen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxL0X3uZIy0 (May 3, 2014)
John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994) American serial killer and torturer
Source: CBS 2 News interview (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2EhSJM33HI
“War is a voracious monster, never satiated.”
Sergio Mattarella (1941) 12th President of Italy
[Speech by President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe], (Strasbourg, April 27, 2022)