Quote of the day

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.

Pericles

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That’s awesome. Do you have the citation?

Wiki has

We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.

but I’m not sure if these are both taken from the same line.

AI will not replace you. A person using AI will.

–Santiago Pino

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Cross-post of the day, in honor of Jacinda! :rainbow:

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That’s a substantive repost, but it’s a good one, so I’ll compromise by letting it live out its retirement here in this thread. :rainbow:

–Walker Percy (1916-1990), “The Loss of the Creature” (PDF format) (which I haven’t read), excerpted from The Message in the Bottle, (which I also haven’t read)

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image

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Now hang on.

I recall hearing it was actually Hitler’s line (not those exact words but the gist), yet I don’t see it here. Does anyone have a reliable citation?

Shake it! don’t break it!
It took your momma nine months to make it
—Brother Marquis

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I couldn’t find a clear attribution either. Apparently something similar was said by Hitler, but I have no idea when or where.

My guess is that it was an idea that was evolved between the two of them, and perhaps not spelled out in a single quote, but in fragments that were pieced together into something highfalutin’ by other writers.

I suppose it’s doubly hard to search for because the original - if there was one - would obviously have been in German.

Iirc it was supposedly in his book and in a totally different context from how it’s usually understood in the various versions attributed to Goebbels – he was accusing the Brits of doing it wrt WWI, or something. (I just never got around to reading the damn thing.)

image

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All scientific work is incomplete. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, or to postpone the action that it appears to demand at a given time.

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Some people say funny things, but I say things funny.

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About this one in FPP: it wasn’t Voltaire.

It was actually… a Neo-Nazi.

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“If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings, I say, ‘I’m still waiting to hear what your point is.’ In this country I’ve been told, ‘That’s offensive,’ as if those two words constitute an argument or a comment. Not to me they don’t.”

–Christopher Hitchens

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