Underappreciated quotations

[Xavier Cromartie 0]

Intellectual elites are familiar with famous passages such as "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" (Julius Caesar) and "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" (Macbeth). What are some lesser-known quotations that deserve greater recognition? Or, what works that aren't exactly on the "world classic" level nonetheless have moments of greatness?

 

I read The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury when I was 19. It was an ok sci-fi collection, but —And the Moon Be Still as Bright (© 1948) had some interesting passages, particularly the following one:

 

"They knew how to live with nature and get along with nature. They didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal. That's the mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered that Darwin and our religions didn't mix. Or at least we didn't think they did. We were fools. We tried to budge Darwin and Huxley and Freud. They wouldn't move very well. So, like idiots, we tried knocking down religion.

 

"We succeeded pretty well. We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us answers to all things. But it went down the drain with Freud and Darwin. We were and still are a lost people."

 

"And these Martians are a found people?" inquired the captain.

 

"Yes. They knew how to combine science and religion so the two worked side by side, neither denying the other, each enriching the other."

Much like the moment when the current President of the United States went to Trinity United Church of Christ and "imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones" (Dreams from My Father, p. 294), this passage opened me up to the idea that instead of rejecting spirituality in favor of science, I could develop my own spiritual/philosophical system that would be in harmony with science and nature.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

It's not literature per se, but the last paragraph in Edward W. Said's Culture and Imperialism is pretty fantastic

 

No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting points, which if followed into actual experience for more than a moment are quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact is about the connections between things; in Eliot's phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the "other echoes [that] inhabit the garden." It is more rewarding--and more difficult--to think concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally, about others than only about "us." But this also means not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them into hierarchies, above all, not constantly reiterating how "our" culture or country is number one (or not number one, for that matter). For the intellectual there is quite enough of value to do without that.

 

Words to live by.

[Xavier Cromartie 0]

No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about.

I agree with the overall sentiment of that passage. But, I think that the quoted section in particular sounds distinctly left-wing, and the left and right will generally have differing views about it. At a physiological level, left-wing individuals are in greater harmony with the desire for 'freedom from want,' whereas right-wing individuals are in greater harmony with the desire for 'freedom from fear.' The ideas of change, complexity, novelty, creativity, and rebelliousness are a fundamental part of a left-wing individual's worldview, just as the ideas of stability, order, familiarity, conformity, and loyalty are a fundamental part of a right-wing individual's worldview.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

From Eugene V. Debs' speech at his sentencing hearing, where he was convicted and given 10 years in prison and permanently disenfranchised for giving antiwar speeches:

 

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

"Glory is fleeting. Obscurity is forever."

 

-Napoleon Bonaparte.

 

Talk about ironic.

[The Metal Maniac 0]

I love how, after all the battles that guy fought and won, most people only know of one battle Napoleon was involved in - the one he lost.

 

And here's a quote I've always liked, from Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, which, despite what the movie would lead you to believe, is actually a pretty decent book.

 

"Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me King of Kings - I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives, but neither Gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can ensure that I will catch it."

 

That me be slightly paraphrased as I don't have my copy handy.

[Ravenbomb 0]

My favorite quote ever:

 

"We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it's not even true."

-Guildenstern, from Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"