What is your favorite quote of all time?

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."

• Picard

Here are a few nice ones, I can't really pick:

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” - John Maynard Keynes

(You can also apply this one to proprietary software vs. Free software (don't say open source in my presence))

“The tyrants are only great because we are on our knees.” - Étienne de La Boétie

“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” - Rosa Luxemburg

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."

• Ernest Hemingway (though I'll admit, I first heard it in Kingsman)

We do not inherit the world from our ansestors, we borrow it from our children. -Antoine de Saint Exupéry

"I'd love to agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong."

“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”

“The brutally honest care more about the brutality than the honesty.”

“Reasonable people can disagree reasonably.”

I can’t live up to those ideals but it would be cruel to myself and others to stop trying to.

“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, direct, easy to understand and wrong.“

 - Paraphrased H.L Mencken 

“To study religion is merely to know the mind of man, but if one truely wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.”

 - Iain Banks

“I believe that children are our future. Unless we stop them now.”

-  Homer Simpson

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” ― Steven Weinberg

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy.

• Abraham Lincoln

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

• Douglas Adams

I don't want to believe, I want to know - Carl Sagan

"Not everything's a lesson Ryan. Sometimes you just fail."

• Dwight Schrute :D

Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. - Mark Twain

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)

It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life. -Jean-Luc Picard - Star Trek - The Next Generation

As someone who loves space:

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke

Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go. -Jamie Anderson

Good people do good things and bad people do evil things but for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

“Be excellent to each other”

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence,—it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

-George Washington (allegidly) The true author is debatable, but the quote is accurate, none the less.

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.

• E.V. Debs

"Oh no, not again." -Bowl of Petunias

'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

-George Orwell

"The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few."

Not growing up with TOS, I always thought this quote was super old, like Greek philosopher stuff. Nope. It was friggin Spock! I gotta believe that the sentiment had to have existed long before Star Trek though. If it wasn't, then... That sucks.

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”

• Nelson Mandela

I struggle with this one a lot, I definitely have a lot of resentment built up as I've grown up. But holding all in just makes my life worse, it only hurts me. It is mental prison of sorts. I think there's another Mandela quote that states exactly that as well.

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little removed? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.

• Unknown soldier

"Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you."

Tyron Lannister

I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.

Kurt Vonnegut

“I’m Batman.”

Some context, Batman says this frequently when explaining why a man dressed up as a Bat is there to a confused onlooker.

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

-G.K. Chesterton

your future hasn't been written yet. No one's has. Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one.

From Back to the Future.

"Gentlemen, I don’t know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change geography"

General Sir Charles Harrington

Just before one of the largest non-nuclear explosions was detonated.

“You build bridges your entire life and no one calls you a bridge builder, however you suck one dick and all of a sudden you’re a removed.”

• Someone

"Comfort was the answer to all life's problems. It didn't solve them, but it made them more distant for a bit as they quietly worsened."

• Welcome to nightvale

There are tons of quotes I like. Below are some of my favorites.

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. - The Brothers Karamazov (book) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I don't want to live someone else's idea of how to live. Don't ask me to do that. I don't want to find out one day that I'm at the end of someone else's life. - Out of Africa (movie) by Sydney Pollack

Someone once told me the definition of hell; on your last day on earth, the person you could have become will meet the person you became. - Anonymous

The world needs fewer cynics and more skeptics.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke

I had a favorite quote growing up. I'm not sure if it's still my favorite today but it was

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding. – Albert Einstein

If I had to choose a quote today it would probably be the one that goes something like "What you do in life is ultimately insignificant but you should do it anyways"

It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.

Please don't ask me to explain it because I don't know, but the writer/musician John Darneille of the Mountain Goats once wrote "God is present in the sweeping gestures, but the devil is in the details". I just really like it even though I'm stuck on its meaning.

"If you're not falling, you're not learning". No idea who said it but it was about skateboarding at the time. It works for everything though.

"You gotta learn to live between the lines". From Big Deal by the Dead Milkmen.

"I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee...",

Unknown Soldier - Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Money can't buy happiness; but at least you can live miserably in comfort

Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

As soon as you're born, you start dying, so you might as well have a good time. - John McCrea

There are only two things that are infinite. The universe and the stupidity of man. I’m not sure about the universe, though.

• Albert Einstein

"If soulmates exist, they're not found, they're made"

"And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.’"

~ Kurt Vonnegut

Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

-Samuel Beckett

"No matter where you go, there you are"
– Dr. Buckaroo Banzai

"The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry."

Good is not the enemy of perfect.

You fucked up. You trusted us.

From Animal House

Cormac Mccarthy:

"Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get anywhere."

"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, and loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."

No matter how dark the night, morning always comes. And our journey begins anew. - Lulu FFX

It's from the video game Final Fantasy X, but it's still such an amazing qoute

You make choices, but in the end, choices really make you.

I have many but here is one I wanna tattoo.

"This is your life, and is ending one minute at the time"

Also:

"Do what you can't"

One must imagine sisyphus happy.

"A day may come when the courage of men fails when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day.” An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down. But it is not this day. This day we fight"

Martin Luther King Jr.

“The only common factor in all of your failures, is you.”

-Meh, I don’t know

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.

Woody Allen

“Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.”

― Euripides

I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot.

Ramón Maria Narváez (1800-68). Said on his deathbed, when asked by a priest if he forgave his enemies.

Not that I’m in favor if shooting people :) It’s just so deliciously unapologetic and I love the setting in which it is said.

Chocolate does not ask. Chocolate understands.

Security is mostly an illusion; it does not exist in nature. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

• Hellen Keller

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." GRRM

The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will

both gramsci

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Alan Kay

I can't pick just one.

Now the world has gone to bed

Darkness won't engulf my head

I can see by infra-red

How I hate the night

-- Douglas Adams, hgttg, Page 444.

When you see yourself doing something badly, and no one's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.

-- Randy Pausch, the last lecture

Just go YouTube The Last Lecture. It takes an hour but you will come away different.

Life is too short to please everybody.

“The American public knows what it wants, and it deserves to get it… good and hard.” - H.L. Mencken

“Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul and set you free from all your sins. Sometimes a woman is a heroin addiction - you are a junkie, you are my best friend. Let her go.” - The Bad Examples

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

"...because if just one of those things gets down here, then all of this... bullshit, that you think is so important, well, you can kiss all that goodbye."

• Ellen Ripley

george lucas' greatest accomplishment is that he created an alien that accurately represented seven racial stereotypes

The world belongs to the intelligent, the universe belongs to the wise.

~ Matshona Dhliwayo

"Cause nothin' moves faster than the hands of time"

Current mood is a toss up between

"I dream of a society where I would be guillotined as a conservative." - Proudhon / "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member" - Marx (Groucho)

"All I know is that I know nothing", Socrates

Took me decades to really understand what he meant.

Yeah, I always wanted to be a well known idiot. - Niko Bellic, after not wanting to appear on camera associated with a street justice man

"Be careful what you wish for"

--Aesop--

“Can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re kidding.” TMBG

“Everything is a dildo if you’re brave enough.” Abe Lincoln

“Someone told me once that there’s a right and wrong, and that punishment would come to those who dare to cross the line. But it must not be true for jerk-offs like you. Maybe it takes longer to catch a total asshole. But I’m tired of waiting. Maybe it’s just bullshit and I should play God, and shoot you myself.”

Maynard

Familiarity breeds contempt

"Don't whistle while you're pissing." ---Hagbard Celine - Illuminatus by Robert Anton Wilson

If we could understand but a single flower it could change our lives.

No clear attribution I could find.

"Man was born free, but everywhere is in chains." -Rousseau

“Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this, they resemble the theologians, who likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirs is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God. When the economists say that present-day relations – the relations of bourgeois production – are natural, they imply that these are the relations in which wealth is created and productive forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature. These relations therefore are themselves natural laws independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus, there has been history, but there is no longer any” -- Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy

Drink 'N Thrive... /s

Who wants to be consistent? The dullard and the doctrinaire, the tedious people who carry out their principles to the bitter end of action, to the reductio ad absurdum of practice. Not I. Like Emerson, I write over the door of my library the word ‘Whim.’

From Intentions, by Oscar Wilde. It's one of my favorite books, all of the essays there are amazing, I definitely recommend anyone giving it a read.

You’ll never get the hang of our game if you keep thinking in flat-earth imagery of right and left, good and evil, up and down. If you need a group label for us, we’re political non-Euclideans. But even that’s not true. Sink me, nobody of this tub agrees with anybody else about anything, except maybe what the fellow with the horns told the old man in the clouds: Non serviam.” Hagbard Celine

"Without challenge there is nothing, and in nothing there is only gloom. In such a state, the difference between absolute power and absolute powerlessness is undetectable."

Might be stretching the bounds of this question because it's a passage from Grapes of Wrath, but it always gets me.

"Two tears in a bucket, motherfuck it"

The Lady Chablis

HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!