Nathaniel Eliot

"And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

Henry V, Scene IV, Act iii

"HA! HA HA HA! You wanted to spend a million years having sex with catgirls. It only took you two years to change your mind and you didn't even have sex with any catgirls."
-- Eliezer Yudkowsky, Overcoming Bias: Interpersonal Entanglement

"We do not influence the course of events by persuading people that we are right when we make what they regard as radical proposals. Rather, we exert influence by keeping options available when something has to be done at a time of crisis."
-- Milton Friedman

"Happiness itself meant nothing. Life without it was unbearable, but as an end in itself, it was not enough."
- Greg Egan, 'Reasons To Be Cheerful', from the Luminous collection of short stories

"I find myself thinking of a checklist Wozniak wrote a few years ago describing how to become a genius. His advice was straightforward yet strangely terrible: You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life. It is a severe prescription."
-- Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm, by Gary Wolf

Its either a lame hippie hairband, or the material focus for the most powerful abjuration ever.

Probably both.
-- Xykon, Order of the Stick #532

I'm uncertain on Steven Brust's Firefly fanfic, My Own Kind of Freedom. The internal monologues break some of the enjoyment of Firefly: they lose the subtle interactions which showed (without telling) each character's inner conflicts, and turn foreshadowing into punch-telegraphy by revealing too much, too soon. However, the dialog and plotting are on par with the show, and contain little gems:

He got up, went back to the bucket, and continued cleaning the wall. River found another sponge and knelt down to help him.

"Art," she said as they wiped it away.

Simon looked at her.

"It's the second person present singular form of the verb 'to be,'" she said.

"I knew that," he told her.

Plus, its nice to see established writers aren't above fanfic or Creative Commons licensed works.

flamingnerd writes:

I asked her, "do you have any negative self talk?" She burst into laughter and said, "Do I ever fart?!" And I got it. EVERYONE has negative self talk. And some people are more flatulent in that regard than others. And it's ok. It's normal, not some great tragedy.

She went on to tell me of a talk given by a young Buddhist priest. "When you beat yourself with a stick just beat yourself with a stick and don't beat yourself for beating yourself."

Thanks to nationelectric for sharing the good reminder.

"Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up you get a lot of scum on the top."
- Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

"Fourth, publicly expressed beliefs advertise the intellectual virtuosity of the belief-holder, creating an incentive to craft clever and extravagant beliefs rather than just true ones. This explains much of what goes on in academia."

"The statement that the mind is designed to ‘find out truths’ would seem to be a rather misleading summary of the past fifty years of research on human reasoning."
-- Steven Pinker, So How Does The Mind Work?

Good-bye — if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico — ah, that is euthanasia!
-- Ambrose Bierce, in one of his last letters to his niece, Lora

"Indifference is not the beginning of the process, it is the end. If I am indifferent to you I will be indifferent to myself. Anger may be an inspiration. At the moment when you are angry you can organize a movement. If you are indifferent, however, it is finished."
-- Elie Weisel describing the Mussulmen, Holocaust victims who'd given up

My great-great-grandfather wrote a letter to his local council of ministers back in the 1930s. It made it's way, through the generations, to me; when my mother showed it to me, I asked to keep it. I've refered to it before, but my original intention was to transcribe it. I have copied it here word for word, adding links to explain what are now minor historical references instead of current events.

The letter is four typewritten pages long, and verbose, but it carries an important message; one that (while I doubt any read my journal) I wish more ministers today would read and take to heart.

( R.V. Sears to the The Bucyrus Ministerial Association. Bucyrus, Ohio, September 22, 1931. )

---

Edit: Cleaned up the spelling, except for the original misspelling of Munchhausen, who wouldn't have had a problem with fictional spellings of his name anyway. Good thing I'm not trying to get paid for transcription anymore, eh?

I recently snapped at domina_lilith, for heaping abuse on the unsuccessful again.  All through writing that, however, I felt there was a larger topic that I wasn't addressing.  Thanks to ethicalhedonism, I can be lazy:

Which is precisely why we need to be kept busy. If we have no time to think, to mull, if we have no time to piece together the sudden associations and unexpected, mid-shower insights that are the stuff of independent opinion, then we are less citizens than cursors, easily manipulated, vulnerable to the currents of power.
  -- Mark Slouka, Quitting the Paint Factory

This is why I get so frustrated: you're otherwise bright and savvy people, but you don't consider the downside of the Protestant Work Ethic.  A good Protestant is too tired to question God, or those who speak on his behalf.  Worst, some of you fight tooth and nail against other beliefs, to keep from feeling foolish in your own.

---

In other words: Repent, Quit Your Job, SLACK OFF! You have been driven to the brink of INSANITY by the Conspiracy!

"When the Know-Nothings get control, it [the Declaration of Independence] will read: "All men are created equal except negroes, foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."
-- Abraham Lincoln, letter to Joshua F. Speed, August 24, 1855

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure....

If today he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us," but he will say to you, "Be silent; I see it, if you don't.""
-- Abraham Lincoln, in an 1848 letter to his law partner, William Herndon

"I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal His will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed that He would reveal it directly to me ... These are not, however, the days of miracles.... I must study the plain, physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be wise and right."
-- Abraham Lincoln, in a speech to an assembly of clergymen

All quotes taken from a Positive Atheism's Big List of Quotations.

"Fear is a powerful motivating tool."
- Station manager, describing station's marketing philosophy.

"You like this outfit? Nickie dressed me this morning."
- Mitch, assignment editor.

"Oh, Mitch! May I see you in my office for a moment?"
- Nickie, managing editor and wife of state senator.

"To tell you the truth, Nickie, I did try to spread the rumor you were having an affair with Mitch. But everyone I told it to had already heard it."
- Helicopter pilot, responding to damage control effort by Nickie.

Just when you thought the news couldn't get any stranger...

“So my dad took me aside, put his arm around me, and said, ’Szandor, you know I like that girlfriend of yours, but she is crazy. Not a little crazy, really crazy. Maybe she won’t be crazy forever, but if she gets better, it won’t be because of you. Trust me, I know this. You can’t fuck a crazy girl sane, son.’”
-- Eastern Standard Tribe