Themes

"O print-clad damsel, fresh and fair, Bending above the threshold there On supple knees and swaying line, And honeyed curve—dear maid, be mine."

"I shit on the chest of Fun."

"Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don't try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human."

"Wonder Woman: Poor child! You've lived a terrible life- gloomy. tragic. You're fun starved! You must learn to play!"

"Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious. Islam does not allow swimming in the sea and is opposed to radio and television serials."

"Don't ever become a pessimist … a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."

"The Beatles, "She's leaving home""

"People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing."

"Live and work but do not forget to play, to have fun in life and really enjoy it."

"Fun without sell gets nowhere, but sell without fun tends to become obnoxious."

"Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business."

"Entertainment, in the form in which it is enjoyed today, is a vain escape from the problems of life towards the immediate acceptance of the most striking aspects of life itself. It does not seek serenity but oblivion, not peace but agitation, not enjoyment but orgy. And so the underlying problems remain hidden and the possibilities for their solution recede. It is not the marginal forms, labelled “escapism”, that constitute the most serious form of escapism, but the dominant forms, preferred by the multitude, accepted without question, encouraged by success. And in the face of these, the question arises: what will “entertain” us from entertainment?"

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."

"The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people — that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature."

"If it's not fun, you're not doing it right."

"“It was a coincidence.” “I don’t believe in coincidences.” “Neither do I. That’s a coincidence, isn’t it?”"

"Of course, I’m only indulging in mankind’s vice of trying to make a symbol out of coincidence."

"This is just too much of a coincidence to be coincidence."

"Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys."

"A “strange coincidence,” to use a phrase By which such things are settled nowadays."

"I long to create something that can’t be used to keep us passive: I want to write a script about plumbing, how every pipe is joined to every other."

"An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

"“Fifty-nine,” Mr. Mowen said. “That’s too many coincidences to just be a coincidence.”"

"I have told you before there is no escaping the nature of the universe. it is that nature that has again brought you to me. Where some see 'coincidence', I see 'consequence'. Where others see 'chance', I see 'cost'."

"In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted."

"The laws of probability not only permit coincidences; they absolutely insist on them."

"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."

"The First Insight occurs when we become conscious of the coincidences in our lives... Coincidences are happening more and more frequently and that, when they do, they strike us as beyond what would be expected by pure chance... They feel destined, as though our lives had been guided by some unexplained force. The experience induces a feeling of mystery and excitement and, as a result, we feel more alive.... More people every day are convinced that this mysterious movement is real and that it means something, that something else is going on beneath everyday life. This awareness is the First Insight... a reconsideration of the inherent mystery that surrounds our individual lives on this planet. We are experiencing these mysterious coincidences, and even though we don't understand them yet, we know they are real. We are sensing again, as in childhood, that there is another side of life that we have yet to discover, some other process operating behind the scenes. p. 8"

"People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be."

"It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur."

"Most coincidences are simply chance events that turn out to be far more probable than many people imagine."

"If Tom had learned anything, it was that you can't ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple Earthly event. Coincidence, that's all anything ever is. Nothing more, than coincidence. Tom had finally learned there are no miracles, there is no such thing as fate, nothing is meant to be. He knew, he was sure of it now. Tom was.. he was pretty sure."

"Coincidence is a pimp and a cardsharper in ordinary fiction but a marvelous artist in the patterns of facts recollected by a non-ordinary memorist."

"Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which — miraculously, it seems — merge into a significant event."

"By the laws of statistics we could probably approximate just how unlikely it is that it would happen. But people forget—especially those who ought to know better, such as yourself—that while the laws of statistics tell you how unlikely a particular coincidence is, they state just as firmly that coincidences do happen."

"My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidences? My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidences?"

"In republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority."

"In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them."

"How a minority, Reaching majority, Siezing authority, Hates a minority!"

"In God's world, there are no majorities, no minorities; one, on God's side, is a majority."

"Majority rule is a precious, sacred thing worth dying for. But—like other precious, sacred things, such as the home and the family—it's not only worth dying for; it can make you wish you were dead. Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a suit, would be stonewashed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library. And—since women are a majority of the population—we’d all be married to Mel Gibson."

"Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. And so tonight—to you, the great of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support."

"In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority."

"It is quite plain that your government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy."

"The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force."

"A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people."

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

"As for the Minority, its very existence proves that it does not recognise the Authority of the Majority, since forming a minority means precisely being opposed to the majority, and so 'reacting' (in one way or another) against its acts. But, where there is no Authority, 'reactions' can only be removed by force. Therefore, wherever the Majority claims a sui generis would-be 'Authority' resulting form its sheer number, it is in fact claiming pure and simple force. (A regime that is based purely and solely on a majority is a regime founded on force only. The 'majority' regime can therefore be contrasted with the 'authoritarian' one; the latter rests on Authority, while the former rests on force.)"

"The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority. Yes, the damned, compact, liberal majority."

"I'm plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie."