Humorists From The United States

"Quantum illae stolae pependisti? You paid how much for that dress?"

"Having done these things, they made the sacrifices prescribed by custom lest they be found lacking in filial piety."

"Si hoc adfixum in obice legere potes, et liberaliter educatus et nimis popinquus ades. If you can read this bumper sticker, you are both very well educated and much too close."

"Si fractum non sit, noli id reficere. If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

"Anates tuas in acie instrue. Get your ducks in a row."

"Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinis alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes! If you can read this sign, you can get a good job in the fast-paced, high-paying world of Latin!"

"Perennial: Any plant which, had it lived, would have bloomed year after year."

"Lege atque lacrima. Read-em and weep."

"Sentio aliquos togatos contra me conspirare. I think some people in togas are plotting against me."

"Canis meus id comedit. My dog ate it."

"In a world that’s gone hellishly mad we’ve always taken comfort in the fact that the faith of our fathers is the one thing that remains solid and unchanging. It occurs to very few of us that perhaps for the last 2,500 years the faith of our fathers has been one of the main reasons why our world has gone hellishly mad."

"Spirits are as real as the powers they personify."

"Do I think I'm a holy man? Sometimes."

"It's all in your head — you just have no idea how big your head is."

"God and I will achieve Supreme Enlightenment at the same moment."

"Religion exalts mystery as an unknowable secret that must be sealed in glass like the corpse of an enchanted princess and fearfully worshipped from afar. Initiation, on the other hand, requires direct participation and demands each of us to smash the casket and press mad lips to mystery, wooing her as a lover who will offer up her treasurers in a succession of sweet surrenders. This she will do, but only in exact ratio to our evolving ability and worthiness to receive them."

"The gods of one age become the devils of the age to follow. The priests look forward to the age to come and see only the end of the world."

"It is the profoundest of cosmic ironies. The divine power, our true spiritual essence, does not achieve perfection until it hits the ‘rock’ bottom of the cosmos – the dense and crude earth. It remains imperfect until the moment of entombment for the simple reason that until that dark nadir is reached the experiential adventure of existence remains incomplete, and Self is not yet endowed with the entire spectrum of the light of consciousness – from spirit to matter – from the highest high to the lowest low."

"If we can’t wake up to the fact that deep down inside we are good, then we deserve to remain asleep dreaming we are evil."

"I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong."

"The purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived."

"Conservative: One who admires radicals a century after they're dead."

"The only thing I can say about W. C. Fields … is this: Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad."

"What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles?"

"Extremists think "communication" means agreeing with them."

"SECRETS ARE LIES SHARING IS CARING PRIVACY IS THEFT"

"What would transparency be if we could delete anything we felt was embarrassing in some way? You know we don't delete."

"When everything is known, everything acceptable will be accepted."

"I understand that we're obligated, as humans, to share what we see and know. And that all knowledge must be democratically accessible." "It's the natural state of information to be free."

"It's not that I'm not social. I'm social enough. But the tools you guys create actually manufacture unnaturally extreme social needs. No one needs the level of contact you're purveying. It improves nothing. It's not nourishing. It's like snack food. You know how they engineer this food? They scientifically determine precisely how much salt and fat they need to include to keep you eating. You're not hungry, you don't need the food, it does nothing for you, but you keep eating these empty calories. This is what you're pushing. Same thing. Endless empty calories, but the digital-social equivalent. And you calibrate it so it's equally addictive."

"If there's a locked door, I start to make up all kinds of stories about what might be behind it. I feel like it's some kind of secret, and it leads to me making up lies. But if all the doors are open, physically and metaphorically, there's only the one truth."

"It was selfish and nothing more. The same way a child doesn't want to share her favorite toy. I understand that secrecy is part of, well, an aberrant behavior system. It comes from a bad place, not a place of light and generosity. And when you deprive your friends, or someone like your son Gunner, of experiences like I had, you're basically stealing from them. You're depriving them of something they have a right to. Knowledge is a basic human right. Equal access to all possible human experience is a basic human right."

"You and yours at the Circle, you're gonna save all the souls. You're gonna get everyone in one place, you're gonna teach them all the same things. There can only be one morality, one set of rules. Imagine! Now all humans will have the eyes of God. You know this passage? 'All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of God.' Something like that. You know your Bible? Now we're all God. Every one of us will soon be able to see, and cast judgment upon, every other. We'll see what He sees. We'll articulate His judgment. We'll channel His wrath and deliver His forgiveness. On a constant and global level. All religion has been waiting for this, when every human is a direct and immediate messenger of God's will. Do you see what I'm saying?"

"The pain is not great. But the symbolism is disagreeable."

"Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome."

"I cannot count the times I have cursed our lack of urgency. If I ever love again, I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love."

"What are we allowed to do when we’re looking for things we’re required to do?"

"When we pass by another person without telling them we love them it’s cruel and wrong and we all know this."

"I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist."

"Openness is all, she thought. Truth was its own reward."

"What did we want? We want the world smaller and bigger and just the same but advancing. We don’t know what we want."

"I was feeling everything too much. Everything was pulling at my eyes."

"We’d have a motherfucking shitload of dogs! Horses. Peacocks. Oh to live among peacocks. I’d seen them once in person and they defied so many laws of color and gravity that they had to be made geniuses waiting to take over everything."

"There are people who meet strangers and people, like me, who know only those they’ve known from birth"

"I was a looker someone who looked over at every car at every traffic light, hoping something would happen, and almost never finding anyone looking back- always everyone looking forward, and every time I felt stupid. Why should people look over at you? Why would they care?"

"Toph does not know the words, and I know few of the words, but you cannot fucking stop us from singing"

"— Mr. Churchill you were given a mission. — Yes — I want to have been given your mission. I want your place in world events, the centrality of it. You were born in the cradle of a catapult! — You are wrong. I found my mission. — I disagree. — If you must. — Tell me: where is my mission? Where are my bunkers and trenches, my goddamn Gallipoli?"

"Hand took a breath and opened his palms, as if accepting the gift of rain. "YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY!" he bellowed into the cold exhausted city."

"But that in any city, in any cluster of people, there a few people who are awake at this hour, who are both awake and dancing, and it’s here that we need to be. That if we are living as we were this week, that we had to be awake with the people who are still dancing."

"Ooh, look at me, I’m Dave, I’m writing a book! With all my thoughts in it. La la la!"