Favourite quotes - Here's mine, Quite a long list. What's yours?

[Scott4030]

A few Aldo Leopold quotes:

“I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness”

“There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot”

“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life and dullness”

“Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal”

 

[BryceM]

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. - T. Roosevelt

 

[Altitude sickness]

The flaw in the sterile and cavalier attitude toward going out by nuclear weapon, is that it would not necessarily be quick. The survivors would face major unpredictable residual effects for generations.

I don’t think he meant to not respect or guard against Nuclear weapons and the effects.

But that there has always been painful drawn out deaths. And there always will be.

Live your lives. Don’t cower in the basement waiting for that miserable death.

 

[EBaker]

"But there were two things they agreed upon wholly and that were never spoken and that was that God had put horses on earth to work cattle and that other than cattle there was no wealth proper to a man." From All the Pretty Horses

"It must be a poor life that achieves freedom from fear." From A Sand County Almanac

"But the story I wish for most is the one in which I am back in those African highlands I grew to love, hunting the Cape buffalo I grew to love too, probably still scared, but only enough to make me sense my true heart nesting inside the cage of my ribs, beating, telling me, over and over, of what I am capable." From Augusts in Africa

"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings" From Blood Meridian

"They were said to fear God so much that there was no fear left over for anyone or anything else." In reference to Texans in the book Empire of the Summer Moon

 

[mitch4570]

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Teddy Rosevelt

 

[fourfive8]

I don’t think he meant to not respect or guard against Nuclear weapons and the effects.

But that there has always been painful drawn out deaths. And there always will be.

Live your lives. Don’t cower in the basement waiting for that miserable death.

Whatever. It was a long and rambling post in “favorite quotes” thread that made no sense, with little basis in reality. Which quote was @sgt_zim’s post responding to?

 

[BonUm16]

“…. (Texas) coffee isn’t really thick enough to patch a driveway; it’s more the consistency of drilling slurry. If you’re strong, you can stir it enough to dissolve some sugar. Don’t bother to add milk or cream; it won’t mix. I once drank half a cup and it left a stain on my teeth for a week. It took a whole plug of Cannonball to take the taste out of my mouth.” - Gene Hill

“Texans think well-done steak is part of the International Communist Conspiracy.” - Gene Hill

 

[sgt_zim]

The flaw in the sterile and cavalier attitude toward going out by nuclear weapon, is that it would not necessarily be quick. The survivors would face major unpredictable residual effects for generations.

C.S. Lewis was a great many things. "Cavalier" isn't one of them; nor is rambling. Is dying from radiation poisoning somehow worse than dying from the plague (mortality rate 90%+ in many cases)? Or tetanus (mortality rate 50%)? Or small pox (mortality rate 30%)? Or polio - a worry every summer?

Death in horrid form was the norm for mankind's entire existence, up until the last 80 or 90 years. Until the advent of sanitation, hygiene, and antibiotics, even in western Europe and the US, 60% all-cause mortality was from pathogenic microbes. In the west today, that number is down to about 5%. We are free of many of the ravages of the past, but we shouldn't mistakenly believe that to mean we are free of all ravages, that new ones won't arrive in the future, either. We've grown spoiled in not having to deal with the same things our grandparents and great grandparents did.

A bit of perspective is what Lewis is exhorting from us here.