The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things - bread and circuses!
-Juvenal


Googled to get exact quote and had an ad promise me Low prices on Bread and Circuses at Amazon


Pretty much sums it up for me.

Cultural pessimists - getting it wrong since the first century AD.

In a similar sentiment, but on a different topic:
Hesiod ca. 700 BC

I found two qoutes with more or less the same content, that are even older than that, but they are both in German.

Perhaps true in poker...

From literature but inspired by a real character (Joseph Bell):

Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically.

~ Sherlock Holmes

"If Lenin were alive today he would now be in prison" because of the "dependence of the best helmsman on the winds and on favorable or contrary currents".

Nadezhda Krupskaya (Lenin's widow), 1926.


"Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness."

Trotsky

And maybe somebody can help me out with this one; paraphrase is:

History teaches no lessons, but punishes those who do not learn them.

Similar to a quote by George Santayana - "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

Edit - Just seen it's already been posted.

It is similar to this but adds the wisdom that many of the biggest historical failures have been due to people trying to 'remember the past' so that they don't 'repeat it' (e.g. appeasement during WWII, the Bolsheviks in Russia indirectly causing the one man rule of Stalin by taking actions designed to prevent 'Bonapartism' i.e. one man rule).

"I win with White because I have White. I win with Black because I am Steinitz." -Wilhelm Steinitz

83 posts and no Twain?

"All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure."

don't see how that works

How did Howard Stern, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, et al get so successful?

don't know who they are, but I can think of a few scenarios where that quote fails, poker would be one of them. How many of you love to be sitting with someone live who is a self established pro that couldn't beat online 25nl?

more like confidence and ignorance gives people the opportunity to succeed

Lol, I think you're being a little nitty here

Sorry for the derail, but this thread got me to google Mark Twain quotes (as I occasionally do). As always, I got absolutely blown away. Great thread, Le Boeuf.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/au...ark_twain.html

yeah being very nitty, but I stand by it; I read quotes to learn/be inspired somewhat, so want them to be logical

Howard Stern, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck lol

Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens

imagination is more important than knowledge.

Twain is being satirical, which is admittedly a little harder to parse than logical.

"Law don't go around here Lawdog."
- Ike Clanton



PTB

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do -Bob Dylan

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever -Napoleon Bonaparte

This above all, to thine own self be true. -William Shakespeare

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse. -Isaac Asimov

We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time. -Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. -Martin Luther King, Jr

I'll leave it at that or I'll post 100 of them.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

- Goethe

I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you **** with me, I’ll kill you all. - Gen. James Mattis, USMC to Iraqi leaders, 2006

Least favorite quote as a historian:

"Anyone who uses history to criticize the present shall have his family executed." ~ Edict of Qin Shihuangdi, first Emperor of China

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. - Mark Twain

Speak softly and carry a big stick- Teddy Roosevelt (originally African proverb?)

"...the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage..."

From Emperor Hirohito's announcement of surrender to his people. One of history's best understatements.

stop the twain and shakespeare quotes goddamit and the nifty quotes about history by philosophers jesus christ