User:MastCell

But why the pride in these doctor children (why not shame, why not incredulous dread?): intimates of bacilli and trichinae, of trauma and mortification, with their disgusting vocabulary and their disgusting furniture... they are life's gatekeepers. And why would anyone want to be that?

—Martin Amis, Time's Arrow, or the Nature of the Offense

Life is short and the art is long; opportunity fleeting; experience is deceptive, and judgment difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.

—Hippocrates of Cos, on the practice of medicine

All who drink of this remedy are cured, except those who die. Thus, it is effective for all but the incurable.

—Galen of Pergamum

Reassure herself as she might—she knew that these accidents, combined with cases of mistaken diagnosis and of measures taken too late or erroneously, comprised no more than perhaps 2 percent of her activity, while those she had healed, the young and the old, the men and the women, were now walking through plowed fields, over the grass, along the asphalt, flying through the air, climbing telegraph poles, picking cotton, cleaning streets, standing behind counters, sitting in offices or teahouses, serving in the army and the navy; there were thousands of them, not all of whom had forgotten her or would forget her—and yet she knew that she would sooner forget them all, her best cases, hardest-won victories, but until the day she died she would always remember the handful of poor devils who had fallen under the wheels.

It was a peculiarity of her memory.

—Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

Macbeth: How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor: Not so sick, my lord,
   As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,
   That keep her from her rest.
Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
   Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
   Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
   And with some sweet oblivious antidote
   Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
   Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient
   Must minister to himself.

—William Shakespeare, Macbeth, V.iii.

Physicians of the Utmost Fame
 Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
 "There is no Cure for this Disease."

—Hilaire Belloc, Cautionary Tales for Children

This disease men call "sacred", but to me it appears no more divine or supernatural than any other disease; it must have a natural cause like all afflictions. Men regard its nature as divine from ignorance and wonder... They who first ascribed this malady to the gods seem to me to have been conjurors, mountebanks, and charlatans, who invoked the supernatural to conceal their own inability to afford any assistance.

—Hippocrates, On the Sacred Disease

The Laws of Medicine:

1. If what you're doing is working, keep doing it.
2. If what you're doing isn't working, stop doing it.
3. If you don't know what to do, don't do anything.
4. Never let a surgeon manage your patient.

—Variant; usually attributed to Robert F. Loeb, as Loeb's Laws

Languebam: sed tu comitatus protinus ad me
 Venisti centum, Symmache, discipulis.
Centum me tetigere manus aquilone gelatae:
 Non habui febrem, Symmache, nunc habeo.

—Martial

Now listen here, Colonel... Batguano, if that really is your name...

—Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

He could feel quite tangibly the difference in weight between the fragile human body and the colossus of the State. He could feel the State's bright eyes gazing into his face; any moment now the State would crash down on him; there would be a crack, a squeal—and he would be gone.

—Vasily Grossman, Жизнь и Судьба (Life and Fate)

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows that the war is over.
Everybody knows that the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight is fixed.
   The poor stay poor and the rich get rich.
That's how it goes.
And everybody knows.

—Leonard Cohen, Everybody Knows

There once was a bastard named Lenin,
Who did two or three million men in.
   That's a lot to have done in,
   But where he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in.

—Attributed to Robert Conquest

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.

I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.

I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and institutions... but I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regime of their barbarous ancestors.

—Thomas Jefferson, shortly before his death

They say I'm all about murder, murder and kill, kill...
But what about Grindhouse and Kill Bill?
What about Cheney and Halliburton? The back door deals on oil fields?
How is Nas the most violent person?
   ...
I'm dealing with the higher form;
Fuck if you care how I write a poem.
The only fox that I love was the Redd one;
The only black man that Fox loves is in jail or a dead one.

Nas, "Sly Fox"

"Why, exactly, do you people intend to have me shot?"

Ivanov let a few seconds go by. He smoked and drew figures with his pencil on the blotting-paper. He seemed to be searching for the exact words.

"Listen, Rubashov," he said finally. "There is one thing I would like to point out to you. You have now repeatedly said 'You' - meaning State and Party - as distinct from 'I' - that is, Nikolai Salmanovich Rubashov. For the public, one needs, of course, a trial and legal justification. For us, what I have just said should be enough."

Rubashov thought this over; he was somewhat taken aback. For a moment it was as if Ivanov had hit a tuning fork, to which his mind responded of its own accord. All he had believed in, fought for and preached over the last forty years swept over his mind in an irresistable wave. The individual was nothing, the Party was all; the branch which broke from the tree must wither... Rubashov rubbed his pince-nez on his sleeve.

Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon

I'm here to laugh, love, fuck, and drink liquor,
And help the damn revolution come quicker.

The Coup, "Laugh/Love/Fuck", Pick a Bigger Weapon

Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair.

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.

The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius — man in the abstract — was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and with all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother's hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? "Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible."

Such was his feeling.

—Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Well, I went to the doctor.
  I said, "I'm feeling kind of rough."
"Let me break it to you, son,
  Your shit's fucked up."

I said, "My shit's fucked up?
  Well, I don't see how."
He said: "The shit that used to work—
  It won't work now."

Warren Zevon, "My Shit's Fucked Up", Life'll Kill Ya

Michael Williams: But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, "We died at such a place;" some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

—William Shakespeare, Henry V, VI, i

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

From Nuremberg Diary, by G. M. Gilbert

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

—Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

They act like they don't love their country
   No
   what it is
is they found out
their country don't love them.

—Lucille Clifton

Wonderful meal in T[aranto]. Steak—eggs—cherries—white wine—macaroni—and Marsala. We should never have fought these people.

From the diary of Oliver Carpenter, a British soldier in occupied Italy, June 1944

The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination... That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

When I was running about this town a very poor fellow, I was a great arguer for the advantages of poverty; but I was, at the same time, very sorry to be poor.

—Samuel Johnson, from Life of Johnson

I don't believe in excess; success is to give.
I don't believe in riches, but you should see where I live.

U2, "God Part II"

The teacher said no college,
But still a kid's gotta get a check with a couple commas...

—Citizen Cope, "Bullet and a Target"

  The Templars have something to do with everything
  What follows is not true
  Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate
  The sage Omus found the Rosy Cross in Egypt
  There are cabalists in Provence
  Who was married at the feast of Cana?
  Minnie Mouse is Mickey's fiancée
  It follows logically that
    If
  The Druids venerated black virgins
    Then
  Simon Magus identifies Sophia as a prostitute of Tyre
  Who was married at the feast of Cana?
  The Merovingians proclaim themselves kings by divine right
  The Templars have something to do with everything

"A bit obscure," Diotallevi said.

—Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

Now, Stuart, if you look at the soil around any large US city where there's a big underground homosexual population—Des Moines, Iowa—perfect example. Look at the soil around Des Moines, Stuart. You can't build on it; you can't grow anything on it. The government says it's due to poor farming. But I know what's really going on, Stuart. I know it's the queers. They're in it with the aliens. They're building landing strips... for gay Martians.

You know what, Stuart? I like you. You're not like the other people here in the trailer park.

—The Dead Milkmen, "Stuart"

The recipe for authorship in this line of business [the social sciences] is as simple as it is rewarding: just get hold of a textbook of mathematics, copy the less complicated parts, put in some references to the literature in one or two branches of the social studies without worrying unduly about whether the formulae which you wrote down have any bearing on the real human actions, and give your product a good-sounding title, which suggests that you have found a key to an exact science of collective behaviour.

Stanislav Andreski, Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972; ISBN 978-0233962269)

The only thing wrong with literature in our time is that it lacks... malice, envy, and hate.

—James Jones, accepting the National Book Award in 1952

/* You are not expected to understand this */

From the UNIX v6 kernel source code

Difficile est saturam non scribere. Nam quis iniquae
  tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus, ut teneat se...

—Juvenal, Satires I;1