The Book of Blog Quotations

"Blogs are more like pubs than debating chambers", said Bryan Appleyard, stealing my analogy. "Wisdom and insight appear fleetingly and are often forgotten by the next morning."

This is unfortunately true, but Think of England does not intend to stand idly by and let the many pearls of blogging wisdom just disappear into the ether. The following is intended to be a perma-linked record of some of the best Post-Judd and Post-Post-Judd quotations, witticisms, one-liners, insights and insults. I will be adding more, so don't fret if your nuggets are not yet here.

Please do suggest additions in the comments, though strict rules state that you cannot propose your own bon mots.

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There are limits to our ability to summon up or command reverence. Memorials for dead soldiers touch almost everyone because they speak to lives consciously risked and sacrificed to protect us. The modern penchant for memorials to victims of terrorism, poverty, abuse, breast cancer, etc. etc. are in the end just reminding us that sh-t happens. We already have memorials to these people. They are called graves.
Peter Burnet 25/9/06


“I am a good person if I help the poor. I help the poor by arguing that the Government should tax people like me more and give the money to the poor. I am a good person.”
David Cohen describes the leftist view of social policy*


I also don't understand going out into the countryside to shoot things. I feel it's a terrible failure of the imagination, like taking a television set on a hike. The wilderness is complete and self-justifying; all we are required to do is look at it.
Bryan Appleyard 17/4/07


Your self-contained wilderness is no such thing, it is a manicured garden devoid of predators. You feel no need to shoot game because you eat beef and pork raised on some factory farm and slaughtered and butchered by low wage laborers. Your idyllic stroll in the woods is only possible because of modern man's absolute dominance over nature.
Duck responds 17/4/07


Religion is the only motive I know of that causes people to avoid pleasure for the sole purpose of avoiding pleasure.
Harry Eagar, concluding a barn-storming explanation of the evolution of pleasure.


As a side note, you might achieve a better understanding of the world by not presuming President Bush is the source of all evil. He’s only one man, he can’t do it all.
AOG (aka Susan's Husband) 26/11/06.


Amateurish where it wasn't wholly incompetent, it failed to garner laughter from the gallery only because it summoned so much more pity.
Hey Skipper describes his own defence case, in his astonishing multi-part tour de force Peter's World


In America, if you can do, the odds are pretty good that you'll be allowed to do.
Oroborous 15/1/06


I always thought you should never do terribly wrong things, obviously, because they are terrible, but you should never do trivially wrong things because they aren't worth selling out over.
Mike Beversluis 25/3/07



*I can't seem to find the exact quote for this one, but it was like that.