Come with the great migration.
Also from H2G2, behold the majestic : " -Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what’s actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, “Hang the sense of it,” and keep yourself busy. I’d far rather be happy than right any day.
-And are you?
-Ah. No. Well that’s where it all falls down, of course "
I like it even better in the movie, Bill Nighy embodies this sentence perfectly.
Came for the second, stayed for the first
Hmmm. I’ll try to remember this one, thank you, that’s a real gift.
A life lesson I’ll learn one day. Trying my best though, but it’ll take time. Thanks for sharing.
I like it. Remember where it’s from?
Love this one. Used to teach students in political science about the horrible thing that “political ventiloquism” is.
I suppose it’s less about the quote origin and more about what we make it to mean :)
Recently, I learned about a historical quote, from French PM Daladier on his way back from Munich where he knew he gave everything to Hitler.
He got out his plane, expecting to be lynched or thrown oranges at, and people, when he realized people were praising him as a herald of “peace”, let out this magnificent “Ah… what a bunch of idiots”.
It’s beautiful and I can understand why it sticks… Thanks for letting us know!!
Oh and there’s also this one ftom H2G2 :
Slartibartfast: Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what’s actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, “Hang the sense of it,” and keep yourself busy. I’d much rather be happy than right any day. Arthur Dent: And are you? Slartibartfast: Ah, no. [laughs, snorts] Slartibartfast: Well, that’s where it all falls down, of course
Hmm, you’re right. I first read this sentence for the first time as an epigraph for a violently anti-patriotic, individualistic, fantastic and oniric book which gave me this impression. After a bit of digging, I still think there’s something of my interpretation in the original material (a lettre from Vaché to Aragon from the battlefield), but it’s also a dadaist piece, so not so easy to decipher, in which he wishes for the death of his own generals, somehow talks about killing Germans while wearing a monocle and, all of them soldiers, French and German, being slowly decerebrated. He was fighting and killing although he was still against the war, seemed to be borderline self-destructing, dandy, rebelling, talking multiple times about how war changed him for the worse in both his mind and his body, crippled for life too. He died at 23 from an opium overdose.
So there is certainly more to it. Indeed, he doesn’t say what I implied and seemed to be such a complicated person he might have wrote the quote while thinking it is a good thing, but I suppose my interpretation isn’t totally absurd.
More info :
Oh, yeah. There’s another one like this for me, a very short poem I read when I was a teenager :
“Ah, what are they dreaming…? Those who say, say, say… Yesterday I was there, today I was here”
That’s so lovely!
And yet, a WWI soldier uttered that phrase. I suppose he did not share this view of WW1. Or he couldn’t have wrote that.
Well everybody already knows that. Like… The power dynamics of “vote lesser evil, vote for minority candidate, vote for a compromising pseudo-progressive party because it’s still something, abstain and stay pure, better face true fascists than traitors, etc.” has been around since representative regimes emerged. Yet everyone has to find his/her political and moral stance in this shitshow. And answers will differ, sometimes for legitimate reasons, sometimes because of total bs. That’s all there is to it and it’s not exactly news.
I’d like to know too, I strongly suggest this is a delusion. Although the saying is a cliché, it’s a remarkably correct statement.
Well at least this may very well work as intended
Re-reads through the thread
Ok, phew, were were not talking about bidets anymore. I was getting confused.
What’s happening in the American Reich is inspiring a very strong sense of European patriotism like I’ve never seen before among common people around me.
It’s pretty ironic, yet makes sense, that European unity could be achieved this sad way.
I do that way too often and… I wonder if it’s not a special kind of self poisoning.