Jacob Proffitt > Jacob's Quotes

“If you want to write a negative review, don't tickle me gently with your aesthetic displeasure about my work. Unleash the goddamn Kraken."

[on Twitter, July 17, 2012]”
― Scott Lynch

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn.”
― Joss Whedon

“It does not, in the conventional phrase, accept the conclusions of science, for the simple reason that science has not concluded. To conclude is to shut up; and the man of science is not at all likely to shut up.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Thing: Why I am a Catholic

“You men can be such boneheads about these things. She doesn't know you the way I do. She's vulnerable right now. Her ex turned out to be an asshole and you come riding in-"
"There was no riding."
"-being the good guy, looking the way you do"-Brooke gestured to him-"wanting to talk and slow things down and be all sensitive with your coffee and your little blanket. What woman could resist that? My God, why didn't you just cuddle a puppy shirtless while you were at it?”
― Julie James, Suddenly One Summer

“People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"
The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide?”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of an entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that has seams tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears, and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.

But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks.

The drinks, people.

That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces.

But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, 'Yeah. Sure. They couldn’t possibly have made this an escalator.”
― Jim Butcher, Summer Knight

“I loved getting my M. B. A., and I really enjoyed being an accountant and financial analyst before I quit my day job twenty-five years ago to write full time. I just liked writing more…plus, I knew even then that as a full-time writer, I'd get plenty of chances to do business-type stuff, while as an accountant, I probably wouldn't get a lot of opportunities to write about dragons.”
― Patricia C. Wrede

“Just a minute," said Lobsang. "Who are you? Time has stopped, the world is given over to...fairy tales and monsters, and there's a schoolteacher walking around?"

"Best kind of person to have," said Susan. "We don't like silliness. Anyway, I told you. I've inherited certain talents."

"Like living outside of time?"

"That's one of them."

"It's a weird talent for a schoolteacher!"

"Good for marking, though," said Susan calmly.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

“He had never been interested in stories at any age, and had never quite understood the basic concept. He'd never read a work of fiction all the way through. He did remember, as a small boy, being really annoyed at the depiction of Hickory Dickory Dock in a rag book of nursery rhymes because the clock in the drawing was completely wrong for the period.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

“Jack shoved his finger in my face. "You can talk to any other guy at this school, but you are not allowed to talk to him."

Had my brother learned nothing in the last sixteen years? Apparently not, and for that he would pay. I turned back to the source of my brother's irritation.

"Grant, do you have a girlfriend who would mind if you kissed me to piss off my brother?”
― Chris Cannon, The Boyfriend Bet

“Tell me about his friend."

"Cute, blond, brown eyes, serious expression, looks like he'll grow up to be a lawyer."

"I do love serious boys. They're so much fun to mess with. Maybe I'll tell him I'm thinking about starting a cult."

"You're evil."

"That's why we get along so well.”
― Chris Cannon, The Boyfriend Bet

“It is far easier to concentrate power than to concentrate knowledge. That is why so much social engineering backfires and why so many despots have led their countries into disasters.”
― Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
― Thomas Sowell

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
― Thomas Sowell

“People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right—especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.”
― Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional? And Other Essays

“The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices - paid by others.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Love is one of the simplest of what we call the Mysteries, and yet the strongest, like air: the greatest treasure cannot buy it nor the smartest thief steal it nor the most powerful emperor command it. And like air, it freely fills to infinity whatever is open to it.”
― Sherwood Smith, Lhind the Spy

“Remember that everything is connected,” I finally settled on. “The water we drink, the air we breathe, the food we eat. Everything has some part of it that leads into each other. Disrupting one thing can disrupt many others. Fixing one thing can fix many others.”
― CasualFarmer, Beware of Chicken

“And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.”
― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch