Shrug Quotes - page 3
We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that's the way things are. That's the way things always have been.
Octavia Butler
How, in this day and age, can any one of you claim to be better than your fellow human beings?”
"Because we are,” said Marilyn Deighton-True with a shrug. "Face reality, Giles, or it will face you. You can spout all the socialiste nouveau crap you like, but it simply doesn't apply to a meritocracy.
Kage Baker
I am more inclined to punish Hurtiancz for his crassness,” said Ildefonse. "But now he simulates a swinish stupidity to escape my anger.”"Absolute falsity!” roared Hurtiancz. "I simulate nothing!”Ildefonse shrugged. "For all his deficiencies as polemicist and magician, Hurtiancz at least is candid.
Jack Vance
Deliamber shrugged. "Such things are never fairly distributed. What makes you think that only the guilty are punished?”
"The Divine-”
"Why do you think the Divine is fair? In the long run, all wrongs are righted, every minus is balanced with a plus, the columns are totaled and the totals are found correct. But that's in the long run. We must live in the short run, and matters are often unjust there. The compensating forces of the universe make all the accounts come out even, but they grind down the good as well as the wicked in the process.”.
Robert Silverberg
We are still ruled, in some ways, by our Church. We are a people more cursed by religion and its manifestations and assumptions than any other. The Steel Tsar, with his messianic socialism, offers us religion again, perhaps. You English have never had quite the same need for God. We have known despair and conquest too often to ignore Him altogether.” He shrugged. "Old habits, Mr Bastable. Religion is the panacea for defeat. We have a great tendency to rationalize our despair in mystical and utopian terms.
Michael Moorcock
Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children. I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking – not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.
Enoch Powell
Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to "restore confidence.” Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I don't like their system, and they know it. That's why I'm sitting in this cell instead of in my cabin, or on the engineering deck. But-” He shrugged. "Their social system is one thing, but people are people everywhere you go, just trying to get along in this crazy universe. I don't like them as individuals, but that's not the same as wanting them dead. They're not monsters, and they don't deserve what's coming to them, and life isn't fair, is it?
Charles Stross