Friday, May 30, 2008

Unwatched

What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that God was watching what they were doing.
-David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion

Monday, May 19, 2008

Vows

I will now read these special vows which Homer has prepared for this occasion. "Do you, Marge, take Homer, in richness and in poorness" -- poorness is underlined -- "in impotence and in potence, in quiet solitude or blasting across the alkali flats in a jet-powered, monkey-navigated"... [consults the notecards] ... and it goes on like this.
-Rev. Lovejoy, The Simpsons, "A Milhouse Divided"