Laura Seabrook's Ramblings

A case in point (taken from the Wikiquote list of misquotations):

Whenever I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my revolver."

• The actual quote is "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning!" This translates as: "Whenever I hear [the word] 'culture'... I remove the safety from my Browning!"
• This quote is often mistakenly attributed to leading Nazi Hermann Goering, or occasionally to Julius Streicher, a lower-ranking Nazi. This misattribution may date from the famous Frank Capra documentaries (Why We Fight) shown to American troops before shipping out.
• In fact, it is a line uttered by the character Thiemann in Act 1, Scene 1 of the play Schlageter, written by Hanns Johst. The association with Nazism is appropriate, as the play was first performed in April 1933, in honor of Hitler's birthday.
• Baldur von Schirach, head of the Hitlerjugend, delivered this sentence in a public speech, circa 1938. A footage of the scene, with von Schirach actually drawing his gun, appears in Frederic Rossif's documentary "from Nurnberg to Nurnberg".
• Notes: It is possible that this is actually a rather more felicitous phrase in translation than it is in the original. Both the original German and this English translation were juxtaposed by Howard Thomas in his review of an article by Nicholas H Battey in the Journal of Experimental Biology, December 2002, as "the famous words of Hanns Johst: 'Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning' - 'Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.'"
• The phrase itself may be a play on words as the word Browning may refer to both a pistol and the English poet Robert Browning.
• Additionally it should be noted that a Browning (most likely the M1935 High-Power) is not a revolver, but a magazine-fed semi-automatic pistol. However, at the time the word "Browning" was used to refer to any pistol, much as "Colt" is used for any revolver in westerns.

SBS in Australia show the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Anyway today's edition had an essay by Nancy Gibbs on Valentine's day,. I thought she was spot on, but if you missed it you can hear it again on their essays page, or by direct link to an MP3.

In particular I liked these two points:

"...my main frustration is that Valentine's day only pretends to celebrate what we like about love while more often undermining it..."

"...love should fizz without champagne, should grow in hard soil. The minute its expression feels like a duty, it's lost its bearings."

In response to leduck's post:

For B5 fans - when you see this, post a B5 quote in your own journal.

Mr. Morden: "What do you want?"

Vir: "I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favours come with too high a price. I'd look up at your lifeless eyes and wave like this. Can you and your associates arrange it for me, Mr. Morden?"

Borrow from nematoddity's Quotes Post:

"Fear less, hope more;
Whine less, breathe more;
Talk less, say more;
Hate less, love more;
And all good things are yours."
--Swedish Proverb

Sounds good to me.

"Knowing things is a vital aspect of our intellectual ability," says technology critic Bill Thompson. "Knowing things allows us to make links, provide context, evolve metaphors and generally make sense of the world." Ignorance does not create space for the development of creative and critical faculties; it breeds superstition and credulity. Analysis without fact, too, is a mill that grinds no corn. (p31)