117
Contextualization matters more than words
In common speech, the quote is fairly vague, and likely only those who have seen the movie would understand the reference (at least, right away, to the desired effect). But by prefacing it with "Luke", you cue people in to the reference better by offering more context.
It's quite similar to how Kirk never said "...
92
It's from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
It even has its own entry on the Wikipedia page for H2G2:
In the series, Don't Panic is a phrase on the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The novel explains that this was partly because the device "looked insanely complicated" to operate, and partly to keep intergalactic travellers from ...
82
You're referring to the quote below from Small Gods between the Great God Om (presently in the form of a small turtle) and his acolyte Brother Brutha (presently in the form of a slightly befuddled young man) on the relative worth of philosophers to society.
“The reason why Omnia hasn’t got much of a fleet any more,” said Om. “That’s why it’s always worth ...
80
This is from Star Trek III:
Kirk: How much refit time till we can take [the Enterprise] out again?
Scotty: Eight weeks, sir. (as Kirk opens his mouth) But you don't have eight weeks, so I'll do it for ya in two.
Kirk: (considers) Mr. Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?
Scotty: Certainly, sir. How ...
71
I think you might be referring to this one:
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.
Terry Pratchett - Mort
Or alternatively, this one:
Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same ...
65
This is the closest I can find, from TNG: Relics
Geordi La Forge: Look, Mr. Scott, I'd love to explain everything to you, but the Captain wants this spectrographic analysis done by
1300 hours.
[La Forge goes back to work; Scotty follows slowly]
Scotty: Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything ...
59
J.R.R. Tolkien was a noted prescriptivist, regarding Shakespearean neologisms as a bastardization of English and attempting to prescribe specific rules for the usage of his own invented languages.
The guide to prescriptivist English, The Elements of Style says:
Shall, Will. In formal writing, the future tense requires shall for the first person, will ...
56
The question Louise Banks poses is as follows:
DR. BANKS: Before you commit to him… ask him the Sanskrit word for “war” and its
translation.
It’s a way of challenging the other linguist’s qualifications, and it is indeed the same question she later answers.
Later, we hear the other linguist’s response, as relayed by the army handler:
Gavisti.1 ...
55
Opinion - I believe his meaning was two-fold:
In being struck down, he was allowed to transcend boundaries that kept physical beings limited. His influence grew (at least where Luke, Yoda and other force sensitives were concerned) even while his physical influence was lost. This proved useful in his wise council to Luke at the Battle of Yavin and, ...
53
It's a reference to the use of Logo (a programming language) to control robots referred to as "turtles".
50
Robert Heinlein had a long rant about cars in The Rolling Stones:
Despite their great sizes and tremendous power spaceships are surprisingly simple machines. Every technology goes through three stages:
first a crudely simple and quite unsatisfactory gadget; second, an
enormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcome the
short-comings of ...
48
He says "Vi har funnet et jævla romvesen! Skål!".
An accurate translation would be something along the lines of "We've found a fu**ing alien! Cheers!".
Some interesting facts:
The word "romvesen" does not literally translate to "alien". An alien refers to anything that does not belong or is not native, like a mexican in Norway. However, norwegians use the ...
46
This is from Maskerade, in relation to Greebo the cat's transformation into a human.
The allusion is that it's very hard to do something once (e.g. turn a cat into a man) but that once it had happened, it was infinitely easier to accomplish again.
But magic is never as simple as people think. It has to obey certain universal laws. And one is that, no ...
46
I found it! It's in the third book of the Robots cycle, The Robots of Dawn (chapter 2: "Daneel"), and said by Daneel, as you correctly guess (emphasis mine):
“Of a certainty, Partner Elijah. It is a pleasure to see you.”
“You feel emotion, do you?” said Baley lightly.
“I cannot say what I feel in any human sense, Partner Elijah. I can say, ...
45
To be on the safe side, just consider this entire answer to be one big spoiler:
The other answers touch on this explanation, but I'll do the long version. The statement by itself could be taken as Saruman simply trying to intimidate Gandalf & party, but when you look at the entire conversation it takes on a different tone. Let's take a look at the scene ...
44
I finally found it! Brian W Aldiss did a (very) short story "Working in the Spaceship Yards" (1969); here's the significant extract:
...
We were building Q-line ships when I was in the shipyard. They were
the experimental ones. The Ql, the Q2, the Q3, had each been
completed, had been towed out into orbit beyond Mars, and triggered
off towards ...
44
The reason for the similarity may simply be that it is a commonplace thought, neither unique to nor original with Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Yale Book of Quotations gives these examples:
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1580):
C'est dequoy j'ay le plus de peur que la peur.
The thing I fear the most is fear.
Francis Bacon (1623):
Nothing is terrible ...
39
Yoda is referring to the first interpretation you offer. I admit, upon looking at the quote written down it is somewhat ambiguous, but in the context in which Yoda made that comment he was clearly referring to his inability to achieve immortality. The latter interpretation is only possible due to Yoda's strange speech pattern, not the intended inference.
39
Disclaimer: I've never seen Babylon 5 (although I plan to), but I'll give this a go!
It basically means "don't get caught up in the constraints of life"
I came across this article which I would encourage you to read. In this article, they basically say that the phrase "My shoes are too tight, but it doesn't matter, because I have forgotten how to dance" ...
37
(There is a TL;DR at the end for those who don't care about Sanskrit or grammar.)
Adamant's answer is pretty excellent, but as a holder of a BA in Sanskrit & Linguistics, perhaps I can add something. I failed two of my exams, but what can you do?
The question is:
DR. BANKS: Before you commit to him… ask him the Sanskrit word for “war” and its ...
35
We saw the Jedi version of boot camp for little kids in Attack of the Clones. Yoda was instructing a dozen or so children who were wielding lightsabers and wearing helmets over their eyes. If Yoda was indeed centuries old, he could have taught Obi-Wan in such a boot camp when Obi-Wan was a boy.
35
The quote is from an untitled 2008 short story sold at a charity auction:
'Things'll be seriously black for you in a minute, you cheeky little--'
Quotes: Harry Potter: The Prequel (Harry Potter 0.5) (Goodreads)
More information: Harry Potter prequel (Wikipedia)
Full transcript: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Harry_Potter_Prequel
29
There is also this quote from Robots and Empire:
"Are you pleased that you will be seeing Elijah Baley again?"
"I am not certain, Madam Gladia, how best to describe my inner state. It may be that it is analogous to what a human being would describe as being pleased."
"But you must feel something."
"I feel as though I can make decisions more ...
28
Daughter of Regals by Stephen Donaldson (1984), appearing in a short-story collection of the same name.
Magic is about the "Real", the Wood of the Ash, Wind, the Fire buried in the mountains of Nabal, or images of Real creatures: the Cockatrice, the Basilisk, the Gorgon, the Phoenix, the Wyvern, the Banshee.
Those that have magic inherit it from some Real ...
28
This was inserted into the Scholastic (US) edition and does not appear in the earlier Bloomsbury (UK) edition. See page 264 of The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon:
In Bloomsbury's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, just after Ron and Harry find themselves blocked from entering platform nine and three quarters, Ron ...
27
From The Big Bang:
(padding)
upd 21 Aug: from Love and Monsters:
When you're a kid, they tell you it's all... grow up. Get a job. Get
married. Get a house. Have a kid, and that's it. But the truth is, the
world is so much stranger than that. It's so much darker. And so much
madder. And so much better.
26
I have only found two quotes for now (source) :
In Interesting Times
Many things went on at Unseen University and, regrettably, teaching had to be one of them. The faculty had long ago confronted this fact and had perfected various devices for avoiding it. But this was perfectly all right because, to be fair, so had the students.
In Moving Pictures
"...
25
Spoilers in abundance:
It's a joke about Usenet as it was in the 1980s. Twirlip sounds eccentric and expresses himself poorly, but in fact his insight is dead on, and everyone should be listening to him/her/it.
Read this post for more analysis (which is also full of spoilers, of course).
The author commented about this in his notes (now available in the “...
25
“There are thousands,” someone called from behind Chett.
“We’ll die.” That was Maslyn’s voice, green with fear.
“Die,” screamed Mormont’s raven, flapping its black wings. “Die, die, die.”
“Many of us,” the Old Bear said. “Mayhaps even all of us. But as another Lord Commander said a thousand years ago, that is why they dress us in black. ...
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