Quotable Quotes: Wisdom from Calvin and Hobbs
by Miki Saxon
Do you remember Calvin and Hobbs by Bill Watterson? Of all the comics I’ve read over the years that is my all-time favorite. I even own most of the collections in book form.
I did Watterson quotes back in ’08 and I thought that almost leap-day would be a good day to share some from Calvin.
First, you have to understand how Calvin sees himself and, in doing so, you’ll understand a great truth of the modern world. “People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.” Although true, I’ve always reminded myself that for every person I think is an idiot there are at least two others who think I’m one.
It may not be original, but I have always like Calvin’s description of life, “Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine, and valleys of frustration and failure.” That fits my life, except that the summits were all bunched together, with the last decade one continuous valley; I could do with a few more flats.
Calvin says, “History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction,” whereas I think that order and direction comes from within.
I’ve always thought that Calvin’s comment, “Careful. We don’t want to learn from this,” would make a great Wall Street motto.
But it is his thoughts on the possibility of other intelligent life in our universe with which I most heartily agree. In fact, I was saying something similar a couple of decades earlier.
“Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.”
Image credit: Just-Us-3 on flickr
