(second), (third), etc. in common lisp

so if I want to express the third element of some list I can write
(third '(a b c))
This works all the way up to (tenth).

WTF? Why would they include built in functions like this? Seems insane coming from C and Java

>>13,14
It's newlisp's extension of lisp semantics. Quoted lists are quoted lists so it doesn't break anything AFAIK. Newlisp also evaluates the functor first, just like scheme.