Another selection of interesting and/or amusing quotes.
Why is it that in every single place I’ve ever worked, the photocopier has special needs?
[Hails at Coffee Helps]
I just love the idea of copies being “special needs”, but it’s absolutely right, they are!
His grace doesn’t half sound in a wax this morning, ducks.
[Julian Maclaren-Ross, quoted in DJ Taylor, What You Didn’t Miss]
Most of what gets marked down as ‘poetry’ these days is simply prose chopped up into irregular lines.
[DJ Taylor, What You Didn’t Miss]
Imagine the surprise of David Purdy on receiving a special offer of the Family Tree Maker program at less than half price. How could he resist the chance to “find out whether any of your descendants were on the Titanic”?
[Feedback, New Scientist, 22/09/2012]
In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape have full swing … Publicity is the very soul of justice … it keeps the judge himself, while trying, under trial.
[Jeremy Bentham, political and legal philosopher, 1748-1832]
Our political masters need to sometimes keep this in mind, and the following …
[T]he judge should have the last word … under the procedure devised in the Bill the judge does have the last word. The only difficulty is that that word is dictated to the judge by the Secretary of State. First, the judge can make a decision only if the Secretary of State makes an application … Secondly, when the judge does come to consider it, it is not for him to weigh up the relative merits of … or to decide what the fairest way would be to decide the case. The judge’s hands are effectively tied. If there is disclosable material that impacts on national security … the judge is required to agree … The judge “must” order a closed material procedure … the government have given formal effect to the requirement that the judge should have the last word, but in substance the Secretary of State continues to pull the strings.
[David Anderson QC, Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, on the Justice and Security Bill; quoted on the Law and Lawyers Blog]
Which reminds me of this insult I once heard hurled at some fiasco or other:
A ball-withering succession of cock-ups
Somehow it also reminds me of Borges …
These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.
{Jorge Luis Borges, Essay: The Analytical Language of John Wilkins]