So here’s this month’s selection of interesting, amusing or thought-provoking quotes.
Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no-one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined: nothing works and no-one knows why.
[unknown]
The execution of Brexit has been [the government’s] real undoing, for the simple reason that nobody with the competence to do it has any enthusiasm for it, and nobody with the enthusiasm has any competence. It’s not a bad working definition of the worst idea ever, but that’s democracy. It is fitting that the party that put it on the menu should have to cook it.
Theresa May’s early flirtation with a Kim Jong-un Brexit (we do it my way, and nobody needs to know what that way is because I am glorious) has left her rather weakened, but even that isn’t the problem. Her job now is to manage down expectations, and maturely present a series of choices which are hard because they are all suboptimal.
[Zoe Williams, Guardian]
“Having sex for money is bad because it is counterfeiting feelings” wow dude, I have bad news about every other customer service job ever.
[someone unknown on Twitter]
The academies send more people out into the world with their heads full of inanities than any other public institution.
[Kant to his pupils]
Love is not about sex, going on fancy dates, or showing off. It’s about being with a person who makes you happy in a way nobody else can.
[unknown]
The Bill weaves a tapestry of delegated powers that are breathtaking in terms of both their scope and potency …
It is a source of considerable regret that the Bill is drafted in a way that renders scrutiny very difficult, and that multiple and fundamental constitutional questions are left unanswered.
[House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution, Interim Report on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, September 2017]
I am not a liberal snowflake. My feelings aren’t fragile, my heart isn’t bleeding. I am a badass believer in human rights. My toughness is in tenderness. My strength is in the service of others. There is nothing more fierce than formidable, unconditional love. There is not a thing more courageous than compassion. But if my belief in equity, empathy, goodness, and love indeed makes me or people like me snowflakes, then you should know – winter is coming.
[unknown]
He [George Rapp] believed that a prolonged practice of celibacy would restore man’s ability to multiply himself alone, according to God’s original plan for Adam.
[William E Wilson; The Angel and the Serpent: The Story of New Harmony]
Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out. And as size comes before colour, green great dragons can’t exist.
[Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence]
They were not life forms. They were … non-life forms. They were the observers of the operation of the universe, its clerks, its auditors. They saw to it that things spun and rocks fell. And they believed that for a thing to exist it had to have a position in time and space. Humanity had arrived as a nasty shock. Humanity practically was things that didn’t have a position in time and space, such as imagination, pity, hope, history and belief. Take those away and all you had was an ape that fell out of trees a lot.
[Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time]
Woke to hear Aunt Leonie this morning talking in a low voice as she’s got something floating loose in her head & does not want to disturb it.
[Marcel Proust]