Our monthly collection of recently encountered quotes …
We as humans are built to ignore big problems.
[Katie Mack at https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/space-the-nation-katie-mack-the-mansplainer-slayer-on-getting-science-right]
It’s very hard to just tell someone, “This is a thing” and have that change their mind … just presenting facts, just throwing facts in people’s faces does not change their minds.
[Katie Mack at https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/space-the-nation-katie-mack-the-mansplainer-slayer-on-getting-science-right]
Almost all of ordinary matter (99.9999999% of it) is empty space. If you took out all of the space in our atoms, the entire human race (all 7 billion of us) would fit into the volume of a sugar cube.
“My dog does magic tricks.”
“Really? What breed is he?”
“He’s a labracadabrador.”
[Stolen from Twitter]
All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.
[Enoch Powell]
Vice, if you gild it lavishly enough, is always attractive … thoughts of the aftermath rarely intrude themselves on such occasions.
[Sidney Felstead]
“Si quis sederet super pellem leonis recedent ab illo emorroides”
If someone sits on a lion’s skin their piles will go away.
[Ortus sanitatis, 1499. “Description of the properties of lions”. Quoted by Katie Birkwood at https://twitter.com/Girlinthe/status/1290593981424902144]
We’ve become incredibly entomologically dumb. We just don’t distinguish the dangerous from the harmless from the helpful. The average kid can probably distinguish more makes of cars or superheroes than insects.
[Jeffrey Lockwood, University of Wyoming]
In Maine, selling weed is illegal but it’s legal to have and use. So there are these guys who run a “psychic” location service and for a fee they will find your lost weed and deliver it to you.
[Twitter]
The best food ever is nonexistent or you will never find it. My reason for this, is that people create new food all the time. Also you have to try every thing that ever existed since the beginning of time. And the reason is that you would have [to] eat things, that you can’t eat, like dark matter. Even if you figured out how to fly around, eating every single quark and lepton you [would] eventually explode because you would contain the whole universe. So, in conclusion don’t try to find the best food in the world because you will explode.
[Anonymous 10-year old asked to write about the best food in the world; quoted on Twitter]
The cult of female modesty is as much part of ““patriarchy” as anything else – it gives men power to shame and demean women … As ever, that modesty cult claims to be in a woman’s own interest.
[Dr Victoria Bateman]
Orange and gold carp.
Living beneath the ice.
Uncaring of the world above,
sustained by the water below.
[Deng Ming-Dao]
There is no greater enemy to dictators than people actually being allowed to vote.