Here is February’s collection of recently encountered quotes …
Calling swimming outdoors “wild swimming” is a bit like calling lawn mowing “wild vacuuming”.
[Tom Cox, Substack]
Books and conversations aren’t just tokens to be processed efficiently by our eyes and ears. They are journeys in thinking and experiencing. Journeys that can bring the serendipity and struggle of deeper understanding.
[Adam Kucharski]
One day this summer [1936] I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on the top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again to me, and murmured, “Socialists”, as who should say, “Red Indians”. He was probably right – the ILP [Independent Labour Party] were holding their summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank.
[George Orwell; The Road to Wigan Pier]
Furthermore, because God created it, “The Human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve its splendour and its beauty”.
[Pope John Paul Il]
When asked what heralds actually do, I usually produce the rough and ready reply: “We design coats of arms, trace family trees and dress up as playing cards twice a year”.
[Patric Dickinson; The Oldie; 23/09/2022; https://www.theoldie.co.uk/blog/what-does-a-herald-do-by-patric-dickinson-1]
The fact is that a mere training in one or more of the exact sciences, even combined with very high gifts, is no guarantee of a humane or sceptical outlook. The physicists of half a dozen great nations, all feverishly working away at the atom bomb, are a demonstration of this.
[George Orwell; Tribune; October 1945]
The problem for most people isn’t a lack of organisation. The problem is having too much stuff to manage.
[Julianna Poplin]
People frequently underrate how inefficient things are in practically any domain, and how frequently these inefficiencies are reducible to bottlenecks caused by humans being human.
[David Oks]
We need a government that can hold two truths at once: the immediate, visible urgencies (cost of living, housing, NHS waits) and the structural shifts already transforming what “work” and “opportunity” mean. These aren’t competing priorities … they’re the same priority seen from two distances.
[Martha Lane Fox]
Herd immunity does not require everyone to he immune to the disease in order for the whole population to be protected. By vaccinating enough people, the chain of transmission can be broken, and the disease stopped in its tracks.
[Prof. Kit Yates]
So we have actual fact checkers who know all the facts? Why not create a TV channel where they just give us the facts? We could call it the News.
[unknown]