Here goes with our first collection of quotes, thought-provoking or amusing, for this shiny new year …
I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.
[Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret]
If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it’s another nonconformist who doesn’t conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.
[Bill Vaughan]
While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn’t. It’s a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you’re determined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavoury, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person’s entire life story — their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that’s better not done.
[Alyson Noel, Shadowland]
If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten?
[Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals]
Leaving the EU was an emotionally charged political proposition, not an economic one. It was a desire rooted in a vision of British sovereignty richly marinaded in a heady mix of nostalgia and bogus victimhood, fanned by Britain’s media, and which made the enormous error of confusing sovereignty with power.
[Martin Kettle, Guardian, 24 December 2020; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/24/boris-johnson-brexit-deal-britain-eu-sovereignty-economy]
It is all very well for the Westminster magistrate to inflict a fine on a man for ringing his muffin bell to the annoyance of the inhabitants of that rather aristocratic city, but after all it is very much in the nature of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. The muffin man’s bell is not quite the noisiest thing in London, and it is a passing nuisance at the best. He rings as he goes, and soon out of hearing. But what of church bells especially the one-string sort? What of piano organs, German orchestras, Salvation Army bands, and such abominations of noise and clatter as motor ‘buses and motor-cars? In London it is by no means uncommon to have a motor-car or taxi-cab rumbling and snorting outside one’s door for five or ten minutes at a time.
[John Bull magazine; 4 February 1911]
The lesson I have learned after so many Ebola outbreaks in my career are be fast, have no regrets. You must be the first mover. The virus will always get you if you don’t move quickly … If you need to be right before you move, you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management. The greatest error is not to move.
[Michael J Ryan, WHO; quoted at https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-isn-t-the-only-one-to-blame-for-britain-s-covid-crisis]
What do you mean, rock can’t think? The whole of modern technology is based on the fact that, actually, it can!
[Terry Pratchett]
I regard a compassionate, warm, kind-hearted person as healthy. If you maintain a feeling of compassion, loving kindness, something automatically opens your inner door, through which you can communicate much more easily with other people – you’ll find that they are just like you.
[Dalai Lama]
If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the lower class.
[unknown]
Science is not about building a body of known “facts”. It is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good.
[Terry Pratchett]
There are enduring irritants – late trains, extortionate taxi fares, youths misbehaving on buses, rudeness on the telephone, and the lack of discipline and moral fibre. The answer to these problems is corporal punishment and temperance, it seems.
Carol singers are a nuisance and wine should not be served with Christmas lunch. Then there are the Mormons who are coming to take our women, the ever-present danger posed by the Church of Rome, fast cars, appalling things on the radio, cinema and television, people singing, dancing and playing sports on a Sunday, mixed bathing and women – “female relatives, friends or fancy bits” – who are allowed to wear the hallowed uniform of the Home Guard.
[Nigel Cawthorne; Outraged of Tunbridge Wells: Original Complaints from Middle England]
… reader Tim Hall “needed to measure [his] dog correctly for his Christmas present”, and found the advice online was to ensure the dog was standing “with all 4 feet (1.2m) on the floor”. We suspect the leaden hand of algorithmic proofreading here. Certainly, it is something New Scientist’s all-too-terrifyingly flesh-and-blood subeditors would never have let pass. They wouldn’t have had a non-metric dog in the house in the first place.
[“Feedback”; New Scientist; 9 January 2021]