So it’s time for another monthly round-up of recently encountered quotes, both meaningful and amusing.
Some people classify Buddhism as a religion. I tend to think of it as a meditation system with 2,500 years of research and development across multiple cultures and eras.
[Brad Warner; Hardcore Zen blog]
We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.
Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”
When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry Thomas smirks, that “They’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
[AA Gill, 2016]
The idea of a pure race is not even a legitimate abstraction. It is a subterfuge to cloak one’s ignorance.
[Theodosius Dobzhansky; geneticist & evolutionary biologist (1900-75)]
Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts – some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningful picture as a whole.
[Theodosius Dobzhansky; geneticist & evolutionary biologist (1900-75)]
Snowflake is a word used by sociopaths in an attempt to discredit the notion of empathy.
[John Cleese]
I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned.
[Richard Feynman]
Books are many things: energy shots, life-jackets, flying carpets, alarm clocks, oxygen masks, weapons, salves. Who needs what and when can’t be predicted till it happens.
[Jeanette Winterson]
Freud often pointed to the erect posture as the definitive evolutionary achievement of the human being. Straightening our backs and tilting our chins up towards the firmament, we freed our heads from the disgusting and arousing smells of our intimate bodily selves, acquiring the dignity, order and discipline of form.
[Josh Cohen; Guardian; 4 January 2019]
The truth is that life is a lot more mysterious than we give it credit for. Ninety-five per cent of the known universe is utterly unknown and unknowable to us. This isn’t propagated in public discourse enough, because of which people are led to this materialist, reductionist idea of reality which leaves them feeling bereft. It leaves them feeling dead inside and as a result you get more people having breakdowns thinking, “What is the point of it all?” … If you’ve been through those severe experiences you’ve been further out than the rest of us and that’s something beneficial for us. In some ancient communities that was a qualification for being a shaman or a wise person.
[Russell Razzaque]
To be fair to him [Chris Grayling], replacing a system that works with an untested ferry firm with zero ships or shipping experience is one of the most concise Brexit summaries we’ve seen so far. Assuming the government has abandoned Brexit and is now spending 100% of its time creating metaphors for how shit Brexit is going, credit where it’s due – this one is bang on.
[James Felton; Guardian; 4 January 2019]
This is a curious little book which does very much what it says in the title. It is about cleaning, as zen monks do it in the monastery, as well as meditation. The life of the zen monk is hard – much harder than we realise; for another perspective see 
