Category Archives: quotes

quotes

Monthly Quotes

So this month we have another collection of recently encountered quotes. So, in no particular order …

No. They have a right to be ignorant. Knowledge only means complicity in guilt; ignorance has a certain dignity
[Yes Minister]

Whereas some brahmans and contemplatives, living off food given in faith, are addicted to talking about lowly topics such as these – talking about kings, robbers, ministers of state; armies, alarms, and battles; food and drink; clothing, furniture, garlands, and scents; relatives; vehicles; villages, towns, cities, the countryside; women and heroes; the gossip of the street and the well; tales of the dead; tales of diversity, the creation of the world and of the sea, and talk of whether things exist or not – [a monk] abstains from talking about lowly topics such as these. This, too, is part of his virtue.
[The Pali Canon]

Drink doesn’t make him turn nasty. On the contrary. How well one knows the feeling of loving the whole world after downing a few doubles. As I no longer drink, I no longer love the whole world – nor, if it comes to that, even a small part of it.
[Anthony Powell, The Soldier’s Art]

Researchers also note that our culture has become one in which people are more likely to believe personal, anecdotal accounts rather than scientific facts.
[Gesshin Claire Greenwood, Just Enough: Vegan Recipes and Stories from Japan’s Buddhist Temples]

It is a well known fact that all inventors get their first ideas on the back of an envelope. I take slight exception to this, I use the front so that I can include the stamp and then the design is already half done.
[Rowland Emett]

The first principle in science is to invent something nice to look at and then decide what it can do.
[Rowland Emett]

Try to make things better in your sphere. We might not be able to change the world, but we can make our corner a nicer, more accepting place.
[Roma Agrawal]

If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.
[Attributed to Mark Twain]

Don’t you realize what would happen if we allowed the Minister to run the Department? In the first place, there would be chaos, and the second, which is much worse, there would be innovation! Public debate! Outside scrutiny!
[Yes Minister]

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.
[Benjamin Disraeli]

Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.
[Bill Watterson]

amusements, quotes

Monthly Quotes

In between everything else this month, I’ve still managed to spot quite a few interesting or amusing quotes …

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit … Stupid people cause losses to other people with no counterpart of gains on their own account. Thus society as a whole is impoverished.
[Carlo Cipolla, essay “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”]

Treat yourself the way you would treat a small child.
Feed yourself healthy food.
Make sure you spend time outside.
Put yourself to bed early.
Let yourself take naps.
Don’t say mean things to yourself.
Don’t put yourself in danger.
[unknown]

Jim Hacker: “I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Times is read by people who actually run the country. The Guardian is read by people who know they don’t run the country but think they ought to. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.”
Sir Humphrey: “What about the people who read the Sun?”
Bernard: “They don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits.”
[Yes Prime Minister]

A cover up? Certainly not! It is responsible discretion exercised in the national interest to prevent unnecessary disclosure of eminently justifiable procedures in which untimely revelation could severely impair public confidence.
[Yes Prime Minister]

Bernard, a good speech isn’t one where we can prove the minister’s telling the truth. It’s one in which nobody else can prove he’s lying.
[Yes Prime Minister]

“We don’t think our study is practically useful for society, but we hope that it will contribute to our understanding of the symmetric beauty in nature.”
[Munetaka Sugiyama quoted in Smithsonian Magazine]

By upholding international human rights principles, the rule of law is key to closing the gap between human rights aspirations and human rights realities, and to promoting and protecting human rights. We see how the rule of law operationalises human rights through constitutional and legal protections of human rights, an independent and impartial judicial system, effective legal remedies, and competent, accountable and inclusive institutions.
The rule of law has a role in preventing violence … as well as protecting human rights. We are mindful that societies in which human rights are valued, and people are empowered and listened to, are more likely to be just, fair, stable and free from violence. In this session … we take the opportunity to stress the importance of the rule of law in enshrining equality before the law, access to justice, and participation in decision making on the basis of equality, thereby empowering the whole of society.
[UK government statement (19 June 2017) to the 35th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. I just wish they behaved as if they believed it.]

Unexpected guests
receive unexpected views.
(Who wears pants at home?)
[Courtney Symonds]

Or just be a decent person first because that’s like literally the first requirement for anything at all. Be it just friendship, a nice conversation with a stranger, a night of fun, a serious relationship, a not serious relationship. They all start with being a decent human.
[@Suhaila]

In the later stages of its natural career, the academic will sometimes leave their pack without warning, find a obscure hill, and choose to die on it in defiance of all reason. Scientists are uncertain if this tragic death ritual serves any adaptive purpose.
[Danielle Navarro]

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
[Jimi Hendrix]

CLERKENWELL.
FISHING WITHOUT A ROD OR NET. Edward White, 15, a blindmaker’s apprentice, of Victor-road, Holloway, was charged, before Mr. Hosack, with fishing with a hook and line in the lake at Finsbury Park, contrary to the bye-laws of the Metropolitan Board of Works. It was stated on behalf of the Board of Works that the boy was charged under the 7th bye-law, which forbids fishing in the lake. A Park Constable proved having seen the lad fishing with a line which had a hook at the end of it. In answer to the Magistrate, the Witness admitted that the Defendant had neither a rod nor a net. Mr. Hosack said the bye-laws said nothing about fishing with a line, but only with a “rod or net”. The contrivance used by the Defendant did not therefore, come within the bye-law. The boy was then discharged, amid considerable laughter.
[Press report; source & date unknown. H/T @IanVisits]

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
[Upton Sinclair, 1934]

Norman saw on English oak.
On English neck a Norman yoke;
Norman spoon to English dish,
And England ruled as Normans wish;
Blithe world in England never will be more,
Till England’s rid of all the four.
[Sir Walter Scott]

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t climb a ladder with a rabbit in each hand.
[Bob Mortimer]

quotes

Monthly Quotes

Another month goes by and we arrive at another edition of our quotes (amusing or enlightening) recently encountered. As usual in no particular order …

What is needed is something in which [we] can all believe irrespective of religion, which in most cases, dare I say it, is a façade. We need something else, and that something is ethics. Goodness, kindness, love, honesty.
[Nicholas Winton]

In this sentence, “-ough” is pronounced nine different ways:
A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed, houghed, and hiccoughed.

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
[Oscar Wilde]

In 2019 Volgograd electrical engineer Pavel Konnov decided that … the [Voynich Manuscript] describes [a] … rite which protected women from sexual violence by vampires.

If you know the wave function of the universe, why aren’t you rich?
[Murray Gell-Mann]

I didn’t know what I was doing. I was like a man fighting bees.
[Charles Portis, True Grit]

Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.
[Gwendolyn Brooks, poet (1917-2000)]

Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.
[Carl Jung]

Conventionality is not morality. Self righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
[Charlotte Bronte’s preface to the 2nd edition of Jane Eyre]

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me.
[Meister Eckhart]

… the acceptance of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as a means of accounting for the development of species. This was linked to the spectacular industrial and technological developments of the period [Victorians] to produce a cult of progress in which the old and primitive were automatically devalued and despised.
[Ronald Hutton, “Under the Spell of the Druids”, History Today, 13 June 2019]

The British took democracy to other countries, but we can’t even abide by it or believe in it ourselves.
[Quoted in the Guardian, 15 June 2019]

amusements, quotes

Quotes

A monthly round-up of recently encountered quotes, interesting and amusing …

Hospitals are a dominion of streets and mapped lines. Their psychogeography filled up with each body that has passed through them. How many people have slept in this bed? A commonwealth of wards, a confederacy of the sick. Anyone who presents themself for care, cure or examination must accept the role of patient, which requires them to give up something: freedom/free will/free movement.
[Sinéad Gleeson, Constellations: Reflections From Life]

There was an old woman from Slough
Who developed a terrible cough
So she drank half a pint
Of warm honey and mint
But sadly she didn’t pull through.
[unknown]

Me: What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Dad: Never whistle with a mouth full of custard.
[Annie Morris on Twitter]

When I’m good I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.
[Mae West]

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
[Richard Feynman]

There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you room to believe that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it. Feynman was a magician.
[Hans Bethe on Richard Feynman]

First, what bothers me isn’t just that people said 5-HTTLPR [a gene, thought to have a role in depression] mattered and it didn’t. It’s that we built whole imaginary edifices, whole castles in the air on top of this idea of 5-HTTLPR mattering. We “figured out” how 5-HTTLPR exerted its effects, what parts of the brain it was active in, what sorts of things it interacted with, how its effects were enhanced or suppressed by the effects of other imaginary depression genes. This isn’t just an explorer coming back from the Orient and claiming there are unicorns there. It’s the explorer describing the life cycle of unicorns, what unicorns eat, all the different subspecies of unicorn, which cuts of unicorn meat are tastiest, and a blow-by-blow account of a wrestling match between unicorns and Bigfoot.
[Quoted by Derek Lowe at https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/05/10/there-is-no-depression-gene]

The police officer who puts their life on the line with no superpowers, no X-Ray vision, no super-strength, no ability to fly, and no invulnerability to bullets, reveals far greater virtue than Superman – who is only a mere superhero.
[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

I love this waterway [Regent’s Canal]. I’d like to have a private barge, and float down it waving to the tarts.
[X Trapnel in Anthony Powell’s, Books Do Furnish A Room]

There once was a man from Nantucket,
who, tired of life
inside a lewd limerick,

moved out
and set up home
in a piece of free verse,

situated
just on the outskirts
of Chepstow.
[Brian Bilston]

There was a young harpist called Niamh,
who would wear her heart on her sliamh.
But then she plucked Sean
(he played the French hean).
They married before New Year’s Iamh.
[Brian Bilston]

Don’t ever let a recipe tell you how much garlic to put in. You measure that with your heart.
[unknown]

Women are angels. And when someone breaks our wings, we simply continue to fly. On a broomstick. We’re flexible like that.
[unknown]

More next month.

quotes

Monthly Quotes

So here goes with this month’s assemblage of recently encountered quotes both interesting and amusing …

In a courtroom somewhere …
Lawyer: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
Doctor (Witness): No.
L: Did you check for blood pressure?
Dr: No.
L: Did you check for breathing?
Dr: No.
L: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
Dr: No.
L: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
Dr: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
L: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
Dr: It is possible that he could have been alive and practising law somewhere.
[unknown]

Metaphor is the currency of knowledge. I have spent my life learning incredible amounts of disparate, disconnected, obscure, useless pieces of knowledge, and they have turned out to be, almost all of them, extremely useful.
[Chandler Burr, The Emperor of Scent]

We will find it, we will bind it,
We will stick it with glue, glue, glue
We will stickle it
Every little bit of it
We will fix it like new, new, new…
[Firmin & Postgate; Bagpuss]

Happiness does not come ready made. It comes through your own actions.
[Dalai Lama]

Even the humble raven contains within its blackness a whole spectrum, a whole rainbow, a chord of black. The black can be sooty, soily, glazed, cindery, blackboard black, kohl black, coal black, noir, Schwarz. I don’t know how many words and phrases there are to describe black.
[Chris Skaife, aka. Ravenmaster]

Tourism is the great soporific. It’s a huge confidence trick, and gives people the dangerous idea that there’s something interesting in their lives. All the upgrades in existence lead to the same airports and resort hotels, the same pina colada bullshit … The tourists smile at their tans and their shiny teeth and think they’re happy. But the suntans hide who they really are – salary slaves, with heads full of American rubbish. Travel is the last fantasy the 20th century left us, the delusion that going somewhere helps you reinvent.
[JG Ballard]

Computers won’t achieve human-style intelligence until they become prone to boredom. A system that can sit stationary indefinitely lacks the dynamical motivation characteristic of life.
[Sean Carroll]

You shuffled around the room in what a contemporary wit called “a form of country walking slightly impeded by a member of the opposite sex” and you called it a foxtrot. You slid around a little faster and called it a one-step … eventually the foxtrot and the one-step merged into a uniform shuffle which presented no difficulty to anybody.
[CEM Joad, writing about the post-WWI craze for dancing]

From kindergarten onwards we need education to strengthen inner values not just pursue material goals. We need to introduce emotional hygiene, much as we teach physical hygiene. This way we can address the problems we face, in the hope of making this a century of non-violence.
[Dalai Lama]

The joy of dictionaries is that they provide you with dozens of answers you were never looking for.
[Susie Dent]

If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, designed or removed from production.
[Pete Seeger]

Government: You owe us money. It’s called taxes.
Me: How much do I owe?
Gov’t: You have to figure that out.
Me: I just pay what I want?
Gov’t: Oh no, we know exactly how much you owe. But you have to guess that number too.
Me: What if I get it wrong?
Gov’t: You go to prison.
[unknown]

If life was all about peace, quiet, and lack of risk, there would be few marriages, and no steeplejacks.
[David Collier on Facebook]

I’m not saying your perfume is too strong. I’m just saying the canary was alive before you got here.
[unknown]

beliefs, personal, quotes

Quote: Ethics

Quote

Don’t lie, don’t kill, don’t steal. Don’t use love as a game or weapon. Respect the earth, and don’t abuse its gifts. All are familiar ethics that we somehow forget, or manage to sidestep, when we just don’t feel like thinking about consequences.
[Stephanie JT Russell]

quotes

Monthly Quotes

OMG! What’s happening to time? It must be speeding up as we’re almost a quarter of the way through this year! But that means it’s time for our monthly collection of recently encountered, interesting and/or amusing quotes.

Treat yourself the way you would treat a small child. Feed yourself healthy food. Make sure you spend time outside. Put yourself to bed early. Let yourself take naps. Don’t say mean things to yourself. Don’t put yourself in danger.
[unknown]

Being good enough doesn’t just apply to our individual lives. It also can inform how we think about our institutions … Good-enough workplaces would give employees a decent wage, relatively interesting work and opportunities to develop. But they wouldn’t make outlandish promises about being everything for staff, nor would they make outlandish demands on them … Good-enough healthcare would provide the support we need when we are ill, but it doesn’t constantly intrude into people’s life to ensure they are well.
[André Spicer; Guardian; 28/02/2019; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/28/excellent-overrated-good-enough-modern-quest-damaging]

Don’t let them tell you you’re annoying, unlikeable, difficult, problematic, or stepping out of your place. They’re just afraid of you. You scare them because they are weak. Because they are afraid of your truth.
[Jameela Jamil]

Buddhism is all about science. If science is the pursuit of the accurate knowledge of reality, then science is Buddhism.
[Robert AF Thurman]

My timeline is currently populated by people who believe that God is Flat, that Darwin supported brexit and that Jesus is not a greenhouse gas. Or something like that.
[Brian Cox on Twitter]

Science has always worked to convert invisible information into the range we can perceive. This is what microscopes and telescopes do: changing the very small or very distant into a form we can digest with our eyes.
[David Eagleman; neuroscientist; Stanford University; quoted at https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/nanotech-injections-give-mice-infrared-vision/583768/]

We should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation – to make a point – than to further the cause of truth.
[Edgar Allan Poe, The Mystery of Marie Roget]

In life, there’s always a solution to a problem. Not taking control of the situation and doing nothing will only make your problems worse.
[Professor Cary Cooper; University of Lancaster]

It will be exceedingly hard, but that is significantly better than impossible.
[Troels Schönfeldt at https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/technology/2019/nuclear-goes-retro-much-greener-outlook]

The whole Brexit process was bound to be difficult despite the claims of Brexiteers that all would be easy and that beneficial trade deals would rain down. It is hard to think of any modern parallel for such avoidable chaos … We are witnessing a golden age of political blundering and it is far from clear what will emerge over the remaining 24 days.
[Law & Lawyers Weblog; 05/03/2019; http://obiterj.blogspot.com/2019/03/24-days-to-brexit-brief-roundup.html]

They’ve shown precisely no ability to manage this process in an adult way. They’ve shown no understanding of the systems they’re discussing. They’ve shown no ability to consider the interests of the country over their own spaffed-out ideological wet dreams.
[Ian Dunt on Twitter about the government and Brexit]

Even when forced to accept that calling for a People’s Vote must be adopted as Labour Party policy, as it was after last night’s vote against adopting Labour’s plan for Brexit, Corbyn does so with congenital truculence. As the BBC’s John Pienaar put it, adopting the policy with all the enthusiasm of a schoolboy staring at a large plate of Brussels sprouts.
[Peter Walmsley on Facebook; 28/02/2019]

From Questions to the Attorney General (Geoffrey Cox QC MP), House of Commons, 7 March 2019:
Helen Goodman MP: … is it still Government policy to seek a reopening of the withdrawal agreement?
Geoffrey Cox: It is Government policy to achieve the necessary change in the backstop that will cause me to review and change my advice. That is Government policy; that is the subject of the discussions that we are having. I would say that it has come to be called “Cox’s codpiece”. What I am concerned to ensure is that what is inside the codpiece is in full working order.
Mr Speaker: Well! I hope everybody heard that. In the interests of the accessibility of our proceedings – in case anybody did not hear it – the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred to Cox’s codpiece. I have repeated it so that the alliterative quality is clear to all observers.
[Hansard; https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2019-03-07/debates/4ACABC6F-EE41-4F99-90DA-2BA5235AF58A/EUWithdrawalAgreementNorthernIreland]