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]

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]

OK, so here we are again with this month’s collection of recently encountered, interesting and/or amusing quotes.

The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognizable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.
[Anthony Powell; A Question of Upbringing]

True freedom is being without anxiety about imperfection.
[Sengchen; 6th century Chinese Zen master]

When you work hard to make your relationship work and stay together for a long time, then you each become the person you were meant to be with.
[Haemin Sunim; Korean Buddhist monk]

You’re fine just as you are but you could use little improvement.
[Sunryu Suzuki]

Woodcutters and fishermen know just how to use things. What would they do with fancy chairs and meditation platforms? In straw sandals and with a bamboo staff, I roam three thousand worlds, dwelling by the water, feasting on the wind, year after year.
[Ikkyu]

Sometimes all we need is a hug to make us realise that everything will soon be alright.

If people bought no more books than they intended to read, and no more swords than they intended to use, the two worst trades in Europe would be a bookseller’s and a sword-cutler’s; but luckily for both they are reckoned genteel ornaments.
[Lord Chesterfield]

Many of us haven’t owned a nice box of coloured pencils since we were children. Yet no adult should be without one, because having a range of colours at our fingertips provides a route to a wide array of moods and inspirations. This box knows that colours are connected to the chords of our souls. It includes a booklet about the psychology behind twelve shades, explaining how each of these colours links us to specific memories and feelings.
[From Twitter, apparently from a box of coloured pencils]

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.
[Seen on Facebook]

Light is known to be fuzzy at the quantum level. With the help of a team in Australia, researchers are sharpening the light by squeezing the fuzziness.
[From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47213202]

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]

So here is this month’s un-Christmas-y selection of recently encountered quotes.

I put friend coins in the woman and sex didn’t come out – I think she may be broken.
[unknown]
(Sadly still an all too common belief.)

I’m not an atheist because I’m ignorant of the reality of scripture. I am an atheist because religious scripture is ignorant of reality.
[unknown]

Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
[Alan Watts]

A contempt for expertise is inevitably expressed by those who, without experts contributing to society as they do, would be lucky to have a voice to speak with, let alone a platform on which to use it. Expertise, like democracy, is far from infallible; each, however, is always preferable to the alternative.
[David Bennum; Guardian; 31/11/2018; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/30/brexit-britain-crisis-uk]

Don’t think about what can happen in a month. Don’t think about what can happen in a year. Just focus on the 24 hours in front of you and do what you can to get closer to where you want to be.
[unknown]

First you forget names; then you forget faces; then you forget to zip up your fly; and then you forget to unzip your fly.
[unknown]

The person we’re … working for is so cool, laid back and unconcerned, I seriously wonder if he moonlights as a jazz correspondent.
[Andrew J Baker]

Asking Maradona what he thinks about Mexican second division football is like asking Beethoven what he thinks about Girls Aloud.
[Adrian Chiles]

My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
[Boris Johnson]

The idea that winter could actually be enjoyable would never have occurred to Ramtop people, who had 18 different words for snow. (All of them, unfortunately, unprintable.)
[Terry Pratchett, The Wyrd Sisters. H/T June Laurenson]

Science is the most beautiful and elegant tool that humanity has yet developed with which to actually investigate the physical universe, to measure it, to test it. Science evolved out of magic.
[Alan Moore, author of Watchmen, in New Scientist, 8 December 2018]

If you think that every second is eternal, don’t do anything that you can’t live with forever.
[Alan Moore, author of Watchmen, in New Scientist, 8 December 2018]

What if there were creatures, entities, that were made up purely of ideas, purely of language or something – wouldn’t that explain everything from Smurfs to gods, to demons, to angels, to leprechauns, to all of this nonsense that we have been obsessed with throughout our development as a species?
[Alan Moore, author of Watchmen, in New Scientist, 8 December 2018]

The Fates permitting, we’ll see you on the other side of the festivities.

Welcome to our latest monthly series of quotes amusing and thought-provoking.

You don’t have to be positive all the time. It’s perfectly okay to feel sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, scared or anxious. Having feelings doesn’t make you a negative person, it makes you human.
[Lori Deschene]

Be well advised and assured what matter you put in his head: for you shall never pull it out again.
[Cardinal Wolsey]

It is a great relief to find that we can accept all things for what they are, whether miracles or tragedies.
[Christmas Humphreys]

In autumn there were days of fog that called the truth of everyday experience into question.
[Esther Kinsky, River]

Is there a book you really wish you’d written yourself? A Dance to the Music of Time, by Anthony Powell. That book was a fascinating primer for me in how to write a sequence of books with the same cast of characters, and having the main character age along the way. This notion that life is a dance to the music of time – if you’re writing a series it’s crucial to know how to do it.
[Ian Rankin, Guardian, 3 November 2018]

Having anxiety and depression is like being scared and tired at the same time. It’s the fear of failure, but no urge to be productive. It’s wanting friends, but hating socializing. It’s wanting to be alone, but not wanting to be lonely. It’s caring about everything, then caring about nothing. It’s feeling everything at once, then feeling paralysingly numb.
[unknown]

If a system can be gamed, someone or something will game it.
For example …
Reward a simulated car for continuously going at high speed, and it will learn to rapidly spin in a circle.
Or alternatively …
I hooked a neural network up to my Roomba. I wanted it to learn to navigate without bumping into things, so I set up a reward scheme to encourage speed and discourage hitting the bumper sensors. It learnt to drive backwards, because there are no bumpers on the back.
[Quoted at http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/11/self-driving-car-rewarded-for-speed.html]

Trying to make science efficient requires figuring out what “efficient science” would be.
[Sean S, in a comment at http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/11/self-driving-car-rewarded-for-speed.html]

Fascists, to begin with, can seem [feckless] at the start, but because they lack any sort of civilized inhibitions, they forge ahead, intent on winning their way at whatever cost to others. Even worse, they believe … in their definition of duty and success without any of the qualms or reservations that trouble finer sensibilities.
[Carl Rollyson, “Anthony Powell and his People” at
https://www.weeklystandard.com/carl-rollyson/anthony-powell-and-his-people]

We all seem to have a good idea of what useful advice is: using our knowledge and experience to tell others how to narrow down their options and zero in on the right move. But new research … shows that there is a better way to approach advice. People seeking advice are generally not interested in being told what to do, but in gathering information so that they will have more alternatives and perspectives to consider. This mismatch causes problems: the advice we give others ends up being less helpful, the recipients don’t follow our recommendations, and we view them negatively as a result.
[Francesca Gino, “How to Give Better Advice” at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-give-better-advice/]

No notion espoused by an economist of whatever leaning has had any greater predictive power than a chimp trying to choose a winning horse at the Grand National.
[Letter from Sam Edge at https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg24032032-300-folk-economic-beliefs-are-not-so-stupid-2/]

Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg are all, like Donald Trump, reality TV stars … In the media circus, the clowns have the starring roles. And clowns in politics are dangerous.
[George Monbiot at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/03/cult-personality-politics-boris-trump-corbyn-george-monbiot]