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]

Our monthly round up of quotes interesting and amusing.

What Dungeness has [is] the sense that it has remained so relatively unchanged, escaping the prissy tedium of the rest of south east England … the convention by which all of the south east must become one giant, government-approved suburb. Here, it feels as if planning laws have never existed. There are no polite and bricky executive cul-de-sacs, no banal shopping malls, no air-conditioned, fluorescent-lit office blocks, no golf courses, neat kerbstones, yellow lines, speed bumps, no traffic wardens or CCTY cameras, no bored and boring yoof lurking under medieval hoods on street corners. Physically, socially and emotionally, Dungeness is a very long way from Middle England.
[Jonathan Glancy in Nigel Green, Dungeness (Photoworks, 2003)]

The reality of our century is technology – the invention, construction and maintenance of the machine. To be a user of machines is to be of the spirit of the century. It has replaced the transcendental spiritualism of past eras.
[Moholy Nagy, 1922]

The concept of connectedness is, of course, the basis of all kinship systems … Getting married, in this case, is not just pairing off, it is, in a way, sharing each other.
[Stephen Muecke quoted in the Guardian]

Intolerance for the indefensible becomes intolerance for anything that is different. The aspiration for the universal becomes a crude insistence on the uniform. Sensitivity is lost to the very different needs of different cultures at different times and places.
[From the Guardian]

There is a contradiction in saying there are no universal truths, since that is itself a universal claim about the nature of truth.
[From the Guardian]

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other people’s houses as an interloper, a beggar or a slave.
[Gandhi, quoted in the Guardian]

A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work.
[Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities]

Sometimes it’s better to take life as it comes, set your sails according to the winds that blow, go with the tide, follow your instinct, choose the grassier, less trodden road for its own sake and not in the hope it might lead anywhere very special.
[Christopher Robin Milne]

We can’t know anything outside our mind. Everything we see is contained within our mind. Thus, I am not in the world. The world is in me.
[Haemin Sunim]

Honesty is the glue that holds together a society of laws. Lies are the solvent that dissolves those bonds.
[From the Washington Post]

You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing things with logic. True power is restraint. If words control you that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.
[Warren Buffett]

Just a reminder: the system in what is currently known as the US isn’t “broken”. It was designed by male white supremacist slave owners on stolen indigenous land to protect their interests. It’s working as it was designed.
[Dr Adrienne Keene on Facebook]

In our quest for happiness and the avoidance of suffering, we are all fundamentally the same, and therefore equal. Despite the characteristics that differentiate us – race, language, religion, gender, wealth and many others – we are all equal in terms of our basic humanity.
[Dalai Lama]

Only having “compassion” for those who are in your in-group, and vilifying or even becoming violent toward those who you perceive as the out-group, is not only antithetical to world peace more broadly, but is also counter-productive to political progress that advances the greater good of all humans on this planet.
[Scott Barry Kaufman, Scientific American, 8 October 2018]

And finally …

If you ever think your job is pointless, just remember there is a bloke in Germany who puts indicators on BMW cars.

So here we are again with this months collection of quotes weird and wonderful!

VESPERS
Hush! Hush. Whisper who dares!
Little boy sits at the foot of the stairs.
Blood on his fingers
And fur on the mat:
Christopher Robin’s castrated the cat!
[John Hein]

Golden-haired boy on the edge of the street
In his tight blue jeans on his lonely beat.
Hush! Hush!
I’m rather afraid
Christopher Robin is looking for trade.
[John Hein]

You cannot overestimate the stupidity of people, yourself especially.
[Robyn Hitchcock]

Fascism is cured by reading, and racism is cured by travelling.
[Miguel do Unamuno]

I believe that when we leave a place, part of it goes with us, and part of us remains. Go anywhere in the station when it is quiet and just listen. After a while, you will hear the echoes of all our conversations, every thought and word we’ve exchanged. Long after we have gone, our voices will linger in these walls.
[unknown]

Faced with a choice between contributors offering an honest and considered assessment or mendacious buffoons with a talent for attracting attention, the BBC will consistently choose the latter. By this means it systematically distorts national life.
[George Monbiot]

Way down deep in the middle of the Congo, 
A hippo took an apricot, a guava and a mango. 
He stuck it with the others, and he danced a dainty tango. 
The rhino said …
‘My testicle was so big, you could play it like a bongo’.
[https://twitter.com/ed_son/status/1038321780010766336]

“History” is not derived from “his story”. It’s from the Greek ἱστορία, historia, which means “inquiry”.
[Rose Eveleth]

Wellness uses terms that sound like a dog whistle for the patriarchy. Pure. Clean. Natural. This could easily be advertising for America’s next virgin bride, not a pathway to health.
[Dr Jennifer Gunter]

If we’re not supposed to have midnight snacks, why is there a light in the fridge?
[Stephen Rodda]

If people can’t face up to the fact of other people being naked … then we’re never going to get anywhere.
[John Lennon]

“I’ve often been asked, ‘What do you old folks do now that you’re retired?’ Well … I’m fortunate to have a chemical engineering background and one of the things I enjoy most is converting beer, wine and vodka into urine. I do it every day and I really enjoy it.”
[unknown]

Here’s this month’s collection of recently encountered quotes.

Borges wrote that a library is a labyrinth. This is also true – the rows of bookshelves running on for miles, with paths and passageways between them, the classification of the texts working as a kind of cipher that the reader must decode in order to find what she wants. That is only the superficial idea, however. Borges meant that literature is itself a labyrinth, and that every library contains the possibility of infinite places and infinite existences. Open a book in a library and you can disappear into a world, its cities, and its landscapes. All books, in turn, are labyrinths that express the winding shapes of their writers’ imaginations. Each writer builds the labyrinth, and then leads the readers through the myriad possibilities of their tale with a thread like that of Ariadne, guiding them down the paths of their story, wherever it might take them.
[Sofia Grammatiki, quoted at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/28/myth-monsters-and-the-maze-how-writers-fell-in-love-with-the-labyrinth]

In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
[Lao Tzu]

Making others happy is not a question of sacrificing our own happiness. Trying to make others happy, even when we do not always succeed, is a source of great satisfaction. Anger and hatred are signs of weakness, while compassion is a sure sign of strength.
[Dalai Lama]

Any sufficiently oblivious technology is indistinguishable from malice.
[Rose Eveleth]

You don’t have to say anything to the haters. You don’t have to acknowledge them at all. You just wake up every morning and be the best you you can be. And that tends to shut them up.
[Michelle Obama]

Doors closed 15 minutes ago. As we do every evening, we’ve turned all the books upside down so the words don’t fall out overnight. It may seem like a silly waste of time, but ask yourself this; when did you last see piles of words on a Waterstones carpet? That’s right – NEVER.
[https://twitter.com/swanseastones/status/1027234913005830144]

A limerick is seldom essential,
And this one is inconsequential,
Just the standard five lines,
And some dubious rhymes,
And it’s pointlessly self-referential.
[https://twitter.com/daniel_barker/status/1027932616442474498]

The rigid low-sodium diet is insipid, unappetising, monotonous, unacceptable, and intolerable. To stay on it requires the asceticism of a religious zealot.
[Sir George Pickering, about 50 years ago, quoted at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/09/salt-not-as-damaging-to-health-as-previously-thought-says-study]

A Limerick on any occasion
Is great for debate or persuasion,
It dissipates bile
Just by raising a smile:
The perfect poetic equation.
[https://twitter.com/bernardstacey/status/1028189895519596544]

Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.
[Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche]

GOING TO THE DOGS
My granddad, viewing earth’s worn cogs,
Said things were going to the dogs;
His granddad in his house of logs,
Said things were going to the dogs;
His granddad in the Flemish bogs.
Said things were going to the dogs;
His granddad in his old skin togs,
Said things were going to the dogs;
There’s one thing that I have to state –
The dogs have had a good long wait.
[Anon; quoted at https://www.facebook.com/barnabyjpage/posts/10156805118473487]

Lighthouse-keepers Trinity House own a lot of land alongside Borough High Street, which is why Avon Place … has a bicentennial mural along its length featuring Henry VIII, osteopathy and a fox chewing a brake cable.
[diamond geezer at http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2018/08/51n-6.html]

So, a day late, here is this month’s collection of quotes interesting and amusing.

The original is unfaithful to the translation.
[Jorge Louis Borges]

I’m skeptical of any claims to a special, singular women’s spirituality (just as I’m skeptical of a singular “women’s” anything – including bathrooms).
[Gesshin Claire Greenwood; Bow First, Ask Questions Later]

The Ten Commandments are a warning from an all-powerful, all-knowing God, eternally separate from ourselves, not to do certain things or else He’ll kick our asses. The Buddhist precepts are reminders to trust our own intuitive sense of right and wrong.
[Brad Warner]

Making ethical choices based on external systems of value (societal norms, religious doctrine) seems to me like an insufficient way of going about things because it means I would be using someone else’s definition of reality and someone else’s experience instead of understanding for myself what is good and useful.
[Gesshin Claire Greenwood; Bow First, Ask Questions Later]

The only power the [Buddhist] precepts have, the only power any of this practice has, is the power we give it, the meaning we make of it. This is why I have such a high tolerance for teachers, ceremonies, and ritual; they’re inherently devoid of meaning until I create my own, through and with those external points of reference.
[Gesshin Claire Greenwood; Bow First, Ask Questions Later]

“Berks and wankers”
Not every reader will immediately understand these two terms as I use them, but most people, most users of English, habitually distinguish between two types of person whose linguistic habits they deplore if not abhor. For my present purpose these habits exclude the way people say their vowel sounds, not because these are unimportant but because they are hard to notate and at least as hard to write about.
Berks are careless, coarse, crass, gross and of what anybody would agree is a lower social class than one’s own. They speak in a slipshod way with dropped Hs, intruded glottal stops and many mistakes in grammar. Left to them the English language would die of impurity, like late Latin.
Wankers are prissy, fussy, priggish, prim and of what they would probably misrepresent as a higher social class than one’s own. They speak in an over-precise way with much pedantic insistence on letters not generally sounded, especially Hs. Left to them the language would die of purity, like medieval Latin.
In cold fact, most speakers, like most writers left to themselves, try to pursue a course between the slipshod and the punctilious, however they might describe the extremes they try to avoid, and this is healthy for them and the language.
[Kingsley Amis; The King’s English (Penguin Modern Classics)]

Being hyper-aware of problems I can do nothing to solve never brought me any joy, nor did it ever make the slightest difference in those problems.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.info/hitler-sells-but-im-not-buying/5926

Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it’s OK to be a boy; for girls it’s like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.
[Ian McEwan; The Cement Garden]

On Friday at Chequers the government will do what it has been doing for the past two years: spend an inordinate amount of time negotiating with itself before producing a ‘solution’ that is unworkable, only to take it to Brussels and discover it is also unacceptable. The problem is not just that they don’t have a rabbit; they don’t even have a hat.
[Gary Younge; Guardian; 6 July 2018]

Much can they praise the trees so straight and high
The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall,
The builder oak, sole king of forests all,
The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral,
The laurel, mead of mighty conquerors
And poets sage, the fir that weepest still,
They yew obedient to the bender’s will,
The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill,
The myrrh sweet bleeding in the bitter wound,
The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill,
The fruitful olive, and the platane round,
The carver holm, the maple seldom sound.
[Edmund Spencer; The Faerie Queene]

The overriding sadness … is that the nation lacks the political leadership required to tackle the 2016 referendum outcome informed as it was by lies, misinformation and the antics of bodies such as Vote Leave … Surely, there is no need to follow a referendum result given that it is now clear that it will lead to ruin.
[Law and Lawyers blog; http://obiterj.blogspot.com/2018/07/uk-eu-future-relationship-uk-proposals_14.html]

An ancient Greek walks into his tailor’s shop with a pair of torn pants.
“Euripides?” says the tailor.
“Yeah, Eumenides?” replies the man.
[Origin unknown]

More next month!