Category Archives: quotes

amusements, quotes

Quotes : On Intelligence

Another in our occasional series of apposite aphorisms.

The time it would take a gang of geriatric virgins [the Roman Catholic hierarchy] to understand and define marriage is longer than the projected lifespan of the universe. It would be a shock if they did have anything coherent to say on the subject after only 2000 years of uninformed speculation from their armchairs.
[WoollyMindedLiberal in a comment on Heresy Corner]

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
[F Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up]

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
[Henry Adams]

Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
[Henrik Tikkanen]

I’m designed intelligently? As far as I can see, I was designed by an idiot. My parts are neither interchangeable nor replaceable. I could use a new ankle right now, and almost everything I do injures my back. Some of my internal organs are useless, and can even kill me. My risk calculation engine is useless. I am afraid to eat beef, but have no problem catapulting myself down tree-lined roads on my motorcycle. My judgement is so bad I can be convinced to send my life savings to a complete stranger with just one phone call. The final stake in the heart of intelligent design is that there are people we might otherwise consider intelligent, who, in the face of all this, maintain we are functioning as intended.
[Eric Dietiker]

quotes

On Humanity

Several recently noticed quotes on various aspects of humanity.

One cannot usefully legislate against an attitude or a belief, but one can legislate against criminal behaviour that might result from an attitude or a belief … It is the duty of governments to protect their citizens from harm. It is not government’s task to protect its citizens’ sensitivities, however justifiable and acute, from peacefully expressed views, however bizarre.
[William Saunderson-Meyer at Thought Leader]

When asked What thing about humanity surprises you the most?, the Dalai Lama answered: Man … Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
[Dalai Lama quoted on Only Dead Fish]

To be human is to have a human body. To be ashamed of one’s body is to be ashamed of being human … Nudity is the default setting for all of us. It’s wrong to let ourselves be bullied or shamed into taking the action of hiding behind clothing. A society in which individuals are free to be as dressed or undressed as they wish would be my ideal.
[“Naked Andy” at iNAKED]

For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting.
[Robert Benchley]

We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.
[Dr Seuss]

books, quotes

History of English

I’ve just finished reading Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English by John McWhorter. It’s a very interesting, although slightly confusing, book about the history of English. That’s English as in the language “what I speak”.

Interesting because in it McWhorter tries to demonstrate that the early (as in mostly pre-Medieval Old English) history of the English language is far more complex but understandable than most scholars are prepared to admit.

Confusing in that as a non-linguist and someone who was never hot on the technicalities of grammar (the one probably because of the other) I don’t easily appreciate the niceties of some of his argument and examples. I would undoubtedly benefit from re-reading it.

It’s a short book but it covers an immense amount of ground. McWhorter starts with the argument that English was moulded by interaction with the Welsh and Cornish languages (all display features found nowhere else in the world). He ends with the suggestion that Proto-Germanic (the root of all modern Germanic languages including English) is a bastard off shoot of Proto-Indo-European made that way by interaction with Phoenician language(s). His concluding paragraphs give you a flavour:

English … [a]n offshoot of Proto-Indo-European borrowed a third of its vocabulary from another language. That language may have been Phoenician … Its speakers submitted the Proto-Indo-European offshoot to a grammatical overhaul … they could not help shaving off a lot of its complications, and rendering parts of the grammar in ways familiar to them from their native language. This left Proto-Germanic a language both mixed and abbreviated before it even gave birth to new languages – and meant that it passed this mixed, abbreviated nature on to those new languages.

One of them was Old English, which morphed merrily along carrying the odd sound patterns, vowel-switching past marking, and mystery vocabulary from Proto-Germanic … Old English was taken up by speakers of yet another language … Celtic ones. As Celts started using English more and more over the decades, English gradually took an infusion of grammatical features from Welsh and Cornish, including a usage of do known in no other languages on earth.

Not long afterward … Vikings speaking Old Norse picked up the language fast, and gave it a second shave … English’s grammar became the least “fussy” of all of the Germanic languages …

The result: a tongue oddly genderless and telegraphic for a European one, clotted with peculiar ways of using do and progressive -ing – with … a great big bunch of words from other languages. Not only Norse, French, Latin, and Greek, but possibly Phoenician …

The vanilla version of The History of English will live on. But its proponents have not had occasion to engage with the underground stories I have attempted to share with you, or, having done so briefly, have opted to sweep them under the rug …

… English is … Interesting.

Interesting indeed!

quotes

Cynics Are Us

A handful of recently discovered, somewhat cynical quotes …

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
[Soren Kierkegaard]

Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.
[Robert Heinlein]

If you can’t convince them … Confuse them!
[Harry S Truman]

What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public.
[Vilhjalmur Stefansson]

amusements, quotes

Wise Words?

A selection of recently culled amusing words from the wise and wise words from the amusing.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
[Steve Jobs]

I am not lazy … I just rest before I get tired.
[Thoughts of Angel]

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.
[Miller Williams, The Ways We Touch]

Everything will be OK in the end … if its not OK, its not the end.
[Thoughts of Angel]

quotes

Quote: Experiencing

The primary difference between the western and indigenous ways of life is that [American] Indians experience and relate to a living universe, whereas western people reduce all things, living or not, to objects.

Vine Deloria

quotes

Thoughts for a Dull Week in January

Even more than critical thinking or time management, what the white-collar economy requires from most workers is the ability to spend the bulk of their waking hours completing tasks of no inherent importance or interest to them, to show up every day, and to not complain overmuch about it.
[Christopher R Beha]

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
[Terry Pratchett]

A judge said that all his experience, both as counsel and judge, had been spent sorting out the difficulties of people who, upon the recommendation of people they did not know, signed documents which they did not read, to buy goods they did not need, with money they had not got.
[Gilbert Harding, died 1960]

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.
[Henry James]

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
[Attributed to Marilyn Monroe]

amusements, quotes

Keep Calm and Drink Up

One of the many contents of my Christmas Stocking was a small book called Keep Calm and Drink Up. It is a collection of quotations and aphorisms about drink — mostly alcoholic drink, of course.

Amongst the more delightfully amusing and/or thought-provoking entries were the following.

The British have a remarkable talent for keeping calm, even when there is no crisis.
[Franklin P Jones]

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.
[George F Burns]

Rum, noun: generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
[Ambrose Bierce]

I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes.
[WC Fields]

Wine is sunlight, held together by water.
[Galileo]

There can’t be good living where there is not good drinking.
[Benjamin Franklin]

Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.
[Arnold Schwarzenegger]

The greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer … the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.
[Dave Barry]

quotes

Thoughts for the Week

A collection of recently culled thoughts on life, the universe …

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
[Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825-1895]

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence
[Thoughts of Angel]

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
[Thomas Edison]

If you treat people the way they are, you make them worse. If you treat them the way they ought to be, you make them capable of becoming what they ought to be.
[Goethe]

Religion convinced the world that there’s an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there’s 10 things he doesn’t want you to do or else you’ll to to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! … And he needs money!
[George Carlin, You Are All Diseased]

In the face of all the challenges we face today, is my optimism about the future of humanity idealistic? Perhaps it is. Is it unrealistic? Certainly not. To remain indifferent to the challenges we face is indefensible. If the goal is noble, whether or not it is realized within our lifetime is largely irrelevant. What we must do therefore is to strive and persevere and never give up.
[Dalai Lama]

Don’t think, it’s bad for the government.
[Touretteshero; this is one of her tics but it is so true!]