Category Archives: quotes

amusements, current affairs, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week, a few words of wisdom from some Americans …

Any social organization does well enough if it isn’t rigid. The framework doesn’t matter as long as there is enough looseness to permit that one man in a multitude to display his genius. Most so-called social scientists seem to think that organization is everything. It is almost nothing — except when it is a straitjacket. It is the incidence of heroes that counts, not the pattern of zeros.
[Robert A Heinlein, Glory Road]

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
[Thomas Jefferson]

Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.
[Scott Adams]

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

I have always believed that I was slightly saner than most people. Then again, most insane people think this.
[Truman Capote]

history, medical, pleasures, quotes, science, thoughts, topographical

Quotes of the Week

Somehow I’m not writing this week, probably because I’ve spent a lot of time with my head in family history research. But here is this weeks strange set of bedfellows.

First I’ve been reading a 1923 book about my home town and discovered that even Cromwell’s officials in 1650 could write estate agent-ese …

The Presence Chamber. One very large, spacious delightful Room called the Kinge’s Presence Chamber, being wainscotted round with carved wainscott of good oak, coullered of a liver color, and richly guilded with gold, with antique pictures over the same ; the ceiling full of guilded pendants hanging down, setting forth the roome with great splendour […] Also a very fair, large chimny piece of black and white marble, with four pilasters of the same stone […]
[Government Survey of Theobalds Palace, 1650 quoted in Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt]


This really is what it’s thought Theobalds Palace looked like!
And from the same volume this delight …

For, if those enemies to all good endeavours, Danger, Difficulty, Impossibility, Detraction, Contempt, Scorne, Derision, yea, and Desperate Despight, could have prevailed by their accursed and malevolent interposition either before, at the beginning, in the very birth of proceeding, or in the least stolne advantage of the whole prosecution; this Worke of so great worth had never bin accomplished.
[John Stow, Survey of London, quoted in Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt]

And now for some things much more of our time …

Face to face advice on the internet.
[BBC TV London News, 11/07/2011]

Be especially sure to wipe your children down. Children are just about the grimiest thing in the world.
[Rob Dunn at Scientific American Blogs]

Boris Johnson knows even less about geology than he does about geography. Undercutting Ealing with a tunnel means my constituents, and his electoral voters, will fall into the ground. London’s transport system is built on clay, it would cost more money to tunnel through that than if we replaced HS2 with sedan chairs and walked people to Birmingham.
[Ealing North MP, Steve Pound, on Mayor Boris Johnson’s idea of tunnelling HS2 rail under outer London]

history, personal, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

A rather temporal theme this week …

What is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not.
[St Augustine, Confessions]

Time is Nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.
[John Archibald Wheeler]

The universe is a simple place. True, it contains complicated things like galaxies and sea otters and federal governments, but if we average out the local idiosyncrasies, on very large scales the universe looks pretty much the same everywhere.
[Sean Carroll, From Eternity to Here: the Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time]

Apart from Earl Alan, the Lord of the Manor, there is no record of local names. As to the women, who one must assume formed the usual percentage of the community, not one word!
[Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt commenting on the Domesday Book entry for Cheshunt]

I just love the preambulatory greetings in old documents, which are maintained even to this day in royal letters patent.

To all Christ’s faithful people unto whom this present shall come, Peter, by the grace of God, Abbot of the Church of St Peter of Fulgeres and of the Convent in that same place, greeting in the Lord!
[Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt translating a 12th century document]

Conan, Duke of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, to all the sons of the Church of the Holy Mother, and its steward and chamberlain, and to all its servants, and to all its men, French and English, and to all Britons, and all its well-wishers, greeting!
[Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt translating a 12th century document]

The constant recurrence of old familiar names in the ancient Parish registers seems to show that some of them have long taken root in the place. “Lowin” and “Adams” and “Archer” and “Cock” and “Tarry” and “Dighton”, and a good many more household names, are plentiful as blackberries in the old Registers.
[Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt quoting comments on parish registers by Revd Arthur Brown]

amusements, books, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

OK, so here’s this week’s vaguely mixed up nosebag …

A writer is a professional rememberer.
[Gunter Grass ]

I’m not arguing, I’m just explaining why I’m right.
[Unknown]

This recession won’t be over until we raise a generation that knows how to live on what they’ve got.
[Unknown]

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
[Edward Abbey]

[T]herapists try to make a person fit in with society, while Buddhists see the value of being able to deal with society. [Buddhists] question its core values and don’t really try to make people fit society’s warped mold, only deal with it.
[Brad Warner on his Hardcore Zen Weblog]

There’s only one thing that I know how to do well
And I’ve often been told that you only can do
What you know how to do well
And that’s be you
Be what you’re like!
Be like yourself!
[They Might Be Giants album Flood]

I am sure you will agree with me, Lady Warminster, in thinking, so far as company is concerned, enough is as bad as a feast, and half a loaf in many ways preferable to the alternative of a whole one or the traditional no bread. How enjoyable, therefore, to be just as we are.
[Anthony Powell, Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant]

amusements, beliefs, books, current affairs, freedom of speech, nudism, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

So here’s this week’s cornucopia of quotations. There’s a philosophy PhD in this lot somewhere!

A clean house is the sign of a broken computer.
[Unknown]

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
[Rose Macaulay]

A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
[Robert Frost]

The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve intact its splendour and its beauty … Nakedness as such is not to be equated with physical shamelessness … Immodesty is present only when nakedness plays a negative role with regard to the value of the person … The human body is not in itself shameful … Shamelessness (just like shame and modesty) is a function of the interior of a person.
[Pope John Paul II, The Theology of the Body]

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
[Jean Cocteau]

The best things in life aren’t things.
[Unknown]

Those who are at ease with themselves […] want to undermine authority rather than exercise it.
[Prof. Paul Delany]

[Tony] Blair has […] told us, “Hand on my heart, I did what I thought was right”. If a dry-cleaner said this after ruining our jacket, we would not be pleased with the explanation. Politicians are different: don’t look at any unfortunate results, they say, just admire my generous motives.
[Prof. Paul Delany]

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason, and the real reason.
[Financier JP Morgan]

One of the basic human rights is to make fun of other people, whoever they are.
[Anthony Powell quoted in John Russell, Reading Russell: Essays 1941 to 1988]

If you don’t like our sense of humour, please tell us so we can laugh at you.
[Unknown]

music, people, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

Hmmm … doesn’t seem to be much happening in general this week, and that includes fodder for “Quotes of the Week”, so here’s only a short selection entitled “The Way Things Are” …

Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgements can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.
[Richard Feynman quoted in Lawrence M Krauss, Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science]

The Beatles music is really some of the best music we’ve had in the last century. Children continue to rediscover the music, generation after generation. It’s like saying why is Gershwin timeless? Their music is part of history, it will last forever.
[Sir George Martin, the Beatles record producer]

There are two descriptions of reality: either reality is the bulk of spacetime surrounded by the boundary, or reality is the area of the boundary. So which description is real? There is no way to answer that. We can either think of an object as an object in the bulk space or think of it as a complicated, scrambled collection of information on the boundary that surrounds it. Not both. One or the other.
[Leonard Susskind; Scientific American; July 2011]

quotes

Quotes of the Week

This week’s collection seems to be a slightly skew-ways look at people …

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed be doing at that moment.
[Robert Benchley]

I grew convinc’d that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life.
[Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin]

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
[George Carlin]

We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.
[Lucretius]

It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
[HL Mencken]

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but can not remember her age.
[Robert Frost]

… isolated cabins on chilly mountains, whose only mark on history is to be the incredibly ordinary place where something extraordinary started to happen. Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all gynaecological probability, someone very famous was born halfway up a wall.
[Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites]

You’re not 40, you have 06:00 with 22 years of experience.
[Anonymous]

quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week we seem to be majoring on the beauty of love and life …

As long as you have tits and a tongue you’ll never get lost.
[HyperSexualGirl at Love and Lust]

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month’s study of books.
[Chinese Proverb]

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
[Matthew Arnold]

For every girl who is tired of acting weak when she is strong,
there is a boy tired of appearing strong when he feels vulnerable.
For every boy who is burdened with the constant expectation of knowing everything,
there is a girl tired of people not trusting her intelligence
For every girl who is tired of being called over-sensitive,
there is a boy who fears to be gentle, to weep.
For every boy for whom competition is the only way to prove his masculinity,
there is a girl who is called unfeminine when she competes.
For every girl who throws out her e-z-bake oven,
there is a boy who wishes to find one.
For every boy struggling not to let advertising dictate his desires,
there is a girl facing the ad industry’s attacks on her self-esteem.
For every girl who takes a step toward her liberation,
there is a boy who finds the way to freedom a little easier.
[Unknown]

Beauty is a very valuable thing; perhaps it is the most valuable thing in life; but the power to express emotion so that it shall communicate itself intact and exactly is almost more valuable.
[Ford Madox Ford]

Any time not spent on love is wasted.
[Torquato Tasso]

You may not be her first, her last, or her only, she loved before she may love again,
but if she loves you now, what else matters?
She’s not perfect – you aren’t either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can.
She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break – her heart.
So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyze and don’t expect more than she can give.
Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there.
[Bob Marley]