So once more it is time (where is the year going?) for this month’s selection of quotes.
A politician … is a man who thinks of the next election; while a statesman thinks of the next generation.
[James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888)]
He knows nothing; he thinks he knows everything – that clearly points to a political career.
[George Bernard Shaw]
We need to stop just pulling people out of the river. Some of us need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in.
[Desmond Tutu]
As a thinking, breathing, acting human you constantly generate a three-dimensional ripple of information from the moment you are born … It is the evidence of your existence, radiating from you into the universe. In some small way (infinitesimal, perhaps, but never zero), the heat of your body, the gravitational pull of your mass, the electromagnetism of your thoughts, and everything else you do touch all of reality around you … Everything in the universe that is touched by your ripple could potentially be aware of you. So, for instance, if you are 40 years old, extra-terrestrial beings on a planet that is 40 light years away from us would just now be entering the ever-expanding, spherical information-ripple of your existence … You don’t need to look far out into space to experience this kind of universal connection. As a ripple of information, you are entangled with everything closer to home as well: your immediate surroundings, your neighbourhood, your planet. Whatever happens to Earth and its inhabitants, you are a part of it.
[Corey S Powell at https://invisibleuniverse.substack.com/p/you-are-a-ripple-of-information]
His head was an hourglass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time.
[Mark Twain]
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]
You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.
[Yogi Berra]
Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.
[Pablo Casals]
More people have poor taste than good taste. They come to their opinions quickly and without any thought, like a small child. That’s why there’s fast food. And moronic reality television shows. And people who follow Paris Hilton. More people will enjoy crack than Proust’s novels. Ergo, just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s inherently good or worthwhile. Too many people just love bad shit because they don’t know any better.
[HyperSexual Girl; Love & Lust]
“All right, class, have we all remembered to bring a potato?”
About three quarters of them held up a potato. I sighed and lifted the shopping bag I’d spent my own money on for this inevitability.
“All right, come get one if you forgot. You too Jason, that’s a carrot.”
“Aw Miss mum said it would be fine.”
“You can’t install Linux on a carrot, Jason, the beta-carotene causes row faults in the DRAM.”
I held up my own potato, showing the genesculpt needles embedded firmly in its flesh. “Now, last week we compiled our VHDL to mRNA, this week we are going to implant it and then incubate our veggies until next week.”
[Christopher Biggs; https://aus.social/@Unixbigot/112628440884924735]
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is
here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
[Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy]