The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n. [John Milton -- Paradise Lost 1:254-5] where strictness of grammar does not weaken expression, it should be attended to in complaisance to the purists of New England. but where by small grammatical negligences the energy of an idea is condensed, or a word stands for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt. [Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, late 1801] Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge. [Hafen Slawkenbergius (Lawrence Sterne) in Tristram Shandy] sound principles will not justify our taxing the industry of our fellow citizens to accumulate treasure for wars to happen we know not when, and which might not perhaps happen but from the temptations offered by that treasure. [Thomas Jefferson -- 1st AnnualMessage to Congress, Dec. 1801] vive, vale, et siquid novisti rectius istis candidus imperti sinon, his ulere mecum. (Live long, farewell. If you know something better than these precepts, pass it on, my good fellow. If not, join me in following these.) [Horace qtd. by Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 13 May 1810] to sum the whole, therefore, it may truly be said that the classical languages are a solid basis for most, and an ornament to all the sciences. [Thomas Jefferson to John Brazier, 1819] it is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate; to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance. [Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson, 28 Mar. 1787] But the old fellows say we must read to gain knowledge, and gain knowledge to make us happy and admired. _Mere_jargon_! is there any such thing as happiness in this world? And as for admiration, I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes most, embroiders most, and speaks the most nonsense, is most admired. Though to be candid, there are some who have to much good sense to esteem such monkey-like animals as these, in whose formation, as the saying is, the tailors and barbers go halves with God Almighty; and since these are the only persons whose esteem is worth a wish, I do not know but that, upon the whole, the advice of these old fellows may be worth following. [Thomas Jefferson to John Page, 25 Dec. 1763] instead of writing ten or twelve letters a day, which I have been in the habit of doing as a thing in course, I put off answering my letters now farmer-like, till a rainy day, and then find them sometimes postponed by other necessary occupations. [Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Apr. 1794] Moral: If the sky is the limit better fix it clear in your mind to begin with. [Rudolph Valentino -- Daydreams, 1923] They say life's a stage, but what a sad thing we have so few good stage managers. [Rudolph Valentino -- Daydreams, 1923] Never take away a prop without putting a stronger one in its place. [Rudolph Valentino -- Daydreams, 1923] Worlds, and Worlds to live in, and so few do. [Rudolph Valentino -- Daydreams, 1923] Fun is a healthy disease and is very contagious. [Rudolph Valentino -- Daydreams, 1923] Care is helpful if we carefully care, but when we carelessly care, be careful. [Rudolph Valentino -- Daydreams, 1923] Take freedom but take care lest it take your liberty from you. [Rudolph Valentino -- Daydreams, 1923] Oh! What a mockery 'cross the sky The dove is sent to act as spy. [Rudolph Valentino -- Daydreams, 1923] A dog is the nearest approach to the sweet submissive spirit God would have in us, Faithfulness in the highest form. [Rudolph Valentino -- Daydreams, 1923] Mundus vult decipi. [motto of Poictesne (James Branch Cabell) -- Figures of Earth] Yes, Javeh did create the first man on the sixth day. And I voiced no criticism. For of course after working continuously for nearly a whole week, and making so many really important things, no creative artist should be blamed for not being in his happiest vein on the sixth day. [the Zhor-Ptitza (Fire Bird) (James Branch Cabell) -- Figures of Earth] Humans contemplate themselves and ponder. I contemplate humans and laugh. [Q (John DeLancie) in I, Q] ...[T]he only thing that separates us from the animals are mindless superstitions and pointless rituals. [Latka Graves -- proverb from his country (Andy Kauffman -- Taxi)] Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to. [Mark Twain] If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat. [Mark Twain] I don't own a cat, but I'm not as smart as my character, either. [Brent Spiner] I like the Klingon way of funerals -- you howl, you pitch. 'Cause the body is just ... Tupperware for the soul. [Anita Rice, 2000] Responsibilities of the Mind These are your duties three: To sing, O science; To reason, O poetry; To be skeptical, O faith. [Stan Rice, 2000] How much fun will be gone when the ages have given over all their treasure, when the bowels of the centuries have yielded up their secrets and their holdings to the perpetually curious and delving pickax and science and research of modern man. What, then, shall become of our thrills? When there are no more uncharted seas to sail? When darkest India and blackest Africa have been staked out, mapped and railroaded? When even the air shall have nothing further to reveal and the depths of the sea shall have been plumbed? Then, no doubt, we shall literally as we have always metaphorically, hitch out scientific wagons to the stars and attempt the sasconnading of the heavens. [Rudoph Valentino -- My Private Diary, 1924] Agnosticism, unfortunately, marches always with civilisation, bringing it ultimately to the point of individualism and decay. The only hope of a high and permanent civilisation was when "persuasion and belief had ripened into faith, and faith became a passionate institution." [Cosmo Hamilton -- Unwritten History, 1924] Honor does not go with stupidity. [H. L. Menken American Mercury editorial, 1924] There is a fraternity of those who passionately want to know. [Charlie Chaplin -- My Autobiography, 1964] I cannot believe that our existence is meaningless or accidental, as some scientists would tell us. Life and death are too resolute, too implacable to be accidental. The ways of life and death -- genius cut down in the prime, world upheavals, holocausts and catastrophes -- may seem futile and meaningless. But the fact that these things have happened are demonstrable of a resolute, fixed purpose beyond the comprehension of our three-dimensional minds. ... There are things beyond reason. How can we comprehend a thousand-billionth of a second. Yet it must exist, according to the system of mathematics. ... My faith is in the unknown, in all that we do not understand by reason; I believe that what is beyond our comprehension is a simple fact in other dimensions, and that in the realm of the unknown there is an infinite power for good. [Charlie Chaplin -- My Autobiography, 1964] It has been pretended by some ... that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. ... By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or moveable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious, then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement of exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. According, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. ... [G]enerally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices. [Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 13 Aug. 1813] Eternity is a mere moment, just big enough for a joke. [Goethe, qtd. in Steppenwolf] Would anyone trust the convictions of a monkey's mind? [Charles Darwin] Man is a good, but not a great ape. [Keith L. Partain, c.2002] God tells us in the Book of Genesis, right after Noah's flood, to eat everything under the sun. Those who ignore his instructions are no better than godless heathens. [Jeffrey Steingarten -- The Man Who Ate Everything, 1997] [on modern abstract writers and poets] Why, we must ask ourselves, have individuals of unquestionably great powers chosen to play with their minds like captive monkeys with their genitalia? [Hans Zinsser -- Rats, Lice, and History, 1934] [Politicians] are just like seaweed; they just stand there and let the current wave 'em back and forth. [Lewis D. Clarkston, 1988] God's a lot more broadminded than you think. [Will Rogers] If you don't pitch in your part, and if I don't pitch in my part, we won't have a part to pitch in. [Ernest P. Worrell (Jim Varney)] Writing, when properly managed, ... is but a different name for conversation. [Lawrence Sterne -- Tristram Shandy] A friend is not a fellow Who is taken by the sham; A friend is one who knows your faults, And doesn't give a damn. [poster with a picture of a terrier, given to Dad by Fern Swarm, c. 1920s-70s] A friend is one To whom one may pour Out all the contents Of one's heart, Chaff and grain together, Knowing that the Gentlest of hands Will take and sift it, Keep what is worth keeping, And with a breath of kindness, Blow the rest away. [trad. Arabian] It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] The Realists Hope that you may understand! What can books of men that live In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live That had gone With the dragons? [W. B. Yeats, Responsibilities, 1914] Is it my imagination, or does it seem like every ruler of every nation in the world is a dick? [Jon Stewart, Feb. 2003] Perhaps it is as well that we have as yet not solved the problem of atomic power. The chances are that the man who invents it will come pretty near to destroying our entire globe. The amount of energy contained in all the particles in this globe is so titanic that the human mind can not conceive it. We are sitting on a ball far more explosive than nitroglycerine and it would not take much to set off this ball and turn it into a nebula. Once atomic energy is set free it would be impossible to stop its destructive effects, which necessarily would be felt from one end of the globe to the other. The scientist who discovers atomic energy, let it be hoped, will have enough insight in the matter to know what he is doing, so that the powder barrel will not be set off prematurely. [Hugo Gernsbeck -- editorial, Science and Invention, Nov. 1922] I would never believe that the Almighty does any thing in vain; and therefore I begin to think, that all the other planets are inhabited as well as our earth. For, to what purpose could the sun shine upon lifeless lumps of matter, if there were no rational creatures upon them to enjoy the benefit of this light and heat? [Eudosia (James Ferguson) -- An Easy Introduction to Astronomy, for Young Gentlemen and Ladies, 1805] Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. [Arthur C. Clarke] Wilson's Corollary to Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced parapsychology is even more indistinguishable from magic. [Robert Anton Wilson] It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. [Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) -- The Beryl Coronet] One should always look for a possible alternative and provide against it. [Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) -- The Black Peter] It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. [Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) -- A Study in Scarlet] There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. [Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) -- The Boscombe Valley Mystery] The more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be. [Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) -- The Red-Headed League] Depend on it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace. [Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) -- A Case of Identity] Where there is no imagination, there is no horror. [Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) -- A Study in Scarlet] Occam's Razor: Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate. (Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora.) (Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.) [William of Occam (Ockham), 14th cent.] We are to admit to no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. [adaptation of Sir Isaac Newton] When you have two competing theories which make exactly the same predictions, the one that is simpler is the better. [modern adaptation, anon.] When our country is wrong she is worse than other countries when they are wrong because she has more light than other countries, and we ought somehow to make her feel that we are sorry and ashamed for her. [William Dean Howells, c.1910-20?] More people would think for themselves if someone just told them to. [Alfred E. Neuman, June 2003] Nature is Christian; preaches to mankind; And bids dead matter aid us in our creed. [Edward Young -- Night Thoughts] Great antemundane Father! in whose breast Embryo creation, unborn being dwelt, And all its various revolutions roll'd Present, tho' future; prior to themselves; [Edward Young -- Night Thoughts, Night the 5th] Earth's highest station ends in, 'Here he lies:' [Edward Young -- Night Thoughts, Night the 4th] Yet peace begins just where ambition ends. What makes a man wretched? Happiness deny'd? Lorenzo! no: 'tis happiness disdain'd. She comes too meanly drest to win our smile; And calls herself Content, a homely name! [Edward Young -- Night Thoughts, Night the 5th] From some superior point (where, who can tell? Suffice it, 'tis a point where gods reside) How shall the stranger man's illumin'd eye, In the vast ocean of unbounded space, Behold an infinite of floating worlds Divide the crystal ware of ether pure, In endless voyage, without port? The least Of these disseminated orbs, how great! Great as they are, what numbers these surpress, Huge, as leviathan to that small race, Those twinkling multitudes of little life, He swallows unperceive'd! Stupendous these! Yet what are these stupendous to the whole? As particles, as atoms ill perceiv'd; As circulating globules in out veins; So vast the plan: fecundity divine! Exub'rent force! ... [Edward Young -- Night Thoughts, Night the 6th] Modern times ["the reign of the deified Nerva and the imperial career of Trajan"] are indeed happy as few others have been, for we can think as we please, and speak as we think. [Cornelius Tacitus -- the histories, Book 1] Qui non est hodie cras minus aptus est. [Ovid] Time makes more converts than reason. [Thomas Paine -- Common Sense, 1776] Night moon, go away. I want a _pink_ moon. [Anita Rice, Nov.? 1989] I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world. [Albert Einstein] Not only does God play dice, he throws them where we cannot see them! [Stephen Hawking] Hilaritas, Sapientiae, Et Bona Proles (Jollity, the Offspring of Wisdom, Good Living) [mantel, Apollo Room, Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg, Va.] Pax, amor, et lepos in iocando (Peace, love, and a sense of fun) [the Whangdoodle's motto, (Julie Edwards) -- The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles] ... my words were caught, multiplied, misconstrued, and even fabricated and spread abroad to my injury. [Thomas Jefferson -- Anas, 6 Aug. 1793] The internal of the house contains specimens of all the different orders except the composite, which is not introduced. The Hall is in the Ionic, the Dining Room is in the Doric, the Parlor in the Corinthian, and the Dome in the Attic. [Thomas Jefferson -- conversation to John Edward Caldwell, 1817] ... power attends knolege as the shadow does it's substance, and the ignorant will for ever be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the wise. Ignorance indeed is a downy pillow of repose, and we seem disposed to slumber on it, until roused by the whips of the driver. ... it is impossible to forsee to what this will lead; but certainly to a state of degradation ... . [Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 9 Mar. 1822] Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. [Thomas Jefferson -- Notes on the State of Virginia, Query VI] That of all the several ways of beginning a book that are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own was of doing it is the best--I'm sure it is the most religious--for I begin with writing the first sentence--and trusting to Almighty God for the second. [Lawrence Sterne -- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Esq., v.VIII ch.II] I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought which heaven intended for another man. [Lawrence Sterne -- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Esq., v.VIII ch.II] ... there are principles but those of religion to be depended on in cases of real stress, and that these are able to encounter the worst emergencies; and to bear us up under all the changes and chances to which our life is subject. Consider then what virtue the very first principle of religion has, and how wonderfully it is conducive to this end. That there is a God, a powerful, wise and good being, who first made the world and continues to govern it, -- by whose goodness all things are designed -- and by whose providence all things are conducted to bring about the greatest and best ends. [Lawrence Sterne -- Sermons, Sermon 15] ... now take any race of animals, confine them in idleness and inaction, whether a stye, a stable or a state-room, pamper them with high diet, gratify all their sexual appetites, immerse them in sensualities, nourish their passions, let everything bend before them, and banish whatever might lead them to think, and in a few generations they become all body and no mind; and this, too, by a law of nature, by that very law by which we are in constant practice of changing the characters and propensities of the animals we raise for our own purposes. such is the regimen in raising Kings, and in this way have gone on for centuries. while in Europe, i often amused myself with contemplating of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe. Louis the XVI was a fool, of my own knowledge, and in despite of the answers made for him at his trial. the King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same. ... the King of Sardinia was a fool. all these were Bourbons. the Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature and so was the King of Denmark. ... the King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of England, you know, was in a straight waistcoat. there remained then, none but old Catharine, who has been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense. in this state Bonaparte found Europe; and it was this state of it's rulers which lost it with scarce a struggle. these animals had become without mind and powerless; and so will every hereditary monarch be after a few generations. ... and so endeth the book of Kings, from all of whom the Lord deliver us, ... [Thomas Jefferson to Gov. John Langdon, 5 Mar. 1810] I consider anatomy and surgery indeed as geometry but medicine is one of the occult sciences. I reverence it's experience as far as it goes, but reject it's ever changing theories and the practices on human life hazarded under them. we shall endeavor to restore to the other sciences that birthright of respect which this bastard brat has usurped from them in our country and guide our youths into pursuits of less equivocal usefulness. [Thomas Jefferson to Robert Walsh, Jr., 21 Dec. 1822] how can that be the church of Christ which excludes such persons from it's communion as he will one day receive into the kingdom of heaven. [Thomas Jefferson -- notes on Locke & Shaftesbury, on religious freedom, 1776] The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder, it pains me to an unspeakable degree. [Thomas Jefferson, conversation with Margaret Bayard Smith, 1804] what a Bedlamite is man! [Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 22 Jan. 1821] yet, like the office of hangman it must be executed by some one. [Thomas Jefferson to Larkin Smith, 1804] History, by apprizing them of the past, will enable them to judge the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat it's views. [Thomas Jefferson -- Notes on the State of Virginia] When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. [Desiderius Erasmus] Your library is your paradise. [Desiderius Erasmus] Yo siempre mi ha imaginado el paradiso bajo la especie de una biblioteca. (I've always imagined paradise as some kind of library. (lit.: I, myself, have always imagined paradise as a subspecies of library.)) [Jorge Luis Borges, 1955] You may depend on it, the study of astronomy will never have the least tendency towards prejudicing your mind against the Scriptures....You that we cannot take every thing in the strict literal sense. If we did, we should believe that our Saviour was actually a vine at one time, a door at another, and a third time a lamb. The Scriptures were given to teach us what we should believe, and how we should behave, in order to attain and secure to ourselves the favour of our Maker here, perpetual felicity hereafter; which are things infinitely more interesting to us than all other knowledge and wealth in the world....They speak according to the common apprehensions of mankind, in those points which are merely speculative, and have no direct tendency to influence our morals; and as they never were intended to instruct us in experimental philosophy, or astronomy, or in any thing else that we could acquire by our own industry without them, nothing that regards these sciences can either be deduced or inferred from them....One might with as good reason take up a law-book and expect to find a system of geography in it, as take up the Bible with a view to find a system of astronomy therein. [Neander (James Ferguson) -- An Easy Introduction to Astronomy, for Young Gentlemen and Ladies, 1805] ... I already begin to think that if an atheist would be persuaded to learn Astronomy, it would soon cure him of his infidelity. [Eudosia (James Ferguson) -- An Easy Introduction to Astronomy, for Young Gentlemen and Ladies, 1805] If things get bad enough, intelligence might arise. [John Cage, 20 Feb. 1985] Civil interests I call life, liberty, health, and indolency of the body; and the possession of outward things ... [John Locke -- A Letter Concerning Toleration] For heights and depths No words can reach, Music is the soul's Own speech. [sampler in Olaf & Orilla Pinkston's front room, Cave City, Ark., c. 1986] [God is] not only an infinite, omnipotent, eternal, and creating Being, but moreover a Master, who has made a Relation between himself and his Creatures; for the knowledge of God without such Revelation is a meer[sic] Barren Idea, which leaves human Nature destitute of Morality and Virtue. [Voltaire -- The Metaphysics of Sir isaac Newton] I have never met with any _Newtonian_ who was not a Theist in the strictest sense. [Voltaire -- The Metaphysics of Sir isaac Newton] Great ill is an achievement of great pow'rs. Plain sense but rarely leads us far astray. ... If wrong our hearts, our heads are right in vain; [Edward Young -- Night Thoughts, Night the 6th] Who gave beginning, can exclude an end. [Edward Young -- Night Thoughts, Night the 7th] He who would prostitute his morals, is a monster, he who sacrifices his inclination and habits of writing is, -- an author. [Charles Robert Maturin -- The Wild Irish Boy, prologue, 1808] Pleasant are the words of the song, said Cuchullin, and lovely are the tales of other times. [James MacPherson -- Fingal, Book III] God said, "Let there be light." God said, "Let there be turtles." God said, "Let there be Cherokees. They shall be wise. They shall be kicked out of their land. They shall have cheesy songs written about them. They shall receive scholarships." [Anita Rice, Aug. 2004] They be two things, unity and uniformity. [Francis Bacon -- "On Religion"] As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. [Henry David Thoreau -- Walden] Trouble? -- This was for art. [Anita Rice, on off-roading, 2005] And if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, it tastes much more like prunes than rhubarb does. [Groucho Marx -- Animal Crackers] You can't possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you're a fool. [Wonko the Sane (Douglas Adams) -- So Long and Thanks for All the Fish] Abstract art? A product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. [Al Capp] Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. [Voltaire] I cannot consent to the bloody consequences of as silly a contest about so silly an object, conducted in the silliest manner that history or observation has ever furnished an instance of, and from which we are likely to derive nothing but poverty, disgrace, defeat, and ruin. [Charles James Fox in Parliament, 26 Oct. 1775, qtd, in McCullough -- 1776] ... -- the commercial rump -- of society ... [Jacques Barzun -- The House of Intellect, 1959] An idea prefigures action and as such may be menacing; but it is also a means of weighing actions before they happen, and as such an idea can be examined and neutralized or destroyed apart from its bearer. [Jacques Barzun -- The House of Intellect, 1959] Moses gave to Israel 613 commandments. David came and comprehended them in 11. (Psalm 15). Isaiah came and comprehended them in 6: 'He that walks righteously, and speaks uprightly, he that despises the gain acquired by oppression, that shakes out his hands from holding of bribes, that stops his ears from hearing of blood, and shuts his eyes from looking upon evil, he shall dwell on high.' (Isaiah 33:15). Micah came and comprehended them in 3: 'He has told you, O man, what is good, and what God requires of you -- do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.' (Micah 6:8). Amos came and comprehended them in 1: 'Seek me and live.' (Amos 5:4). [Rabbi Simlai -- Talmud, Makkot 23b-24] Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha'olam, shehecheyanu, v'kiyimanu, v'higiyanu, lazman ha'zeh. (Praised are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who grants us life, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this day.) [Shehecheyanu blessing] Evidently his [Bismarck's] idea of progress is seizing something. [Benjamin Disraeli to Queen Victoria, 1878, qtd. in Theo Aronson -- Victoria and Disraeli] ... a live dog they say is worth a dead king. [Walter Gerard (Benjamin Disraeli) -- Sybil, 1845] He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. [Rafael Sabatini -- Scaramouche] ...the historian, be he part scientist, part psychologist, or part political analyst, ought never altogether to neglect his role as storyteller;... [Walter L. Arnstein -- The Bradlaugh Case, 1965] A new world of inventions -- of railways and telegraphs -- has grown up around us which we cannot help seeing; a new world of ideas is in the air and affects us, though we do not see it. [Walter Bagehot -- Physics and Politics, 1872] Why should a sum worked accurately fail when it comes in contact with mere details of fact? [Thomas Banks Strong] Many circumstances of oppression have doubtless gradually disappeared: but that has arisen from the change of manners, not from any political recognition of their injustice. The same course of time which has removed many enormities, more shocking however to our modern feelings than to those who devised and endured them, has simultaneously removed may alleviating circumstances. [Walter Gerard (Benjamin Disraeli) -- Sybil, 1845] There are some moments when the nervous system defies even brandy. [Benjamin Disraeli -- Sybil, 1845] ... that vague melancholy which springs from the contemplation of the past, and which at all times softens the spirit. [Benjamin Disraeli -- Sybil, 1845] [the computer generation ...] ... using technological devices to make up for deficiencies of character. [Stan Rice, 11 Aug. 2005] "What are we going to do tonight, Brain?" "Same thing we do every night, Pinky. -- Try to take over the WORLD!" [Pinky & The Brain, c.2000] Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering? [The Brain, c.2000] What, me worry? [Alfred E. Neuman -- MAD, 1950s] ... [T]hat war [WWI] was itself the ultimate amusement-park shooting gallery. [Walter L. Arnstein -- "The Merry-Go-Round", Imagining the 20th Century, 1997] Domus sine libris est simlis corpus sine anime. (A house without books is like a room without windows; lit., A house without books is like a body without a soul.) [Marcus Tullius Cicero] The best guests, however, were turtle, whitebait, venison, and burgundy. [Benjamin Disraeli] A culture can be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least. [Jacques Barzun -- The Culture We Deserve, 1989] ... [S]ylvan scenery never palls. [Benjamin Disraeli] That Newton should be born the year Galileo died, good; carrying on the torch. [Benjamin Disraeli -- Reminiscences] On a broad historical view it is, of course, not the demonstrative gesture of Friendship among our ancestors but the absence of such gestures in our own society that calls for special explanation. We, not they, are out of step. [C. S. Lewis -- The Four Loves, 1960] For human nature is so constituted that whatever you write seriously is taken as a joke, and whatever you mean as a joke is taken seriously! [Arthur (Lewis Carroll) -- Sylvie and Bruno Concluded] The character of a "lunatic" is not, I believe, very difficult to _acquire_; but it is amazingly difficult to get rid of. [Lewis Carroll -- Sylvie and Bruno Concluded] If you want to _see_ a man, offer him something to eat. It's the same rule with a mouse. [the Professor (Lewis Carroll) -- Sylvie and Bruno Concluded] [Civilization] is an expression of collective life cast in determinate ways, an expression that includes power, "growth," a joyous or grim self-confidence, and other signs of going concern. But it consist also of tacit individual faith in certain ideals and ways of life, seconded by a general faith in the rightness of the scheme. It follows that widespread disbelief in those intangibles and the habits they produce in day-to-day existence, brings on the dissolution of the whole. [Jacques Barzun -- The Culture We Deserve, 1989] It is said of great Empires, That the best way to preserve them from decay, is to bring them back to the first Principles, and Arts, on which they did begin. [Robert Hooke -- Micrographia, 1665] As in so many realms of social existence, Western man has all the right ideas except that which would turn them into actualities. [Jacques Barzun -- The Culture We Deserve, 1989] And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche. [Geoffrey Chaucer -- Canterbury Tales] ... [W]ithout exposure to this annoyance [un-PC ideas and events of the past] one's understanding of out modern thoughts and virtues is incomplete. [Jacques Barzun -- From Dawn to Decadence, 2000] ... [H]istories give visions of the past. [Jacques Barzun -- From Dawn to Decadence, 2000] To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence. [Jacques Barzun -- From Dawn to Decadence, 2000] To say that a particular public mood has passed is not to say that it never existed. [Walter L. Arnstein -- The Bradlaugh Case, 1965] But if the past may at times be viewed with irony, ought it be viewed with derision? ... For the liberal heritage of unfettered freedom of expression, of personal courage and independence, and of peaceful political change within the framework of tradition is not irrelevant to our times. [Walter L. Arnstein -- The Bradlaugh Case, 1965] [I]n all my years I never heard, seen, nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about. Hell, yes, I'm for debatin' anything -- [Stephen Hopkins (Peter Stone & Sherman Edwards) -- 1776] ... the sense of history, which may be defined as the simultaneous perception of difference and similarity between past and present. [Jacques Barzun -- From Dawn to Decadence, 2000] It takes hundreds of the gifted to make half a dozen of the great. [Jacques Barzun -- From Dawn to Decadence, 2000] If you can steer clear of quality, you're all right. [Pete Townsend, 1960s? 70s?] The past is, perhaps, not as great as we regard it, if it can't suggest to us how we ought to conduct ourselves in the present and the future. That's terribly important. And the historian's role there is unique, for he has command of so much that has happened, and if he uses it properly, he can have a lot to say about what ought to happen. [John Hope Franklin, 1997] I think it would be folly to think thatI could change the world with my words -- although I try to. [John Hope Franklin, 1997] ... in history the mind must be prepared for every possible and improbable truth and the wits sharpened to see it. [Jacques Barzun -- "History, Popular and Unpopular," The Interpretation of History, 1943] ... but the historian cannot skimp his self-education. He who has merely learned the facts in an outline is only a crammed goose and not an historian. [Jacques Barzun -- "History, Popular and Unpopular," The Interpretation of History, 1943] Historical examples are not formulas:... and it is not in transferrable moral that the worth of history consists. It is in the diagnostic power that it develops. Diagnostic power means seeing the familiar within the strange without losing the sense of either. [Jacques Barzun -- "History, Popular and Unpopular," The Interpretation of History, 1943] The use of history is not external but internal. Not what you can do with history but what history does to you is its use. It is a personal discipline, not a measure of sanitation collectively applicable. [Jacques Barzun -- "History, Popular and Unpopular," The Interpretation of History, 1943] [communication, and therefore teaching, is] Two Minds Sharing One Thought [Jacques Barzun -- Teacher in America, 1946] For most people, it's name-dropping if it's a celebrity. For you, it's name-dropping if it's a person. [Anita Rice, Nov. 2005] And that's what it is to be human -- to make yourself more than what you are. [Capt. Jean-Luc Picard -- Star Trek: Nemesis] For people with autism, rules are very important, because we concentrate intensely on how things are done. ... But many people have difficulty deciphering how people with autism understand rules. Since I don't have any social intuition, I rely on pure logic, like an expert computer program, to guide my behavior. I categorize rules according to their logical importance. It is a complex algorithmic decision-making tree. There is a process using my intellect and logical decision-making for every social decision. Emotion does not guide my decision; it is pure computing. [Temple Grandin -- Thinking in Pictures, 1995] Social adaptation has to proceed via intellect. [instead of intuition for the autistic] [Hans Asperger, qtd. in Temple Grandin -- Thinking in Pictures, 1995] "With all due respect, M, I don't think you have the balls for this job." "Perhaps. But then, I don't have to think with them all the time." [Tomorrow Never Dies] When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to to be very grown up. [C. S. Lewis] Because life is too short to drink cheap beer. [Warsteiner beer label, 2003] Guinness is good for you. [Guinness beer slogan, early 1900s] Whereas the very essence of thought is continuity, the very essence of domestic life is interruption. If a young woman dared disconnect the doorbell, smash the phone, and gag the baby, she might be able to read a book or think a thought; but with a duty towards everybody but herself, her mind necessarily reverts to the feral state. [Jacques Barzun -- Teacher in America, 1946] We enter the world as little lunatics and leave it with only an outward artificial skin hiding our real condition. [Jacques Barzun -- Teacher in America, 1946] Those who compare the age on which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay: but no man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present. [Thomas Babington Macaulay -- The History of England from the Ascension of James II, 1848] "The trouble with me, Gabrielle, is that I belong to a vanishing race; I am one of the intellectuals." "That means you got brains." "Hmm, yeah -- brains without purpose, noise without sound, shape without substance. Have you ever read 'The Hollow Men'? Well, don't. It's very discouraging because it's true. It refers to the intellectuals who thought they'd conquered nature. They dammed it up and used its waters to irrigate the wastelands. They built streamlined monstrosities to penetrate its resistance. They wrapped it up in cellophane and sold it in drugstores. They were so certain they had it subdued. And now -- do you realize what it is that's causing world chaos? You don't, eh? Well, I'm probably the only living man who can tell you. -- It's nature hitting back. She's fighting with new instruments called 'neuroses.' She's deliberately afflicting mankind with the jitters. Nature's proving that she can't be beaten, not by the likes of us. She's taking the world away from the intellectuals, and giving it back to the apes." [Alan Squires (Leslie Howard), in The Petrified Forest, 1935] With manners coarsened, feelings become promiscuous, too; that is, no longer in proportion with the things that arouse them. [Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, 2000] [D]ifferent periods conceive differently and each must be granted its premise before one judges its conclusions, in art or any other form of expression. [Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, 2000] In other respects they had much in common, and their differences were complementary. [David Lodge -- Author, Author, 2004] It can't be done, Tom! It can't be done! I admit that you've made a lot of wonderful things -- things I never dreamed of -- but this is too much. To transmit pictures over a telephone wire, so that each person cannot only see to whom they are talking, as well as hear them -- well, to be frank with you, Tom, I should be sorry to see you waste your time to invent such a thing. [Barton Swift, in Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone, 1914] But what I'm getting at is this -- that electricity must travel pretty nearly as fast as light -- if not faster. [Tom Swift, in Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone, 1914] It is not erudition that makes the intellectual man, but a sort of virtue which delights in vigorous and beautiful thinking, just as moral virtue delights in vigorous and beautiful conduct. Intellectual living is not so much an accomplishment as a state or condition of the mind in which it seeks earnestly for the highest and purest truth. [Philip Gilbert Hamerton -- The Intellectual Life, 1899] I find that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, can produce all the effects of drunkenness. [Oscar Wilde] I compare the life of the intellectual to a long wedge of gold -- the thin end of it begins at birth, and the depth and value of it go on indefinitely increasing till at last comes Death ... who stops the auriferous process. [Philip Gilbert Hamerton -- The Intellectual Life, 1899] Beauty is in the glass of the beholder. [Stan Rice, after a powerful rum & Coke, 2006] Striking up conversations with strangers is the autistic person's version of extreme sports. [Karam Nazeer, c.2005] Has it ever occurred to you how novelists are _using_up_ experience at a dangerous rate? No, I see it hasn't. Well, then, consider that before the novel emerged as the dominant literary form, narrative literature dealt only with the extraordinary or the allegorical -- with kings and queens, giants and dragons, sublime virtue and diabolic evil. There was no risk of confusing that sort of thing with life, of course. But as soon as the novel got going, you might pick up a book at any time and read about an ordinary chap called Joe Smith doing just the sort of things you did yourself. Now, I know what you're going to say -- you're going to say that the novelist still has to invent a lot. But that's just the point: there've been such a fantastic number of novels written in the last couple of centuries that they've just about exhausted the possibilities of life. So all of us, you see, are really enacting events that have already been written about in some novel or other. Of course, most people don't realise this -- they fondly imagine that their little lives are unique.... Just as well, too, because when you _do_ tumble to it, the effect is very disturbing. [Adam Appleby (David Lodge) -- The British Museum is Falling Down, 1965] People say and I think truly that in literature, as in animal food, too much nutrition kills, and that you must have the incumbrance of pulp. [William Ewart Gladstone] I like to keep a few trees between me and the rushing, stupid mass of humanity. [Stan Rice, 2006] The only reason that the sun never sets on the British Empire is that God doesn't trust the English in the dark. [anon.] Hurrah! for the age of steam wonder! Pyramids and Pantheons, Gothic buildings and Babylon gates, should sink into oblivion beside this steam-century, with its palace of Industry. [Samuel Sullivan Cox -- A Buckeye Abroad, 1852] When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness. [Alexis de Toqueville] Honest history is the weapon of freedom. [A. M. Schlesinger, Jr.] A reason that the past is so hated by the young is that there is no way to be entirely free of it. [Paul Hogan] I wonder why we hate the past so. [W. D. Howells to Mark Twain] It's so damn humiliating. [Twain's reply] History is the record of encounters between character and circumstance. [Donald Creighton] There is properly no history, only biography. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] Life must be lived forward but it can only be understood backward. [Soren Kierkegaard] In analyzing history, do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] Historians, it is said,fall into one of three categories. Those who lie. Those who are mistaken. Those who do not know. [anon.] History is not history unless it is the truth. [Abraham Lincoln] You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is. [William Faulkner] The past is never dead. It's not even past. [Gavin Stevens (William Faulkner) in The Mansion] The writing of history reflects interests, predilections, and even the prejudices of a given generation. [John Hope Franklin] Historical awareness is a kind of resurrection. [William Least Heat Moon] The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. [Mark Twain] Trite lives, even though it's -- trite. [Anita Rice, 2006] I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught. [Winston Churchill] Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy. [Tim O'Reilly, 2005] We have met the enemy and he is us. [Pogo (Walt Kelly)] Good is better than evil 'cause it's nicer. [Mammy Yokum (Al Capp)] It is only by _compelling_ ourselves to act right, that we can do any thing towards correcting the inherited disorders of our minds. [T. S. Arthur -- Advice to Young Ladies, 1850] Though we adore men individually, We agree that as a group, They're rather stupid. [Mrs. Banks, in Mary Poppins, 1910 (1964)] You can't make a college without breaking eggheads. [Coleman Silk, in The Human Stain, 2003] Sometimes a whistle case is just a whistle case. [Jerome Colburn, 2002] "Tristram Shandy" was a post-modern classic long before there was any modern to be post about. [Stephen Coogan, in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, 2005] It takes light to create shadow. [Metropolis (anime), 2002] New practices do not so much flow directly from technologies that inspire them as they are improvised out of old practices that no longer work in new settings. [Carolyn Marvin -- When Old Technologies Were New] Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. [Charles Darwin] The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. [Bertrand Russell] Whoever wrote the book of Revelation must've gotten some bad hash from Damascus. [Stan Rice, 2006] The terror of the unforseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic. [Philip Roth -- The Plot Against America] Manner, then, I am bound to confess, is the cloak of character, but if to bare the character be indecent, it is better it should wear a cloak than go about naked. [The Man in the Club Window -- The Habits of Good Society, c. mid-late 1850s] If we must meet with vice in our literature, let it be the growth of our own soil, for I think our rascality has yet the healthier aspect. [C. B. Boynton, c.1840s] Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, ... [W. B. Yeats -- Celtic Twilight, 1893] Books -- best weapons in the world. [Dr. Who -- Tooth & Claw] When Life sh__s on you, she dumps it on you all at once. [Ken Runes, c. 1980] Life is just a pile of sh__, but sometimes you find a strawberry. [Margaret Eberle, c.1990] It would be well, there can be no doubt, for the American people as a whole, if they loved the Real less, and the Ideal somewhat more. It would be well, if there were greater encouragement to lightness of heart and gaiety, and a wider cultivation of what is beautiful, without being eminently and directly useful. [Charles Dickens -- American Notes, 1842] ...; [A] Long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right ... [Thomas Paine -- Common Sense, 1776] Our job is to report the news -- not fabricate it. That's the government's job. [V for Vendetta, 2006] Love is measured by the thermometer, not by the calendar. [Ramon Novarro -- Daybreak, 1931] Gliciwch yma am i version Gymraeg (Click here for the Welsh version) [Radio Ceredigion, 2007] By dint of inventing machinery, man will end in being eaten up by it! I have always fancied that the end of the earth will be when some enormous boiler, heated to three thousand millions of atmospheric pressure, shall explode and blow up our Globe! [Dick Kennedy (Jules Verne) -- Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1869] ... [O]ne has only just to follow things along as they happen, and he can always work his way out of a scrape! The safest plan, you see, is to take matters as they come. [Joe (Jules Verne) -- Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1869] Certainly nobody nowadays can think of making a trip to Africa without going to see Timbuctoo. [Joe (Jules Verne) -- Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1869] No respectable gentleman is that respectable. [Pierce (Sean Connery) -- The Great Train Robbery, 1978] With enough courage you can do without a reputation. [Rhett Butler (Margaret Mitchell) -- Gone with the Wind] [I am] so constantly engaged that tho in the midst of a tolerable library of [my] own, [I am] like Tantalus, forbidden to indulge [my] appetite. [Thomas Jefferson to D. Vasey, 11 Oct. 1792] Sometimes anger can help you survive. [Storm -- X2: X-Men United] -- So can faith. [Nightcrawler -- X2: X-Men United] A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. [Italo Calvino] Never lend books, for no one ever returns them. The only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me. [Anatole France] A man of large purse has usually a very little soul which he keeps in it. [Edgar Allan Poe] Woman was never made from the rib of man. She was made from his funnybone. [Jean -- How Sandy Proposed, 1909] If I cannot hit you in the face, I will p__p at your door. [Russian proverb, qtd. in BBC News] What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gender. [Walter Arnstein, 2007] What's sauce for the goose is applesauce for the gander. [John Held, Jr., 1920s] There's some mighty fine people in the swamp. [Duke (Will Rogers) -- Steamboat 'Round the Bend] Sir, you must not neglect a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; -- from fear of its being abused. A man who has candles may sit up too late, which he would not do if he had not candles; but nobody would deny that the art of making candles, by which light is continued to us beyond the time that the sun gives us light, is a valuable art, and ought to be preserved. [Samuel Johnson, qtd. in Boswell -- The Life of Samuel Johnson] We have to believe in free will. We've got no choice. [Isaac Bashevis Singer] There is no period so remote as the recent past. [Irwin -- The History Boys, 2006] History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. [Miss Lintott -- The History Boys, 2006] If you want to learn about Stalin, study Henry VIII; if you want to learn about Mrs. Thatcher, study Henry VIII. [Irwin -- The History Boys, 2006] All knowledge is precious, whether or not it serves the slightest human use. [A. E. Housman, qtd. by Hector -- The History Boys, 2006] The best moments in reading are when you come across something -- a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things -- that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours. [Hector -- The History Boys, 2006] Life's a lot like farting. If you try too hard, all you end up with is crap. [Adrienne Lalli, c.2000-2008] What you see revealed within the anger is worth the pain. [Jackson Browne -- "You Love the Thunder," on Runnin' on Empty] There's someone in my head, but it's not me. [Pink Floyd -- "Brain Damage," on Dark Side of the Moon] One person making something up is a liar. A bunch of people making something up is a paradigm. [Sarge -- Red Vs Blue Sees Green, 2007] 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master -- that's all.' [Lewis Carroll -- Through the Looking-Glass] Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. [Groucho Marx] To a bibliophile, there is but one thing better than an box of new books, and that is a box of old ones. [Will Thomas -- Some Danger Involved, 2004] Does a bibliophile ever have enough room on his shelves? The answer is obvious: get more shelves. [Cyrus Barker (Will Thomas) -- Some Danger Involved, 2004] Agus chuadar ag ol. (And they all went off drinking.) [U. of I. Irish Folk Club unofficial motto, c. 1980] Art is like science. It's problem-solving. [Sylvia Arnstein] It's my mind hallucinating, not me. [Anita, 2008] It would be nice if a biography of Jefferson could be written by someone of nerdly inclinations -- that is, even more nerdly than the average historian. [Anita? Adrienne? Daniel? Tracy? Jessica Reed? 2008] It's a good day to be a vulture. [Stan, Sept. 2008 (after the crash)] There are only two industries that refer to their customers as "users." [Edward Tufte] Why is it that drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users? [Clifford Stoll] There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is. [Albert Einstein] When you see something that is technologically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do with it only after you have had your technical success. [Robert Oppenheimer] A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. [Henry David Thoreau] Everywhere there's lots of piggies, living piggy lives ... clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon. [John Lennon -- "Piggies," on The White Album, 1968] Equality is not achievement of the identical average. [Bernard Malamud -- A New Life, 1961] Procrastinators UNITE.. tomorrow.... [lolcats -- icanhascheezburger.com/2008/06/04/...] childhood is short immaturity is forever [lolcats -- icanhascheezburger.com/2008/12/04 ...] To be a librarian was to know everything that was known. Not the entire sum of human knowledge literally at the command of one's thoughts -- Newton had perhaps been the last to do that. But to know what _could_ be known, understand the indices and passwords of all the secrets of Creation. The science of libraries was the science of the truths hidden within the world. [Jay Lake -- Escapement, 2008] Hurrah! for the age of steam wonder! Pyramids and Pantheons, Gothic buildings and Babylon gates, should sink into oblivion beside this steam-century, with its Palace of Industry. [Samuel Sullivan Cox, 1852] I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake. [Sir Thomas More -- A Man for All Seasons] But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind. [Sir Thomas More -- A Man for All Seasons] You would think being overly responsible would buy me the luxury to behave irresponsibly every now and then. But, really, it's the opposite. The one time you let go, it stands out like a red flag. And it costs too much. [Nightwing (Marc Andreyko) -- Nightwing; the Lost Year, 2007] [B]y that word I mean a Nose, and nothing more, or less. [Laurence Sterne -- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Esq., v.III, ch.XXXIII] Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. [Sigmund Freud] I consider scientific knowledge to be that food which alone can enable the mental functions to acquire vigor and activity; but elegant literature as the wine that should invariably follow, because without it the mind would never rise to the full measure of its enjoyment, the power of sympathizing with itself, after sympathizing with Nature. [Thomas Jefferson] It is dangerous to project oneself back into the past. Historians can identify with their subjects, but they should exercise a bifocality: that is, they should stand both inside and outside the period and context they are writing about in order to maintain a certain degree of fairness. [Clarence E. Walker -- Mongrel Nation, 2009] The presence of old men and children were the mark of any event of importance to a nation, for they were the memory-stream. [Dorothy Dunnet -- King Hereafter, 1982] Recognise it; assimilate it; put it behind you. The pattern has changed again, and you must change accordingly. [Dorothy Dunnet -- King Hereafter, 1982] So between malice on one side and servility on the other the interests of posterity were neglected. But historians find that a tone of flattery soon incurs the stigma of servility and earns for them the contempt of their readers, whereas people readily open their ears to the criticisms of envy, since malice makes a show of independence. [Tacitus -- The Histories] Scientific theory isn't just a guess. Science is real. [They Might Be Giants] He is a Beast that drinks more at one Time, than he can lift with one Hand. [Murtagh Mc Dermot -- A Trip to the Moon, 1728] New media don't succeed because they're like the old media, only better; they succeed because they're worse than the old media at the stuff the old media is good at, and better at the stuff the old media are bad at. [Cory Doctorow -- Content, 2008] Civilization would probably pay a terrible price if the genes that cause autism and Asperger's Syndrome were eradicated. The world might become a place of highly social yakkity-yaks who would never do anything new or creative. [Temple Grandin, 1999] The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act. [Clay Shirky -- Cognitive Surplus, 2010] The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play. [Capt. James T. Kirk -- Star Trek (TOS) Shore Leave, 2266] Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. [Thomas Paine -- Common Sense, 1776] He who prides himself on giving what he thinks the public wants is often creating a fictitious demand for lower standards which he will then satisfy. [John Reith, 1925] Books are among the most beautifully engineered, and human-engineered, components in existence, and they will continue to be functionally important within the context of man-computer symbiosis. (Hopefully, the computer will expedite the finding, delivering, and returning of books.) [J. C. R. Licklider -- Man-Computer Symbiosis, 1960] Never trust ale from a god-fearing people. [Quark -- ST: DS9: Emissary, 2369] What goes around, comes around. If not examined too closely, it passes for justice. [Terry Pratchett -- The Last Hero, 2001] That is beyond our experience, but not beyond our imagination, or our mathematics. [Stephen Hawking -- The Grand Design, 2010] With great power comes great responsibility. [Spiderman's uncle] With no power comes no responsibility -- except -- that wasn't true. [Kick Ass] Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, and do whatever you want all the time, you could miss it. [Cartman in Southpark] She's totally round the bend. But perhaps she gets a better view from there. [Terry Pratchett -- Johnny and the Bomb] We set sail on this new sea, because there is new knowledge to be won, .... [Pres. John F. Kennedy, 1962] We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. [Pres. John F. Kennedy, 1962] I've now used the word 'suck' so much that it's lost all meaning. [Rory Gilmore in The Gilmore Girls] Alas, poor Yorick, To sleep perchance to dream; Have you been drinking Paregoric, Or is it just that new vanishing cream? [Bob Hope in ?My Favorite Spy, 1951] Anything you can pat your foot to is good music. [Louis Armstrong] Onward and upward into the past. [Walter Arnstein, Sept. 17, 2011] The naive, uncritical faith in material progress that has made Americans feel so superior to the past is still a menace to a hope of any kind of progress. It is also liable to as naive a despair. Once infatuated with our unprecedented achievements, men are now appalled by the realization that history is big enough to swallow them up too. [Herbert J. Muller -- The Uses of the Past, 1952] Science, which has fathered the doctrine of determinism, is the most striking example of man's determination and ability to bend nature to his own purposes. [Herbert J. Muller -- The Uses of the Past, 1952] And none are prone to judge more freely, or more harshly, than those -- like the Puritans and Marxists -- who ostensibly believe in predestination or determinism. [Herbert J. Muller -- The Uses of the Past, 1952] When I buy from you a copy of your idea and reproduce or improve it, I enter into competition with you. You might not much like that but you still have the money I paid you for the price you set as well as your original copy of your idea which you are free to use, or sell, or do with as you please. [Michele Bodrin & David K. Levine -- Against Intellectual Monopoly, 2007] Don't be afraid of what being trapped by the past means. After all, one should be afraid being trapped by the present. [Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows, 1967] If I see you in school and I don't say "hi," please don't take it personal, o.k.? [Cherry to Ponyboy in The Outsiders] Breeding is an ugly thing. [Blood in A Boy and His Dog, 1975] Grow up, Raj -- there's no place for truth on the internet. [Howard Wolowitz in The Big Bang Theory, 2008] The future is already here; it’s just not very evenly distributed. [William Gibson -- Fresh Air interview, 1993] What I have found is, that with a little bit of rational thought, you can channel all that emotion to just keep moving forward. [Neil deGrasse Tyson -- Science Friday: Desktop Diaries, 2012] One of the odder aspects of my lengthening life is that the race to enable modern technology to transport a real live man to walk on that moon succeeded half a life-time ago. Only a few years later we reach the "Been there! Done that!" stage. It was as if we now lived in Madrid in the year 1534. "Wasn't there a chap named Columbus who four decades ago took three ships across the ocean and found a brand new world among previously unknown people who ate strange new foods?" "Yes, I believe there was, but Columbus is long since dead, you know, and we are keeping the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria in the neighborhood. After all, we've got plenty of ocean water all around the Iberian peninsula." [Walter Arnstein, 2012] If I don't obsess about something then it doesn't get done. [David Finch -- The Journal of Best Practices, 2012] That's why people have sayings -- so they can repeat stuff out loud to make it come true. [Wolverine in X-Men: Prelude to Schizm, 2012] It's so overt it's covert. [Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, 2011] The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few -- or the one. [Spock in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (Vulcan proverb)] I have been and always shall be your friend. [Spock to Kirk in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan] Erfahrung ist nur die Hälfte der Erfahrung. (Experience is only half of experience.) [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe] Sometimes a little technobabble is good for the soul. [Capt. Jack Harkness in Torchwood: Day One] Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man. In spite of yourself. [Francis Prescott (Louis Auchincloss) in The Rector of Justin, 1964] We like heroes in shirtsleeves, or, in other words, we don't like heroes. But things were not always that way, and today is not forever. [Brian Aspinwall (Louis Auchincloss) in The Rector of Justin, 1964] I have brains I haven't even used yet. [Gracie Allen -- Lambchops, 1929] "But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you ca'n't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here." [Lewis Carroll -- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865] I believe we can seize this future together, because we are not as divided as our politics suggest. We are not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and forever will be, the _United_ States of America. [President Barack Obama -- re-election acceptance speech, 6 Nov. 2012] ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten. [Stanford University, 1959] Strange thoughts brew in your heart when you spend too much time with old books. [Aravind Adiga -- The White Tiger, 2008] Si hortum in bibliotheca habes deerit nihil. (If you have a garden in the library, nothing is wanting. (nothing is deficient)). (Si tienes un jardin y una libreria (bibliteca), tienes todo lo que necessitas.) (If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.) [Marcus Tullius Cicero to Terentius Varro, 13 June 46 B.C.] No, I do not weep at the world--I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife. [Zora Neale Hurston -- How It Feels to Be Colored Me, 1928] A God that can be understood is no God. [a Ramakrishna swami (W. Somerset Maugham) -- The Razor's Edge, 1943] "The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth." "No, but at least it makes it worthy of consideration." [Maugham & Larry Darrell(W. Somerset Maugham) -- The Razor's Edge, 1943] There's no point in being grown up, if you can't be childish sometime. [Doctor Who (the 4th Doctor) -- Robot, 1974-5] The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my Regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried in a 1000 Years the Power of Man over Matter. We may perhaps learn to deprive large Masses of their Gravity & give them absolute Levity, for the sake of easy Transport. Agriculture may diminish its Labour & double its Produce. All Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard. O that moral Science were in as fair a Way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and that human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity. [Benjamin Franklin -- letter to Joseph Priestly, 1780] Plant more flowers! And be a little more tolerant of the weeds in the garden. [May Berenbaum, on NPR 7 May 2013] Because that was now... and this is then. [Backstory with the American History Guys] The state are us, and when we start making war against the state, hey, we're committing suicide. That is a nonpolitical, nonideological message. [Peter Onuf -- Backstory with the American History Guys: Straight Shot: Guns in America, 4 Nov. 2012] I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. Therefore, it is the brain I must consider. [Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) -- The Adventure of the Mazurin Stone] Strange how the brain controls the brain! [Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) -- The Adventure of the Dying Detective] There will always be those who mean to do us harm. To stop them, we risk awakening the same evil within ourselves. [Capt. James T. Kirk, Star Trek: Into Darkness, 2266/2013] Christopher Pike: That's a technicality. Spock: I am Vulcan, sir. We embrace technicalities. Christopher Pike: Are you giving me attitude, Spock? Spock: I am expressing multiple attitudes simultaneously sir, to which one are you referring? [Star Trek: Into Darkness, 2266/2013] ... we're all one and life goes on within and without you. [The Beatles: George Harrison -- Within You Without You, 1967] And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. [The Beatles: Paul McCartney -- The End, 1969] The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he's already degraded. [George Orwell] Lt. Cmdr. Data: [asking Worf to take care of Spot] He will need to be fed once a day. He prefers feline supplement number 25. Lieutenant Worf: I understand. Lt. Cmdr. Data: And he will require water. And you must provide him with a sandbox - and you must talk to him. Tell him he is a pretty cat, and a good cat... Lieutenant Worf: I will feed him. Lt. Cmdr. Data: Perhaps that will be enough. [Star Trek: The Next Generation: Phantasms 2375/1993] As our society becomes more digitally dependent and enhanced, it might well be that, in the future, autistics will be seen as a resource rather than as a burden, while neurotypicals flounder, still struggling to program theire VCRs. [Pete Hautman -- VOYA interview, June 2013] Paradoxes are compact energy sources, talismans. [Rudy Rucker -- Infinity and the Mind, 1982] A good paradox can never be finally disposed of. [Rudy Rucker -- Infinity and the Mind, 1982] There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. [Pythagoras] Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and demons. [Iamblichus] Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. [Bertrand Russell -- "The Study of Mathematics"] It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching, not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions. [Capt. Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space 9: The Emissary, 2369/1992] I think entanglement's just a big atom orgy. [Jason Patteson, Nov. 9, 2013] [about biting] It's like kissing, only there's a winner. [the Tardis, in Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife, 2011] Remember danger is very real, but fear is a choice. [Gen. Cypher Raige, in After Earth, 2013] Root yourself in this present moment, now -- sight, sound, smell, what do you feel? [Gen. Cypher Raige, in After Earth, 2013] Let us calculate, without further ado, and see who is right. [Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz -- The Art of Discovery, 1685] This is the century that we will either become a space-faring society or a horse drawn society. [Bradley C. Edwards & Eric A. Westling -- The Space Elevator, 2002] You have to know a lot of stuff to understand things. [Benjamin Gennetay, May 2013] People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but, actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff. [Doctor Who -- in Blink, 2007] We're all Easter Island. [Jasmin, Aug. 14, 2014] Look for the helpers. [Fred Rogers] Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. [Theodore Roosevelt] Get action. Do things; be sane, don't fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action. [Theodore Roosevelt, 1900] He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe. [G. K. Chesterton -- The Man Who Was Thursday, 1908] _endless false_ and _untrue_ things have been written and said about us, public and private, and ... in these days people _will write_ and _will_ know, therefore the only way to counteract this, is to let the _real full_ truth be _known_, and as much as _can be_ with prudence and discretion, and then _no harm_ but _good_ will be done. [Queen Victoria -- to Princess Alice, 12 Jan. 1875, qtd. in The Heir Apparent] ...[T]he mightiest of all educational machines is the library. [Arthur C. Clarke -- Omni Magazine: Electronic Tutors, 1980] [about new libraries with computers, more open space, and fewer books] That's not a library. That's a Blockbuster. [library patron, 2015] Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side. [Sherlock Holmes in A Scandal in Belgravia, BBC, 2011] But the point about escaping is that you should escape to, as well as from. You should go somewhere worthwhile, and come back the better for the experience. [Terry Pratchett, 1992] As a species, we are always sticking our fingers into the electric socket of the universe to see what will happen next. [Terry Pratchett, 1993] Weaponry will only keep you alive, but a good ballad can make you immortal. [Terry Pratchett, 1999] If you set to work to believe everything, you will tire out the believing muscles of your mind, and then you'll be so weak you won't be able to believe the simplest true things. [Charles Dodgson to Mary MacDonald, 23 May 1864] Pain is weakness leaving the body. [U.S. Marines t-shirt, 2015] Amberley excelled at chess -- one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind. [Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Retired Colourman] Languages are like that. If you open up a suitcase, the grammar will plop its way in and look at you and lick its nose. [John McWhorter -- The Great Courses: The Story of Human Language, 2004] Travel does not merely broaden the mind, it deepens it as well. [Thomas Llewelyn (Will Thomas) in Anatomy of Evil, 2015] Earth is the cradle of mankind, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever. [Konstantin Tsiolkovsky] Humanitydoes not pass though phases as a train passes though stations; being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never laeving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still. [C. S. Lewis -- The Allegory of Love, 1936] We can't kill anybody with literacy. [Karl Siewart -- Facebook, 2015] Info literacy is not an inoculation. "Once & done" doesn't work. [Karl Siewart -- Twitter, Oct. 2015] The 21st century is when it all changes -- and you've gotta be ready. [Torchwood: intro -- 2006] I dream of a day when people will be enlightened by objective truths, not offended by them. [Neil DeGrasse Tyson -- Star Talk, 2015] Sending a staus update is like sniffing their butt. [linking dog & human social behavior] [Neil DeGrasse Tyson -- Star Talk, 2015] Die, my dear doctor? That is the last thing I shall do. [Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston -- last words, 1865] Hell yeah I'm a botanist! Fear my botany powers! [Mark Watney in The Martian (book), 2011] Mars will come to fear my botany powers. [Mark Watney in The Martian (film), 2015] Duct tape is magic and should be worshipped. [Mark Watney (Andy Weir) in The Martian (book & film), 2011 & 2015] I'm gonna have to science the sh_t out of this. [Mark Watney in The Martian (film), 2015] Now this, O monks, is noble truth which leads to the cessation of pain: this is the noble Eightfold Way, namely, right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. [Gautama Buddha] Manger juste et bien [bien et juste] [attr. to Moliere] ... I don't really think that it's useful to look at good guys and bad guys because each one of them contributed something to, you know, the founding and the growth of the nation. I mean, they fought amongst themselves. But we don't have to fight amongst ourselves on their behalf. [Annette Gordon-Reed -- NPR interview, Apr. 16, 2016] The World is bad opera. [Salmon Rushdie -- NPR interview, June 11, 2016] Getting the books -- now that was what _really_ mattered to her. That was the whole point of the Library -- as far as she'd been taught, anyway. It wasn't about a higher mission to save worlds. It was about finding unique works of fiction and saving them in a place out of time and space. Perhaps some people might think that was a petty way to spend eternity, but Irene was happy with her choice. Anyone who really loved a good story would understand. [Genevieve Cogman -- The Invisible Library, 2016] We are the Library. What we don't know, we research. [Coppelia (Genevieve Cogman) -- The Invisible Library, 2016] Cherokee women have always done and will always do what they want. [Cherokee women always do what they want. (2016)] [Attakullakulla (Becky Hobbs) -- Nanyehi, 2012] Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. [Abraham Lincoln -- New York Cooper's Union Address, 1860] And I think there's something about being the daughter of a pilot that makes you feel that metaphorically you could fly too. [Isabel Wilkerson -- On Being interview, Nov. 17, 2016] Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. [Hobbes (Bill Watterson) -- Calvin and Hobbes, Jan. 28, 2013] The trouble is that daydreams, like hallucinogenic drugs, are addictive; the more we indulge, the deeper we plunge, and then, as I said before, we end up in the looney-bin. [Doctor Powell (Daphne du Maurier -- The House on the Strand, 1969] When God calls us his "children," it's not always a compliment. [Pastor Marty Voltz? early 1980s] Knowledge is power and languages are superpowers. [moi, May 2017] Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy. [Tim O'Reilly] Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive! [Sir Walter Scott -- Marmion, Canto VI, Stanza 17, 1808] Do you know what a foreign accent is? It's a sign of bravery. [Amy Chua -- Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, 2011] Who needs to clobber things when you can research an answer instead? [Cassandra (Greg Cox) -- The Librarians and the Mother Goose Chase, 2017] Librarian -- because Book Wizard isn't an official job title [t-shirt, c. 2017] Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt. (The boundaries of my language define the boundaries of my world.) [Ludwig Wittgenstein] Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie. [J. R. R. Tolkien -- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954] Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. [J. R. R. Tolkien -- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954] Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy, and good with ketchup. [bumper sticker, c. 2000] Do not meddle in the affairs of bards, for they are not subtle and you name scans to Greensleeves. [bumper sticker, c. 2000] “CAN girls help to mend engines?” Peter asked doubtfully. “Of course they can. Girls are just as clever as boys, and don't you forget it! ..." [said Father] [Edith Nesbit -- The Railway Children, 1906] If the class hour doesn't end with the teacher having learned something, he doesn't know how to teach. [John Archibald Wheeler] Mistakes make great variations. [Hector Arrazola, 2018] Never let your ego get in the way of a good idea. [Stanley Kubrick] People don't do wrong right. If you're going to do wrong, do it right. [Kaye Robinson, Sept. 14, 2019] There’s no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds. [Don Gustavo Barceló, (Carlos Ruiz Zafón) in The Shadow of the Wind, 2001 (tr.2004] Humans aren’t descended from monkeys. They come from parrots. [Mr. Molins, (Carlos Ruiz Zafón) in The Shadow of the Wind, 2001 (tr.2004] Years of teaching had left him with that firm and didactic tone of someone used to being heard, but not certain of being listened to. [Daniel Sempere (narrator), (Carlos Ruiz Zafón) in The Shadow of the Wind, 2001 (tr.2004] Like all old cities, Barcelona is a sum of its ruins. [Father Fernando Ramos, (Carlos Ruiz Zafón) in The Shadow of the Wind, 2001 (tr.2004] This is the first president to try ghosting the Constitution. [Peter Sagal, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, 12 Dec. 2019]