“The days are stacked against what we think we are.”

— Jim Harrison

Source: The Road Home

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Jim Harrison20

American novelist, poet, essayist 1937–2016

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

“If you switch on television it's just ridiculous and its destructive. It kills us. And talk shows will kill us. They kill our language. So we have to declare holy war against what we see every single day on television. Commercials and — I think there should be real war against commercials, real war against talk shows, real war against "Bonanza" and "Rawhide", or all these things.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980)

“Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

The Value of Science (1955)
Context: The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.

“To-day when we think of Empire we think of it primarily as an instrument of world peace.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to a dinner given by the Province of Ontario (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 91-92.
1927
Context: There is no precedent for the British Commonwealth of Nations... we have wrought for ourselves a common tradition which transcends all local loyalties and binds us as one people. The Empire of our dreams, if not always of our deeds, is compacted of great spiritual elements— freedom and law, fellowship and loyalty, honour and toleration... To-day when we think of Empire we think of it primarily as an instrument of world peace.

“Raven: So Alexander, now we know what we do all day. What do you do? Alexander: I spend it thinking about you.”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

Variant: Raven: So Alexander, now we know what we do all day. What do you do?
Alexander: I spend it thinking about you.
Source: Love Bites

“What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Ce qui nous donne tant d’aigreur contre ceux qui nous font des finesses, c’est qu’ils croient être plus habiles que nous.
Maxim 350.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)