“The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.”

— Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 36, January 19, 1945.

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Alfred North Whitehead 112

English mathematician and philosopher 1861–1947

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Reading (1990)

“If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Title of his autobiography (1987)
A variant of a slightly earlier quote: "If voting could change anything, it would be illegal" ( 1978 https://books.google.com/books?id=RPgcAQAAMAAJ&q=%22if+voting+could+change+anything%22&dq=%22if+voting+could+change+anything%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjg4IDksJHMAhVPxWMKHc7sBikQ6AEIJTAC)
Variant: If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it.

“A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Review of Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, published in the newspaper Alger Républicain (20 October 1938), p. 5; reprinted in Selected Essays and Notebooks, translated and edited by Philip Thody
Context: A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. And in a good novel, the whole of the philosophy has passed into the images. But if once the philosophy overflows the characters and action, and therefore looks like a label stuck on the work, the plot loses its authenticity and the novel its life. Nevertheless, a work that is to last cannot dispense with profound ideas. And this secret fusion between experiences and ideas, between life and reflection on the meaning of life, is what makes the great novelist.

“Singaporeans, if I can chose an analogy, we are the hard disk of a computer, the foreign talent are the megabytes you add to your storage capacity. So your computer never hangs because you got enormous storage capacity”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

On accepting foreign talent (Straits Times, 22 April 2007)
2000s

“Never put anything on paper, my boy, and never trust a man with a small black moustache.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Cocktail Time

Cocktail Time (1958)

“A throw of the dice will never abolish chance.”

Stéphane Mallarmé Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard

Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard
Title of poem (1897), as quoted in Mallarmé's Un coup de dés : An Exegesis (1949) by Robert Greer Cohn.
Observations

“We have abolished space here on the little Earth; we can never abolish the space that yawns between the stars.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

We'll Never Conquer Space (1960)
Context: We have abolished space here on the little Earth; we can never abolish the space that yawns between the stars. Once again, as in the days when Homer sang, we are face-to-face with immensity and must accept its grandeur and terror, its inspiring possibilities and its dreadful restraints.