Quotes about speed

A collection of quotes on the topic of speed, time, timing, use.

Best quotes about speed

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“In skating over thin ice our safety is our speed.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Prudence
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: In skating over thin ice our safety is our speed.

Rafael Nadal photo

“Did you see the speed of the ball or not?”

Rafael Nadal (1986) Spanish tennis player

When asked by a reporter why he spent so much time well behind the baseline against Fernando Verdasco in the Australian Open semifinals 2009 http://tennis.com/yourgame/instructionarticles/strategy/strategy.aspx?id=173552

Isaac Asimov photo

“I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Conor McGregor photo

“Timing beats speed…precision beats power.”

Conor McGregor (1988) Irish mixed martial artist and boxer

UFC 194 post-fight press conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLwsbBqbw4LprA5DYSMWVLeeLNdwYhWRRK&v=YdKawskqoRo (December 2015) Ultimate Fighting Championship, Zuffa, LLC
2010s, 2015

Alexander Suvorov photo

“Judgment of eye, speed and attack are the basis of victory.”

Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander

Readings in Russian History - Page 694 by Warren Bartlett Walsh - Soviet Union - 1959.

Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Deliberately misattributed for comic effect in the opening of the film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
Misattributed

Steven Wright photo

“What is the speed of dark?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author
Eddie Izzard photo

“Two languages in one brain? No one can live at that speed!”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Source: Definite Article

Quotes about speed

Maya Angelou photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo

“Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets you.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Variant: Speed has never killed anyone, suddenly becoming stationary… that’s what gets you.

Hermann Göring photo

“The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

This statement was attributed to Goering in at least one book on World War II, but it was removed from the English Wikipedia page on him on grounds that it was not actually verified that Goering had ever said it.
Disputed
Context: In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I'm going to buy a British radio set – then at least I'll own something that has always worked.

“You're mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid.
You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation
at high speed with total clarity.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

John Lennon photo
Jacque Fresco photo
Douglas Adams photo

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”

Variant: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Source: Mostly Harmless

Tamora Pierce photo
Albert A. Michelson photo
Sun Tzu photo

“Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter XI · The Nine Battlegrounds

Galileo Galilei photo

“This bounded terminal speed will be called the maximum that such a heavy body can naturally attain through the air”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Salviati, Day Four, 278-279 Stillman Drake translation (1974)
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
Context: The speed of the ball—thanks to opposition from the air—will not go on increasing forever. Rather, what will happen is seen in bodies of very little weight falling through no great distance; I mean, a reduction to equable motion, which will occur also in a lead or iron ball after the descent of some thousands of braccia. This bounded terminal speed will be called the maximum that such a heavy body can naturally attain through the air...

Miyamoto Musashi photo
George Orwell photo

“War is the greatest of all agents of change. It speeds up all processes, wipes out minor distinctions, brings realities to the surface.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Part III : The English Revolution, § II
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

William Shakespeare photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo
Robert Fulghum photo

“Speed and efficiency do not always increase the quality of life.”

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Roald Dahl photo
Edward R. Murrow photo

“The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

On receiving the "Family of Man" Award from the Protestant Council of the City of New York (28 October 1964)

Terry Pratchett photo
Leon Trotsky photo
James Tobin photo

“The rate of investment – the speed at which investors wish to increase the capital stock – should be related, if to anything, to q, the value of capital relative to its replacement cost.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

Source: "A general equilibrium approach to monetary theory" (1969), p. 21 as cited in: Sılvio Rendon, "Non-Tobin’s q in Tests for Financial Constraints," 2009

Clive Barker photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Angelus Silesius photo
Thomas Paine photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“I would really like to slow down the speed of reading with continual punctuation marks. For I would like to be read slowly.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

As I myself read.
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 77e

Gabriel Marcel photo
Galileo Galilei photo

“It seems to me proper to adorn the Author's thought here with its conformity to a conception of Plato's regarding the determination of the various speeds of equable motion in the celestial motions of revolution. …he said that God, after having created the movable celestial bodies, in order to assign to them those speeds with which they must be moved perpetually in equable circular motion, made them depart from rest and move through determinate spaces in that natural straight motion in which we sensibly see our moveables to be moved from the state of rest, successively accelerating. And he added that these having been made to gain that degree [of speed] which it pleased God that they should maintain forever, He turned their straight motion into circulation, the only kind [of motion] that is suitable to be conserved equably, turning always without retreat from or approach toward any pre-established goal desired by them. The conception is truly worthy of Plato, and it is to be more esteemed to the extent that its foundations, of which Plato remained silent, but which were discovered by our Author in removing their poetical mask or semblance, show it the guise of a true story.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

I. Bernard Cohen's thesis: Galileo believed only circular (not straight line) motion may be conserved (perpetual), see The New Birth of Physics (1960).
Sagredo, Day Four, Stillman Drake translation (1974) pp.283-284
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)

Ronald Reagan photo

“We're going forward with research on a new Orient Express that could, by the end of the decade, take off from Dulles Airport, accelerate up to 25 times the speed of sound, attaining low Earth orbit or flying to Tokyo within two hours.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

State of the Union address http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/20486a.htm, , quoted in [1986-03-05, Michael Kilian, Hypersonic flight just a hyperbolic Reagan rhapsody, The Evening Independent, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=950&dat=19860305&id=bmJQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=t1kDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4836,1112899]
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

Abraham Lincoln photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Jayant Narlikar photo
Richard Bach photo
W.B. Yeats photo

“Much did I rage when young,
Being by the world oppressed,
But now with flattering tongue
It speeds the parting guest.”

Youth And Age http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1762/
The Tower (1928)

Milkha Singh photo

“He emphasized that I must maintain my speed for the first 300 metres, and then give it my all in the last 100 metres. He said that if I ran the first 300 metres at full speed, Spence would do the same, although that was not his running strategy.”

Milkha Singh (1935) Indian track and field athlete

At the 1958 Commonwealth Games, Milkha describes how Dr. Howard, the American coach built the strategy to outrace his biggest threat Milkha At Midnight, 13 December 2013, publisher+Outlook India http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282698,

“One of the funniest examples of these kinds of statistics comes from Evolution: Possible or Impossible by James F. Coppedge [who] cites an article by Ulric Jelinek … which claims that the odds are 1 in 10^243 against "two thousand atoms" (the size of one particular protein molecule) ending up in precisely that particular order "by accident." Where did Jelenik get that figure? From Pierre Lecompte du Nouy… who in turn got it from Charles-Eugene Guye, a physicist who died in 1942. Guye had merely calculated the odds of these atoms lining up by accident if "a volume" of atoms the size of the Earth were "shaken at the speed of light." In other words, ignoring all the laws of chemistry, which create preferences for the formation and behavior of molecules, and ignoring that there are millions if not billions of different possible proteins--and of course the result has no bearing on the origin of life, which may have begun from an even simpler protein. This calculation is thus useless for all these reasons, and is typical in that it comes to Coppedge third-hand (and thus to us fourth-hand), and is hugely outdated (it was calculated before 1942, even before the discovery of DNA), and thus fails to account for over half a century of scientific progress.”

Pierre Lecomte du Noüy (1883–1947) French philosopher

Richard Carrier, "Bad Science, Worse Philosophy", Addendum B, http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html#et_al at The Secular Web (Internet Infidels: 2000)
About

Abraham Lincoln photo

“Abraham Lincoln is my name
And with my pen I wrote the same
I wrote in both hast and speed
and left it here for fools to read”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Manuscript poem, as a teenager (ca. 1824–1826), in "Lincoln as Poet" at Library of Congress : Presidents as Poets http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/prespoetry/al.html, as published in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) edited by Roy. P. Basler, Vol. 1
1820s

Maria Callas photo

“[Serafin was] an extraordinary coach, sharp as a vecchio lupo [old wolfe]. He opened a world to me, showed me there was a reason for everything, that even fiorature and trills… have a reason in the composer's mind, that they are the expression of the stato d'animo [state of mind] of the character — that is, the way he feels at the moment, the passing emotions that take hold of him. He would coach us for every little detail, every movement, every word, every breath. One of the things he told me — and this is the basis of bel canto — is never to attack a note from underneath or from above, but always to prepare it in the face. He taught me that pauses are often more important than the music. He explained that there was a rhythm — these are the things you get only from that man! — a measure for the human ear, and that if a note was too long, it was no good after a while. A fermata always must be measured, and if there are two fermate close to one another in the score, you ignore one of them. He taught me the proportions of recitative — how it is elastic, the proportions altering so slightly that only you can understand it…. But in performance he left you on your own. "When I am in the pit, I am there to serve you, because I have to save my performance." he would say. We would look down and feel we had a friend there. He was helping you all the way. He would mouth all the words. If you were not well, he would speed up the tempo, and if you were in top form, he would slow it down to let you breathe, to give you room. He was breathing with you, living the music with you, loving it with you. It was elastic, growing, living.”

Maria Callas (1923–1977) American-born Greek operatic soprano

Callas : The Art and the Life (1974)

Henry Ford photo
David Attenborough photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo
Nikola Tesla photo

“Nature may reach the same result in many ways. Like a wave in the physical world, in the infinite ocean of the medium which pervades all, so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, may be, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages and ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of a complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present. A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature. In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider, that in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

"On Light And Other High Frequency Phenomena" A lecture delivered before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia (24 February 1893), and before the National Electric Light Association, St. Louis (1 March 1893), published in The Electrical review (9 June 1893), p. Page 683; also in The Inventions, Researches And Writings of Nikola Tesla (1894)

Eugene Paul Wigner photo

“In science, it is not speed that is the most important. It is the dedication, the commitment, the interest and the will to know something and to understand it — these are the things that come first.”

Eugene Paul Wigner (1902–1995) mathematician and Nobel Prize-winning physicist

in an interview by [István Kardos, Scientists face to face, Corvina Kiadó, 1978, 963130373X, 370]

Billie Holiday photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo

“To the guests that must go, bid God's speed and brush away all traces of their steps.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

45
The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)

Nikolai Gogol photo
Barack Obama photo

“What’s at stake in this debate goes far beyond a few months of headlines, or passing tensions in our foreign policy. When you cut through the noise, what’s really at stake is how we remain true to who we are in a world that is remaking itself at dizzying speed. Whether it’s the ability of individuals to communicate ideas; to access information that would have once filled every great library in every country in the world; or to forge bonds with people on other sides of the globe, technology is remaking what is possible for individuals, and for institutions, and for the international order. So while the reforms that I have announced will point us in a new direction, I am mindful that more work will be needed in the future. One thing I’m certain of: This debate will make us stronger. And I also know that in this time of change, the United States of America will have to lead. It may seem sometimes that America is being held to a different standard. And I'll admit the readiness of some to assume the worst motives by our government can be frustrating. No one expects China to have an open debate about their surveillance programs, or Russia to take privacy concerns of citizens in other places into account. But let’s remember: We are held to a different standard precisely because we have been at the forefront of defending personal privacy and human dignity.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)

Abraham Lincoln photo
Barack Obama photo

“But the fall of Ramadi has galvanized the Iraqi government. So, with the additional steps I ordered last month, we’re speeding up training of ISIL forces, including volunteers from Sunni tribes in Anbar Province.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Obama's White House speech, Later the White House corrected Obama's slip by replacling 'ISIL' by 'Iraqi' https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/06/remarks-president-progress-fight-against-isil
YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2NkjNvwuaU
2015

“Wealth is the hidden side of speed and speed the hidden side of wealth.”

Paul Virilio (1932–2018) French philosopher

Pure War. New York, NY, U.S.A.: Semiotext(e), 1983. p. 30

Newton Lee photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“No one thinks or feels or appreciates or lives a mental-emotional-imaginative life at all, except in terms of the artificial reference-points supply'd him by the enveloping body of race-tradition and heritage into which he is born. We form an emotionally realisable picture of the external world, and an emotionally endurable set of illusions as to values and directions in existence, solely and exclusively through the arbitrary concepts and folkways bequeathed to us through our traditional culture-stream. Without this stream around us we are absolutely adrift in a meaningless and irrelevant chaos which has not the least capacity to give us any satisfaction apart from the trifling animal ones... Without our nationality—that is, our culture-grouping—we are merely wretched nuclei of agony and bewilderment in the midst of alien and directionless emptiness... We have an Aryan heritage, a Western-European heritage, a Teutonic-Celtic heritage, an Anglo-Saxon or English heritage, an Anglo-American heritage, and so on—but we can't detach one layer from another without serious loss—loss of a sense of significance and orientation in the world. America without England is absolutely meaningless to a civilised man of any generation yet grown to maturity. The breaking of the saving tie is leaving these colonies free to build up a repulsive new culture of money, speed, quantity, novelty, and industrial slavery, but that future culture is not ours, and has no meaning for us... Possibly the youngest generation already born and mentally active—boys of ten to fifteen—will tend to belong to it, as indeed a widespread shift in their tastes and instincts and loyalties would seem to indicate. But to say all this has anything to do with us is a joke! These boys are the Bedes and Almins of a new, encroaching, and apparently inferior culture. We are the Boëthii and Symmachi and Cassiodori of an older and perhaps dying culture. It is to our interest to keep our own culture alive as long as we can—and if possible to reserve and defend certain areas against the onslaughts of the enemy.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (6 November 1930), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 207
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“The mind passes in an instant from east to west; and all the great incorporeal things resemble these very closely in speed.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), I Philosophy

Herodotus photo

“It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.”

Book 8, Ch. 98
variant: Not snow, no, nor rain, nor heat, nor night keeps them from accomplishing their appointed courses with all speed. (Book 8, Ch. 98)
Paraphrase: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" ”
Appears carved over entrance to Central Post Office building in New York City.
The Histories

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: I have not lost faith. I'm not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven't lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I can still sing "We Shall Overcome" because Carlyle was right: "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right: "Truth pressed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right: "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne." Yet, that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the bible is right: "You shall reap what you sow." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid because the words of the Lord have spoken it. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we're free at last!" With this faith, we'll sing it as we're getting ready to sing it now. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore. And I don't know about you, I ain't gonna study war no more.

Camille Paglia photo

“My point is that you cannot force social change at a speed that it cannot go. Social change is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Deep social change takes time.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)
Context: My point is that you cannot force social change at a speed that it cannot go. Social change is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Deep social change takes time. And slowly the culture is changing. The MTV generation is far more tolerant, and that tolerance is growing.

Hermann Hesse photo

“When you throw a rock into the water, it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water. This is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolution.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

As translated by Ejvind Haas
Siddhartha (1922)
Context: When you throw a rock into the water, it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water. This is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolution. Siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal attracts him, because he doesn't let anything enter his soul which might oppose the goal. This is what Siddhartha has learned among the Samanas. This is what fools call magic and of which they think it would be effected by means of the daemons. Nothing is effected by daemons, there are no daemons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.

Morrissey photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Barbara Kingsolver photo
Rick Riordan photo
Elizabeth Gilbert photo
Carl Hiaasen photo
James Patterson photo

“Basically, I have two speeds…. Hostile or smart-aleck. Your choice.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Dave Barry photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Woody Allen photo

“I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
Mark Millar photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Kazuo Ishiguro photo
Milan Kundera photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Gabriel García Márquez photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Oprah Winfrey photo
William Gibson photo

“A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void…”

Source: Neuromancer (1984)
Context: A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void… The Sprawl was a long strange way home over the Pacific now, and he was no console man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.

Deb Caletti photo
John Keats photo
Rick Riordan photo
Jane Austen photo
Grant Morrison photo

“Einstein was wrong! I"M the speed of like CRACKING through shivery rainbows and GOD the sky whirls and withers like a melting RAINBOW!”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

Source: Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth

Jodi Picoult photo
Steven Wright photo
Rick Riordan photo
Cecelia Ahern photo
Paulo Coelho photo
David Sedaris photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Ayn Rand photo
Dorothy Parker photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo