Quotes about speed
page 3

“There is a steep and lofty wall,
Where my warders trembling stand,
He who at speed shall ride round its height,
For him shall be my hand.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto IV
The Troubadour (1825)

“Technology moves with terrifying speed. If the traffic rules are explicit and understandable, and accompanied by common-sense protective designs, this technology will be an incalculable boon to America, a shot in the arm to our international competitiveness, and a stimulus to our creative industries. If not, then the information superhighway, cyberspace, the Internet, call it what you will, technology will collapse the great wonder of intellectual property. The country will be the loser. Big time.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

Testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives on copyright immunities for ISPs. (7 February 1996)

Understanding, Sense, Time, Country

“The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.
Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines, so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations. They will be controlled by a control card or film, they will select their own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted, they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

Nature, Time, Future

“On the tennis court, one needs a cool temperament, tremendous ball sense, reflexes, speed, hand-eye co-ordination, power, timing and peak physical fitness. Off the court, the player and support team need skills in planning, execution, travel, an ability to raise funds when needed, and several other talents.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Arun Sharma Sachin's my inspiration - he's also excellent at tennis: Sania Mirza http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/interviews/Sachins-my-inspiration-hes-also-excellent-at-tennis-Sania-Mirza/articleshow/26167479.cms, The Times of India, 22 November 2013

Travel, Support, Sense, Time

“It was neither healthy nor good when public stock exchanges introduced order types and speed advantages that high-frequency traders could use to exploit everyone else. This sort of inefficiency didn't vanish the moment it was spotted and acted upon. It was like a broken slot machine in the casino that pays off every time. It would keep paying off until someone said something about it; but no one who played the slot machine had any interest in pointing out that it was broken.”

Michael Lewis book Flash Boys

Source: Flash Boys (2014), p. 233

Time

“It's a bird … it's a plane … no, it's KernelMan, faster than a speeding bullet, to your rescue. Doing new kernel versions in under 5 seconds flat …”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Announcement for Linux 1.3.27, 1995-11-14, Torvalds, Linus, 2017-04-25 http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/alpha/9509.1/0006.html, 1990s, 1995-99

Bird

“The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American Policy makers.”

Jeane Kirkpatrick (1926–2006) American diplomat and Presidential advisor

Dictatorship and Double Standards, Commentary (New York, Nov. 1979), quoted in The Economist , 23 December 2006:131

“Communication becomes the defining characteristic of homo sapiens; we are the species that speaks. We utter the words that create our world, and have learned to take our words and translate them into the ethereal play of zeros and ones, lay them out, at the speed of light, first on a wire, then a radio wave, and lately, on a beam of light, so that the voice, once constrained by mouth and ear, now straddles the entire planet in thirty millionths of a second, messages pinging back and forth, not unlike the meeting points of a synaptic gap, using photons as neurotransmitters, and each network router the equivalent of a synapic junction, deciding whether to activate or extinguish each message that crosses the continents, connected now in a seamless, endless web of knowledge, more than two billion pages, more than any one of us could ever read or know, the collected and collective intelligence of a species that seems to have made information the central mystery of culture, the project of civilization, and the goal of being.”

Mark Pesce (1962) American writer

From the narration to Becoming Transhuman http://www.webearth.org/bt.pdf

World, Intelligence, Communication, Knowledge

“George Foulkes: Will the Prime Minister tell us what word he would legitimately use to describe those Cabinet Ministers who, while professing loyalty to him, are setting up telephone lines in campaign offices for the second round of the election?
John Major: I have no knowledge of that. I can say that the speed at which these matters can be done is a tribute to privatisation.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Prime Minister's Questions http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199495/cmhansrd/1995-06-29/Orals-2.html, 29 June, 1995. It was rumoured that Cabinet member Michael Portillo had installed telephone lines in the event of his standing in the Conservative leadership election. 1990s, 1995

Knowledge, Loyalty

“With silver drops the mead yet spread for ruth,
In active games of nimbleness and strength,
Where we did strain, trained with swarms of youth,
Our tender limbs that yet shot up in length.
The secret groves, which oft we made resound
Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies' praise;
Recording oft what grace each one had found,
What hope of speed, what dread of long delays.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

Source: Prisoned in Windsor, He Recounteth his Pleasure there Passed, Line 21

Secret, Youth, Hope, Game

“The quantity of action is the product of the mass of the bodies times their speed and the distance they travel. When a body is transported from one place to another, the action is proportional to the mass of the body, to its speed and to the distance over which it is transported.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

Travel, Time

“It is only in the case of musical instruments that I find any commendable diligence in the [Irish] people. They seem to me to be incomparably more skilled in these than any other people that I have seen. The movement is not, as in the British instrument to which we are accustomed, slow and easy, but rather quick and lively, while at the same time the melody is sweet and pleasant. It is remarkable how, in spite of the great speed of the fingers, the musical proportion is maintained. The melody is kept perfect and full with unimpaired art through everything – through quivering measures and the involved use of several instruments – with a rapidity that charms, a rhythmic pattern that is varied and a concord achieved through elements discordant.”
In musicis solum instrumentis commendabilem invenio gentis istius diligentiam. In quibus, prae omni natione quam vidimus, incomparabiliter instructa est. Non enim in his, sicut in Britannicis quibus assueti sumus instrumentis, tarda et morosa est modulatio, verum velox et praeceps, suavis tamen et jocunda sonoritas. Mirum quod, in tanta tam praecipiti digitorum rapacitate, musica servatur proportio; et arte per omnia indemni inter crispatos modulos, organaque multipliciter intricata, tam suavi velocitate, tam dispari paritate, tam discordi concordia, consona redditur et completur melodia.

Gerald of Wales (1146) Medieval clergyman and historian

Topographia Hibernica (The Topography of Ireland) Part 3, chapter 11 (94); translation from Gerald of Wales (trans. John J. O'Meara) The History and Topography of Ireland ([1951] 1982) p. 103.

People, Art, Music, Time

“"Come on! You too, Will."
"If you must call me anything, you may address me as Most Excellent Testamentary Clause," said the sun bear.
"Claws?" said Suzy, as she tilted the chair to speed the bear on its way. "Orright, Claws, hop to it."
"No, no, no," protested the sun bear. "Most Excellent-"
"Claws it is," said Suzy loudly. "After you, Claws."
"I said… oh… just don't speak to me," huffed the Will as it waddled after Arthur.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Grim Tuesday (2004), p. 300.

Way, Sun

“Einstein had drawn attention to nonlocality in 1935 in an effort to show that quantum mechanics must be flawed. …Einstein proposed a thought experiment—now called the EPR experiment—involving two particles that spring from a common source and fly in opposite directions.
According to the standard model of quantum mechanics, neither particle has a definite position or momentum before it is measured; but by measuring the momentum of one particle, the physicist instantaneously forces the other particle to assume a fixed position… Deriding this effect as "spooky action at a distance," Einstein argued that it violated both common sense and his own theory of special relativity, which prohibits the propagation of effects faster than the speed of light; quantum mechanics must therefore be an incomplete theory. In 1980, however, a group of French physicists carried out a version of the EPR experiment and showed that it did indeed give rise to spooky action.”

John Horgan (journalist) (1953) American science journalist

The reason that the experiment does not violate special relativity is that one cannot exploit nonlocality to transmit information.
Source: The End of Science (1996), p. 83

Spring, Sense, Effort, Light

“The seven dwarfs were each on different little trips. Happy was into grass and grass alone … Happy, that's all he did. Sleepy was into reds. Grumpy, too much speed. Sneezy was a full blown coke freak. Doc was a connection. Dopey was into everything. Any old orifice will do for Dopey. He's always got his arm out and his leg up. And then, the one we always forget, because he was Bashful. Bashful didn't use drugs. He was paranoid on his own. Didn't need any help on that ladder.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Toledo Window Box (1974)
Source: Carlin, George, perf. Toledo Window Box. Rec. 20 Jul 1974. Monte Kay, Jack Lewis, 1974. Vinyl recording.

Happiness, Grass, Help, Forgetting

“The immaterial Blue colour shown at Iris Clert’s in April [1958, together with Jean Tinguely ] had in short made me inhuman, had excluded me from the world of tangible reality; I was an extreme element of society who lived in space and who had no means of coming back to earth. Jean Tinguely saw me in space and signaled to me in speed to show me the last machine to take to return to the ephemerality of material life.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1958; p. 47
before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

Life, World, Reality

“Films like Speed belong to the genre I call Bruised Forearm Movies, because you're always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you. Done wrong, they seem like tired replays of old chase cliches. Done well, they're fun. Done as well as Speed, they generate a kind of manic exhilaration.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/speed-1994 of Speed (10 June 1994) Reviews, Four star reviews

Personality

“Inflation is really like drugging the baby universe with speed. The supercool union of the hitherto unfriendly gods was blessed by amphetamine, and this made the universe inflate rather than just expand. The early orgy of expansion in the universe comes to an abrupt end as soon as the supercooled particle stuff finally freezes.”

João Magueijo (1967) Portuguese scientist

pg. 115
Faster than the Speed of Light

God, Universe, Baby

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith. They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1940s, Prayer on D-Day (1944)

God, Faith, Religion, Strong

“[R]eformers seeking to speed China's modernization by modernizing the writing system through a policy of digraphia have to contend not only with the natural attachment of Chinese to their familiar script but also with chauvinistic and mindless claims for its superiority.”

John DeFrancis (1911–2009) American linguist

Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems (1989, p. 120) http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/visible/index.html Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems (1989)

Nature

“It is also important to remember that evolution works like any other aspect of real life, in that not everything progresses or progresses at the same speed. It's just like at work: some employees may suddenly excel, soaring through the corporate ranks while others may be in the same position doing the same old thing as long as they're there. Some even get demoted. Not everything moves in the same pace or in the same direction, and some don't seem to change much at all.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Geerup's Terrible Lizard Classification https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhZeowON8l8 (July 28, 2009)

Life, Change

“In every kind of testing to see where I'm at, strength, speed, conditioning, I'm either right at or well ahead of the best marks I've ever had at this stage of training. A few weeks ago, we were concerned I was peaking too fast. I'd kick the [expletive] out of myself at the same stage of training for any of my previous fights. … The biggest thing is better recuperation from training. I don't have the days where I came in flat. It's made for the best training camp of my career.”

Jon Fitch

About his switch to a vegetarian diet. "Vegetarianism all the rage in MMA" https://www.yahoo.com/news/vegetarianism-rage-mma-145900165--mma.html, interview with Yahoo! Sports (18 February 2011).

Fight, Training

“[T]he once-marginal myth that the [South Korean] republic came into existence in Shanghai in 1919 as a nationalist state has become orthodox with remarkable speed.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, "Heaven is Helping Us": More from the Nationalist Left (August 2018)

“America`s relatively brief experiment with a generous welfare state was doomed by our African-American population. America tried to import the two fundamentals of the Swedish welfare state—high welfare payments and an end to social disapproval of illegitimacy—beginning about 1961. In parts of the U. S., such as heavily Scandinavian Minnesota, this worked reasonably well. But American voters were confronted with stunning speed with the realization that African-Americans responded differently than Swedes did to the new incentive structures. Welfare allowed much of African-American society to revert to African-style family structures.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

More Diversity = Less Welfare? http://www.vdare.com/articles/more-diversity-less-welfare, VDARE, March 14, 2004

Family, Parting

“In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Written on the Body (1992)

Happiness, People, Family, Way

“My estimate of American character has improved, contrary to my expectations, by this visit…I find myself in love with their intelligence, their sincerity, and the decorous self-respect that actuates all classes. The very genius of activity seems to have found its fit abode in the souls of this restless and energetic race. They have not, ‘tis true, the force of Englishmen in personal weight or strength, but they have compensated for this deficiency by quickening the momentum of their enterprises. All is in favour of celerity of action and the saving of time. Speed, speed, speed, is the motto that is stamped in the form of their ships and steamboats, in the breed of their horses, and the light construction of their wagons and carts: and in the ten thousand contrivances that are met with here, whether for the abridging of the labour of months or minutes, whether a high-pressure engine or a patent boot-jack. All is done in pursuit of one common object, the economy of time.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. Cobden (5 July 1835) during his visit to the United States, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), pp. 39-40.
1830s

Love, Soul, Intelligence, Light

“We may now picture this great Fleet, with its flotillas and cruisers, steaming slowly out of Portland Harbour, squadron by squadron, scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought. We may picture them again as darkness fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute blackness through the narrow Straits, bearing with them into the broad waters of the North the safeguard of considerable affairs…. The king’s ships were at sea.”

Winston S. Churchill book The World Crisis

The World Crisis, 1911–1914 : Chapter IX (The Crisis), Churchill, Butterworth (1923), pp. 212-213.
Early career years (1898–1929)

Way, Water, Sea

“[Talking about Richard Hammond's high-speed dragster crash] That should be the anti-speeding advert. It should be footage of Richard Hammond trying to remember his own wedding day. [Mimicking Richard Hammond] "She was wearing black… or was it red? Am I married?"”

Frankie Boyle (1972) Scottish comedian

Mock the Week

Wedding

“Blues. An American dance stemming from the Foxtrot, the speed of which it reduced and into which it brought a deliberately contrived dismal atmosphere. When Blues are sung their words seem to aim at attaining to the utmost depths of gloom and inanity.”

Eric Blom (1888–1959) Swiss-born British-naturalised music lexicographer, musicologist, music critic, music biographer and transl…

Article, Blues, p. 60
Everyman's Dictionary of Music (London: J. M Dent & Sons; 3rd ed. 1958)

Dance

“In 5 billion years, the expansion of the universe will have progressed to the point where all other galaxies will have receded beyond detection. Indeed, they will be receding faster than the speed of light, so detection will be impossible. Future civilizations will discover science and all its laws, and never know about other galaxies or the cosmic background radiation. They will inevitably come to the wrong conclusion about the universe……We live in a special time, the only time, where we can observationally verify that we live in a special time.”

Lawrence M. Krauss (1954) American physicist

"A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

Law, Light, Universe, Science

“Sound is defined as the result of a succession of regular and periodic vibrations. Noise is instead caused by motions that are irregular, as much in time as in intensity. 'A musical sensation,' says Helmholtz 'appears to the ear as a perfectly stable, uniform, and invariable sound.' But the quality of continuity that sound has with respect to noise, which seems instead fragmentary and irregular, is not an element sufficient to make a sharp distinction between sound and noise. We know that the production of sound requires not only that a body vibrate regularly but also that these vibrations persist in the auditory nerve until the following vibration has arrived, so that the periodic vibrations blend to form a continuous musical sound. At least sixteen vibrations per second are needed for this. Now, if I succeed in producing a noise with this speed. I will get a sound made up of the totality of so many noises--or better, noise whose successive repetitions will be sufficiently rapid to give a sensation of continuity like that of sound.”

Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) Electronic music pioneer and Futurist painter

Russolo. English trans. Barclay Brown (1986: 37).
undated quotes

Music, Appearance, Time, Success

“Twenty kilometers. At an average speed of 120 klicks per hour, we should cover the distance in ten minutes. Ten freezing, adrenaline-pumping, gorge-rising, terror-beating-against-the-ribs, react-in-a-microsecond-or-die seconds.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 15 (p. 297)

“[Regarding the 'Advance to Contact'] The simple truth about war is that if you are on the attack, you can't do a damned thing until you find your enemy, and the only way to do that is to push on, at whatever speed seems prudent, until you see or hear him, or he makes his presence known by letting fly at you.”

George MacDonald Fraser book Quartered Safe Out Here

Source: Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), p. 120.

War, Truth, Way, Flying

“On a second front, a powerful new technology platform is developing out of the bowels of the Second Industrial Revolution, speeding the central contradiction of capitalist ideology to the end game mentioned above. The coming together of the Communications Internet with the fledgling Energy Internet and Logistics Internet in a seamless twenty-first-century intelligent infrastructure—the Internet of Things (IoT)—is giving rise to a Third Industrial Revolution. The Internet of Things is already boosting productivity to the point where the marginal cost of producing many goods and services is nearly zero, making them practically free. The result is corporate profits are beginning to dry up, property rights are weakening, and an economy based on scarcity is slowly giving way to an economy of abundance.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

Way, Game, Intelligence, Communication

“An ounce of perception, a pound of obscure
Process information at half speed
Pause, rewind, replay
Warm memory chip
Random sample, hold the one you need
-- Vital Signs (1981)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Memory

“A girl of seven or ten years old is held to be the equal partner in a crime where another and a stronger is the principal; because she is in so many ways hampered and harmed by laws and customs pertaining to the past, we reach out hands of help especially to her that she may overtake the swift-marching procession of progress, for its sake that it may not slacken its speed on her account as much as for hers that she be not left behind.
I brought to the last Council our petition to Congress for the protection of women, which was responded to by raising the age of consent from ………. to sixteen years.”

Frances Willard (1839–1898) American suffragist

February 1891 https://prohibition.osu.edu/willard/speech

Women, Age, Law, Way

“What's evil for the hawk is the mouse because, you know, the mouse is quick and gets away but I did this one realization every scientist goes through at one point… if you gave the hawk power, the power of God, the first thing the hawk might do is to slow down the mouse. But then the hawk would lose it's speed. And then if you slow the mouse all the way down, so it can just barely move, the hawk would lose its flight. So that in a weird way the tension between those two say natural enemies is what gives birth to their beauty. So I definitely feel that the tension we have right now within the human community in particular — that those are ultimately going to be resolved with a deeper harmony and a deeper appreciation for one another.”

Brian Swimme (1950) American cosmologist

Meaningoflife.tv interview, 2013

God, Beauty, Way, Feeling

“You know what's hard? I want to give back. I want to do all the things that will make me feel fulfilled. But whenever I do those things, people think it's a press stunt or something. Because they do find me, and there's really no way of hiding from that. And the second that you complain about it, they say, "Well, this is what you wanted, so this is what you're going to get." That's all people see it as now. It's not, "No, I just want to have some time for myself." There are things I want to do, and people don't understand that. You know, my car accident that I got into, where I got my first charge, I wouldn't have been speeding up like I was if I didn't have people shoving cameras in my windows.”

Lindsay Lohan (1986) American actress and pop singer

Interview interview (2009)

People, Cars, Way, Feeling

“"Speed to Fail" should be every entrepreneur's motto. When you finally find the one idea that can't be killed, go with it.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p.101

Idea

“Hawks are better soarers than buzzards but more often resort to flapping because they wish greater speed. A damp day is unfavorable for soaring unless there is a high wind. No bird soars in a calm.
The object of the tail is to increase the spread of surface in the rear when the wings are moved forward in light winds and thus preserve the centre of pressure at about the same spot. It seems to be used as a rudder very little. In high winds it is folded up very narrow.”

Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) American aviation pioneer

Wright's Notebook (1900)

Bird, Light

“Oh, wow, what a scene that place was - that heavenly drug down sexual perversion get their rocks off health spa. I was already so bombed I don't know how I got there. I got down to the pool, where all the freaks were. I met Paul America at the pool and I told him we were probably in danger if we stayed, but we were so blasted we forgot what was good for us and what wasn't, and the whole place turned into a giant orgy... every kind of sex freak, from homosexuals to nymphomaniacs... oh, everybody eating each other on the raft, and drinking, guzzling tequila and vodka and Scotch and bourbon and shooting up every other second... losing syringes down the pool drains, the needles of the mainline scene, blocking the water infiltration system with broken syringes. Oh, it was really some night just going on an incredible sexual tailspin. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Couldn't get enough of it. It was one of the wildest scenes I've ever been in or ever hope to be in. I should be ashamed of myself. I'm not, but I should be. Sex and speed, wow! Like, oh God. A twenty-four-hour climax that can go on for days. And there's no way to explain it unless you've been through it; there's no way to tell anyone who hasn't tasted it. I'd like to turn on the whole world for just a moment... just for a moment. I'm greedy; I'd like to keep most of it for myself and a few others, a few of my friends... to keep that superlative high, just on the cusp of each day... so that I'd radiate sunshine.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Ciao! Manhattan tapes, recalling its pool spa orgy scene
Edie : American Girl (1982)

God, Health, World, Hope

“In this world, the question has already been asked. The world has already started to face the problems, the problems which are vital for the human race. There is no need to discuss the problems, but I would like to present my opinion. In the midst of all this, I still sincerely think that this Knowledge, the Knowledge of God, the Knowledge of our Creator, is our solution. Many people might not think so, and carry a completely different opinion, but my opinion is that since man came on this planet earth, he has always been taking from it. Remember, this planet Earth is not infinite, it is finite, and though it has a lot to give, it is limited. Maybe now we can somehow manage to stagger along, cutting our standards of living, cutting gas, reducing the speed limit more, but the next very terrifying question is What about the future? I think this Knowledge which I have to offer this world, free of charge, is the answer. For if everybody can understand that everybody is a brother and sister, and this world is a gift, not a human-owned planet, and have the true understanding of such, we'll definitely bring peace, tranquillity, love and Grace, which we need so badly. I urge this world to try. I do not claim to be God, but do claim I can establish peace on this Earth by our Lord's Grace, and everyone's joint effort.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Proclamation for 1975, signed Sant Ji Maharaj the name by which Prem Rawat was known at that time. Divine Times (Vol.4 Issue.1, February 1, 1975)
1970s

Love, God, People, World

“The way out of this recession, the way to create jobs, is to grow the economy by encouraging investment in factories and equipment, and by speeding up tax relief so people have more money to spend. For the sake of American workers, let's pass a stimulus package.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Money, People, Way

“Tulane and Johnny opened a novelty shop
Back under the counter was the cream of the crop
Everything was clickin’ and the business was good
Till one day, lo and behold, an officer stood
Johnny jumped the counter but he stumbled and fell
But Tulane made it over Johnny just as he yelled
Go head on, Tulane, he can’t catch up with you
Go Tulane, he ain’t man enough for you
Go Tulane, use all the speed you got
Go Tulane, you know you need a lot
Go Tulane, he’s laggin’ behind
Go head on, Tulane”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Tulane" (1970)
Song lyrics

Business

“I love what speed and coke do to my weight. It's unnatural, I know. I could just exercise….”

Carrie Fisher book Postcards from the Edge

Postcards from the Edge (1987)

Love, Exercises

“Full little knowest thou that hast not tride,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.
.........
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires; 13
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendance spend!”

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) English poet

Mother Hubberds Tale, line 895; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Fear, Hope, Soul

“The Futurists were the first painters, poets, and architects who exalted modern work with their art—
they painted speeding automobiles—
they painted lamps bursting with light—
they painted steaming locomotives and swift bicyclists—
the Futurists stylized their compositions, adopting a violently colored look; with synoptic and geometric shapes they multiplied and decomposed the rhythms of objects and landscapes in order to increase their dynamic qualities and to give an effective rendering of their swift ideas, the states of mind, their conceptions.”

Fortunato Depero (1892–1960) Italian painter, writer, sculptor and graphic designer

Depero (1931) "Futurism and Adverticing Art"; Republished in: Futurism : an anthology http://modernistarchitecture.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/ebooksclub-org__futurism__an_anthology__henry_mcbride_series_in_modernism_.pdf. edited by Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman, (2011), p. 290

Art, Color, Idea, Light

“We all know what the negro has been as a slave. In this relation we have his experience of two hundred and fifty years before us, and can easily know the character and qualities he has developed and exhibited during this long and severe ordeal. In his new relation to his environments, we see him only in the twilight of twenty years of semi-freedom; for he has scarcely been free long enough to outgrow the marks of the lash on his back and the fetters on his limbs. He stands before us, today, physically, a maimed and mutilated man. His mother was lashed to agony before the birth of her babe, and the bitter anguish of the mother is seen in the countenance of her offspring. Slavery has twisted his limbs, shattered his feet, deformed his body and distorted his features. He remains black, but no longer comely. Sleeping on the dirt floor of the slave cabin in infancy, cold on one side and warm on the other, a forced circulation of blood on the one side and chilled and retarded circulation on the other, it has come to pass that he has not the vertical bearing of a perfect man. His lack of symmetry, caused by no fault of his own, creates a resistance to his progress which cannot well be overestimated, and should be taken into account, when measuring his speed in the new race of life upon which he has now entered.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, The Future of the Colored Race (1886)

Life, Birth, Sleep, Freedom

“He existed in all the many dimensions of the multiverse. Yet he, in common with all others, was bound by the dimension of Time. He had cast off the chains of space but was tied, as perhaps all denizens of the multiverse would always be, by the imperturbable prowl of Time, which brooked no halt, which condoned no tampering with its movement, whether to slow it or to speed it.
Time, the changer, could not be changed. Space, perhaps, the material environment, could be conquered. Time, never.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: The Sundered Worlds (1965), Chapter 15 (p. 290)

Change, Time

“The compression of the modern picture, its variety, its breaking up of forms... It is certain that the evolution of the means of locomotion and their speed have a great deal to do with the new way of seeing. Many superficial people raise the cry 'anarchy' in front of these pictures because they cannot follow the whole evolution of contemporary life that painting records.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 12
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914

Life, People, Way, Painting

“Nature appears to us in four seasons. The spring is bright and warm, the summer lazy and hot. The fall is decked with colour with a trace of sadness, and the winter frosted and severe. Similarly, the movement of shin shin toitsu aikido are rich and varied. There is both severity and kindness, speed and calmness. It is designed to express the many moods and characteristics of men and women, young and old. But if it for one moment varies from the principles of the universe, it is no longer aikido with ki.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

23
Ki Sayings (2003)

Women, Men, Sadness, Spring

“I come back to speed, and I want my last words to be on speed. I see a danger ahead that our people may become mechanised, not only in body, but mechanised in mind. I dread the mass mind. I dread the loss of that independent individualist character which has made this nation what it is. I dread the growth of that materialistic view of life which, to my mind, is a danger both to body and to soul. We must see to it that in some way we can preserve the character of our people to meet the changed conditions of the age, and see that our character triumphs over our environment.”

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

Speech to the Federation of British Industries (13 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 116-117.
1937

Life, People, Age, Way

“Tarzan held a peculiar position in the tribe. They seemed to consider him one of them and yet in some way different. The older males either ignored him entirely or else hated him so vindictively that but for his wondrous agility and speed and the fierce protection of the huge Kala he would have been dispatched at an early age.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 7 : The Light of Knowledge

Hate, Age, Way

“Relativity distorted classical expectations in a way that Clavain still did not find entirely intuitive. Slam two objects towards each other, each with individual velocities just below light-speed, and the classical result for their closing velocity would be the sum of their individual speeds: just under twice the speed of light. Yet the true result, confirmed with numbing precision, was that the objects saw each other approach with a combined speed that was still just below the speed of light. Similarly, the relativistic closing velocity for two objects moving towards each other with individual speeds of one-half of light-speed was not light-speed itself, but eight-tenths of it. It was the way the universe was put together, and yet it was not something the human mind had evolved to accept.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 26 (p. 463)

Way, Light, Universe

“The Internet is powerful because it allows people to organise around issues at unprecedented speed, broadcast their thoughts and challenge those in charge. A wave of such groups banded together in early 2011 to demand the removal of authoritarian leaders in the Middle East as one country after another rose up with varying degrees of success. But the Internet doesn't cause revolution. It is a communications network. What people choose to do with technology - that is where we can make moral judgements. Some people will use it for ill, others for good. Security forces tend to focus on the ills, while the majority use it for good. In the name of protecting us from 'bad things on the Internet' there are increasing moves to suppress communications networks in both repressive and democratic countries. Demands to shut down, censor, filter or in other ways oversee and control the way people communicate are on the rise.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page xi.
The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches From the Information War, 1st Edition

People, Way, Communication, Success

Sher Shah Suri (1486–1545) founder of Sur Empire in Northern India

Tarikh-i-Daudi of ‘Abdullah in Elliot and Dowson's History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume IV, pp. 478-79. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition

Life, Death, Angels, Personality

“He hit the water—impacted really is the word for it—at over six hundred miles an hour, with a report so loud that it made birds fly out of trees up to three miles away. At such a speed water effectively becomes a solid. I don’t believe Mr. Milton penetrated it at all, but just bounced off it about fifteen feet, limbs suddenly very loose, and then lay on top of it, still, like an autumn leaf, spinning gently.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 78

Autumn, Bird, Tree, Water

“Dicko: I thought you sung a dismal song really well. You said it was a challenge for you. It was a challenge for me to listen to it cause I just couldn't follow it. I wanted to party tonight. I thought there were some great songs and that was just a bit of a speed bump in the evening for me and it's a shame cause I think you are growing. I wanted you to tear it up tonight and I think the song weighed you down but I thought you delivered it well.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 10

Thinking, Tear

“Nothing in nature or the cosmos is ever completely still — as I write this, several wild Mallards have returned to the Museum courtyard and are creating a frantic spectacle of water and wings as they dive and attack in their annual spring ritual. Further from home, a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 56 million light years from Earth has recently been observed to be spinning at close to the speed of light.”

Evalyn Gates (1958)

"Letter from the director", Explore magazine of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (Spring 2013), p. 4

Home, Spring, Nature, Light

“The increasing speed of technological advancement and economic integration in recent years has highlighted the importance of intellectual property and put great stress on the ability of established national and international systems that administer IP rights to effectively serve the global community.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

August 11, 2003, at the Jordan IP Week Conference, Amman, Jordan.

Communication

“Once you see a touchdown, there's no need to make a move. You just use your speed.”

Ted Ginn, Jr. (1985) American football wide receiver, kick returner

[Miller, Rusty, Buckeyes' Ginn hopes to build on fast start, Associated Press, 2005-09-01, 2007-01-23]

“Non-local influences do not diminish with distance. They are as potent at a million miles as at a millimeter.
Non-local influences act instantaneously. The speed of their transmission is not limited by the velocity of light.
A non-local interaction links up one location with another without crossing space, without decay, and without delay. A non-local interaction is, in short, unmediated, unmitigated, and immediate.”

Nick Herbert (1936) American physicist

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 12, Bell's Interconnectedness Theorem, p. 214

Light

“A car crash harnesses elements of eroticism, aggression, desire, speed, drama, kinesthetic factors, the stylizing of motion, consumer goods, status — all these in one event. I myself see the car crash as a tremendous sexual event really: a liberation of human and machine libido”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

if there is such a thing
Interview in Penthouse (September 1970)

Cars

“…a [literary] style can be a whole way of existing, so that you exist, for the moment, in perfect sympathy with it: you don’t read it so much as listen to it as it sweeps you along—fast enough, often, to make you feel a blurred pleasure in your own speed. Often a phrase or sentence has the uncaring unconscious authority—how else could you say it?—that only a real style has.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“An Unread Book”, p. 36
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Pleasure, Way, Feeling, Reading

“We are on a runaway train headed over the climate cliff as we stoke the engine with more coal to increase its speed.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

Training

“(Sylvia at typewriter) The best place to discuss your sexual dissatisfaction with your partner is 1) in the bedroom 2) in a car, traveling at high speed 3) in a crowded elevator.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 86

Cars, Travel

“We not that those players with weaker arms might be better off throwing at a lower angle to get the ball to the plate on the bounce. If the surface is Astroturf, the 90-mph player can gain as much as 0.2 seconds, or 6 feet, on the runner by throwing on the bounce. But if his team is playing on grass and his groundskeeper has kept the grass long and well watered to help his team (which relies on singles, speed, and baserunning), the ball may lose so much speed at the bounce that nothing will be gained.”

Robert Adair (physicist) (1924) Physicist and author

Source: The Physics Of Baseball (Second Edition - Revised), Chapter 4, Running, Fielding, And Throwing, p. 61

Grass, Water, Help

“Speech and prose are not the same thing. They have different wave-lengths, for speech moves at the speed of light, where prose moves at the speed of the alphabet, and must be consecutive and grammatical and word-perfect. Prose cannot gesticulate. Speech can sometimes do nothing else.”

James Stephens (1882–1950) Irish writer

"Finnegans Wake", in James, Seamas & Jacques: Unpublished Writings (London: Macmillan, 1964) p. 161.

Light, Perfection

“I don’t listen to anything on the radio but NPR and occasional oldies programs. I can’t comment on the content or format of most commercial radio but I have read the statistics about the step-by-step deregulation of FCC rules that has allowed monopolies like Clear Channel to buy up massive shares of the airwaves. This has damaged our business (music) and our culture (American). The internet is offering bold alternatives but a transistor radio is only $25.00 and not everyone is hooked up through a computer and high speed connection.”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Quotes from NatalieMerchant.com

Music, Business, Reading

“Knowing that training is little more than breaking down muscle, I figured that what rebuilds that same muscle must be a major factor for recovery and therefore quicker improvement. If I was able to recover from each workout faster, I would be able to schedule them closer together and therefore train more than my competition. I would improve faster. As I suspected, food was the answer—high-quality, nutrient-dense, alkaline-forming, easily digestible food in proper proportions … Nutrition has a dramatic effect on recovery—that was unmistakable. … The result was astounding. Not only did my recovery time plummet but my energy level, strength-to-weight ratio, and endurance shot up. … On the cellular level, this diet was able to speed the renewal of muscle tissue. That meant that following this diet would actually help the body regenerate more frequently, suggesting that it could help reduce biological age.”

Brendan Brazier (1975) Canadian triathlete, publisher, writer, editor

Introduction
The Thrive Diet

Age, Food, Time, Help

“But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbéd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."”

Francis Thompson The Hound of Heaven

St. 1.
The Hound of Heaven (1893)

“Jazz music is a lifestyle. It’s not notes, chords and arpeggios. Today’s improvisation is too based on the knowledge of chords and the way they practice the chords. It’s not a melodic thing anymore like the older days. It was much more important to play shorter and to play more variable, valid stuff. Today, a lot of solos are long and uninteresting and the influence usually comes from John Coltrane’s group. He himself was a master musician, but he put so much emphasis on chord knowledge and technique, and now the kids want to show how fast they can play. This is the same with piano players and most instrumentalists—it’s speed. That’s gonna change again and hopefully the kids who are now 16 and 17 years old have a little more sense and maybe some more stories to tell.”

Joe Zawinul (1932–2007) austrian composer and pianist

Reflecting on the new generation's take on jazz music
Prasad interview (1997)

Music, Way, Knowledge, Sense

“Making Donkey Punch was all about energy, speed and intense work.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[Edinburgh International Film Festival, www.edfilmfest.org.uk, http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/news/2008/06/self-portrait-olly-blackburn, Olly Blackburn, News - Self portrait: Olly Blackburn, 20 June 2008, 23 February 2012]

“Well did he know how Palms by oppression speed,
Victorious, and the Victors sacred Meed!
The Burden lifts them higher. Well did he know,
How a tame stream does wild and dangerous grow
By unjust force; he now with wanton play,
Kisses the smiling Banks, and glides
But his known Channel stopt, begins to roare,
And swell with rage, and buffet the dull shore.
His mutinous waters hurry to the War,
And Troops of Waves come rolling from afar.
Then scorns he such weak stops to his free source,
And overruns the neighboring fields with violent course.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

Book I, lines 49-60
Davideis (1656)

War, Smile, Kiss, Water

“I will propose a Highway Safety Act of 1966 to seek an end to this mounting tragedy. We must also act to prevent the deception of the American consumer—requiring all packages to state clearly and truthfully their contents—all interest and credit charges to be fully revealed—and keeping harmful drugs and cosmetics away from our stores. It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention. We must change to master change. I propose to take steps to modernize and streamline the executive branch, to modernize the relations between city and state and nation. A new Department of Transportation is needed to bring together our transportation activities. The present structure—35 government agencies, spending $5 billion yearly—makes it almost impossible to serve either the growing demands of this great nation or the needs of the industry, or the right of the taxpayer to full efficiency and real frugality. I will propose in addition a program to construct and to flight-test a new supersonic transport airplane that will fly three times the speed of sound—in excess of 2,000 miles per hour. I propose to examine our federal system-the relation between city, state, nation, and the citizens themselves. We need a commission of the most distinguished scholars and men of public affairs to do this job. I will ask them to move on to develop a creative federalism to best use the wonderful diversity of our institutions and our people to solve the problems and to fulfill the dreams of the American people. As the process of election becomes more complex and more costly, we must make it possible for those without personal wealth to enter public life without being obligated to a few large contributors. Therefore, I will submit legislation to revise the present unrealistic restriction on contributions—to prohibit the endless proliferation of committees, bringing local and state committees under the act—to attach strong teeth and severe penalties to the requirement of full disclosure of contributions—and to broaden the participation of the people, through added tax incentives, to stimulate small contributions to the party and to the candidate of their choice.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, Men, People, Penalty

“It is not possible to cover over a thing like this, whatever is necessary will be done … It is routine for jet fighters to sometimes fly in and out over (national) borders … when you consider their speed over the sea … These are not ill-intentioned things but happen beyond control due to the jets' speed.”

Abdullah Gül (1950) 11th President of Turkey 2007–2014

After a Turkish warplane was shot down by Syria due to violations of borders http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18562210 (2012)

Flying, Sea

“Katsumi Tezuka and I both tried on the Godzilla costume during the first day of shooting. The costume was very stiff and heavy. I could walk about thirty feet in it, but Mr. Tezuka could only walk about ten feet in it. There were three cables coming out of the back of the costume. Two were for the operation of the eyes, and one was for the operation of the mouth. Eizo Kaimai was responsible for the movement of the eyes and the mouth. The ASA speed of the film that was used at the time was very slow, so the set had to be very brightly lit. Another actor complained that the lights made it too hot inside the costume, but I never complained. Batteries were installed in the Godzilla costume that was made for the second Godzilla movie. They were for the operation of the eyes and the mouth. The batteries made the costume even heavier than the one that had been constructed for the first Godzilla film.”

Haruo Nakajima (1929–2017) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Haruo Nakajima Interview" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/nakajima.htm, Kaiju Conversations (March 1995)

Light, Time

“Chen is not only ahead of Steve Jobs in terms of turnaround speed, he has done something that both HP and Sun failed at: turned a hardware company into a software and services company, arguably something Jobs couldn't have done. … Jobs smartly decided to kill the process at Apple to transition that company to software and services. Jobs didn't understand how to do that and would have likely failed because he was just a hardware guy.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

BlackBerry's John Chen: Beating Jobs by Doing the Impossible in Three Years http://itbusinessedge.com/blogs/unfiltered-opinion/blackberrys-john-chen-beating-jobs-by-doing-the-impossible-in-three-years.html in IT Business Edge (26 January 2017)

Guy, Understanding, Sun

“You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)

Light, Perfection, Flying

“There is a need to put in place regulations that will promote a uniform and consistent standard for the design and installation of road signs, waiting sheds, streetlights, speed bumps and other road infrastructure not only to promote safety, but also to advance aesthetics throughout the country’s thoroughfares.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Manila Times http://www.manilatimes.net/escudero-files-bill-mandating-dpwh-to-make-roads-safer/209625/ 2015

Waiting, Country

“The Fulton Fish Market will be more of an odor than a landmark at this time of day, but it really swings out at four o'clock in the morning - another Timothy 'Speed' Levitch recommendation if you can't sleep and you like fish.”

Timothy Levitch (1970) American actor

The Cruise (1998)

Fish, Sleep, Time

“The dawn speeds a man on his journey, and speeds him too in his work.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 579.

“"Bring forth the horse!" — the horse was brought;
In truth, he was a noble steed,
A Tartar of the Ukraine breed,
Who look'd as though the speed of thought
Were in his limbs.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Mazeppa http://readytogoebooks.com/MZP21.htm (1819), stanza 9.

Truth, Horse

“Life at Cambridge during those war years was to me particularly congenial, and it completed the process of thorough absorption in English life which, from the beginning, I had found very easy. Somehow the whole mood and intellectual atmosphere of the country had at once proved extraordinarily attractive to me, and the conditions of a war in which all my sympathies were with the English greatly speeded up the process of becoming thoroughly at home—much more than in my native Austria from which I had already become somewhat estranged during the conditions of the 1920s. While neither on my early visit to the United States nor during my later stay there or still later in Germany did I feel that I really belonged there, English ways of life seemed so naturally to accord with all my instincts and dispositions that, if it had not been for very special circumstances, I should never have wished to leave the country again. And of all the forms of life, that at one of the colleges of the old universities…still seems to me the most attractive. The evenings at the High Table and the Combinations Room at King's are among the pleasantest recollections of my life, and some of the older men I came then to know well, especially J. H. Clapham, remained, while they lived, dear friends.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Stephen Kresge and Leif Wenar (eds.), Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 86
1980s and later

Life, Men, War, Way

“Work is a defining, all-consuming part of our lives. Now, more than ever, the speed at which the nature of work is changing is having an extraordinary impact on working lives everywhere.”

Lynda Gratton (1953) Business theorist

The Shift: The Future of Work Is Already Here, 2011

Nature, Change, Parting

“When Spring is old, and dewy winds
Blow from the south, with odors sweet,
I see my love, in shadowy groves,
Speed down dark aisles on shining feet.”

Maurice Thompson (1844–1901) American novelist

Atalanta’s Race.

Love, Spring

“In the spring of 1920, General Motors found itself, as it appeared at the moment, in a good position. On account of the limitation of automotive production during the war there was a great shortage of cars. Every car that could be produced was produced and could be sold at almost any price. So far as any one could see, there was no reason why that prosperity should not continue for a time at least. I liken our position then to a big ship in the ocean. We were sailing along at full speed, the sun was shining, and there was no cloud in the sky that would indicate an approaching storm. Many of you have, of course, crossed the ocean and you can visualize just that sort of a picture yet what happened? In September of that year, almost over night, values commenced to fall. The liquidation from the inflated prices resulting from the war had set in. Practically all schedules or a large part of them were cancelled. Inventory commenced to roll in, and, before it was realized what was happening, this great ship of ours was in the midst of a terrific storm. As a matter of fact, before control could be obtained General Motors found itself in a position of having to go to its bankers for loans aggregating $80,000,000 and although, as we look at things from today's standpoint, that isn't such a very large amount of money, yet when you must have $80,000,000 and haven't got it, it becomes an enormous sum of money, and if we had not had the confidence and support of the strongest banking interests our ship could never have weathered the storm.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 185-6; Retrospective vein President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., addressing the automobile editors of American newspapers at the Proving Ground at Milford, Michigan in 1927.

Money, War, Cars, Confidence

“During the final months of the campaign, as polls indicated that I had a real chance of becoming the next leader, opposition from the supply management lobby gathered speed. Radio-Canada reported on dairy farmers who were busy selling Conservative Party memberships across Quebec. A Facebook page called Les amis de la gestion de l’offre et des régions (Friends of supply management and regions) was set up and had gathered more than 10,500 members by early May. As members started receiving their ballots by mail from the party, its creator, Jacques Roy, asked them to vote for Andrew Scheer.
Andrew, along with several other candidates, was then busy touring Quebec’s agricultural belt, including my own riding of Beauce, to pick up support from these fake Conservatives, only interested in blocking my candidacy and protecting their privileges. Interestingly, one year later, most of them have not renewed their memberships and are not members of the party anymore. During these last months of the campaign, the number of members in Quebec had increased considerably, from about 6,000 to more than 16,000. In April 2018, according to my estimates, we are down to about 6,000 again.
A few days after the vote, Éric Grenier, a political analyst at the CBC, calculated that if only 66 voters in a few key ridings had voted differently, I could have won. The points system, by which every riding in the country represented 100 points regardless of the number of members they had, gave outsized importance in the vote to a handful of ridings with few members. Of course, a lot more than 66 supply management farmers voted, likely thousands of them in Quebec, Ontario, and the other provinces. I even lost my riding of Beauce by 51% to 49%, the same proportion as the national vote.
At the annual press gallery dinner in Ottawa a few days after the vote, a gala where personalities make fun of political events of the past year, Andrew was said to have gotten the most laughs when he declared: “I certainly don’t owe my leadership victory to anybody…”, stopping in mid-sentence to take a swig of 2% milk from the carton. “It’s a high quality drink and it’s affordable too.” Of course, it was so funny because everybody in the room knew that was precisely why he got elected. He did what he thought he had to do to get the most votes, and that is fair game in a democratic system. But this also helps explain why so many people are so cynical about politics, and with good reason.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

page 23 in "Live or die with supply management", chapter 5 previewed April 2018 http://www.maximebernier.com/my_chapter_on_supply_management of "Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada"

People, Game, Drink, Business

“The U. S. stock market was now a class system, rooted in speed, of haves and have-nots. The haves paid for nanoseconds; the have-nots had no idea that a nanosecond had value. The haves enjoyed a perfect view of the market; the have-nots never saw the market at all. What had once been the world’s most public, most democratic, financial market had become, in spirit, something like a private viewing of a stolen work of art.”

Michael Lewis book Flash Boys

Source: Flash Boys (2014), p. 69

World, Art, Idea, Perfection

“I don't believe that the average fellow has anything like a true line on the value of wrist action in hitting anything—a baseball, a golf ball, a tennis ball or a polo ball. If you watch most of them, you will see they are trying to hit with their bodies, with their shoulders, with their arms—with almost everything except their wrists. I think it comes because most of them are overanxious, all tied up, too tense. They start by gripping too tightly. That kills off the hands and wrists. Their wrists get locked and then they have to swing their shoulders and bodies in. You'd be surprised how far a fellow can hit a ball, using only his wrists. I know I've been caught off guard or out of position on a sharp breaking curve, have had to slap at the ball, using only my wrists and have now and then watched it sail over the fence. The wrist is the mainspring—both wrists in baseball and golf. If you get them to work the rest is fairly easy. If you don't get them to work you are not going to do any good hitting. You can't get any speed in closing a door if the hinges are rusty and won't work. Hack Wilson must have great wrist action, for no short, stocky guy is going to hit that many home runs without a lot of it.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "The Sportlight" by Grantland Rice, in The Baltimore Sun (August 22, 1930), p. 13

Guy, Home, Thinking

“Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
Even at this moment haply quickeneth
The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
Though screen'd and hid, shall walk the daylight here.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

The Choice

God, Sun

“I’ve always liked gossip, gossip is fun, but whether you believe it or not is something else, and yet the web seems to want to believe. The web doesn’t distinguish between what’s playful and serious. And the speed! What is happening in the web, and all the tweeters tweeting, they become neurons. They are the neurons of the global village. Village is the right word because the village is where the gossip is taking place, it doesn’t take place in the cities. A piece of information comes into that little neuron – whoop – and they’ve immediately got to pass it across the synaptic gap…”

Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe

As quoted in the article 'Terry Gilliam interview for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'’ http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/joshua-jackson-on-marrying-diane-kruger-never-say-never-2012246 in The Telegraph (9 October 2009)

“All my life I had hated machines. I could remember how bitterly at school I had resented reading the news that someone had flown across the Atlantic or travelled through the Sahara in a car. I had realized even then that the speed and ease of mechanical transport must rob the world of all diversity.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 259.

Life, Hate, World, School

“Since 1954, the raw speed of computers, as measured by the time it takes to do an addition, increased by a factor of 10,000. That means an algorithm that once took 10 minutes to perform can now be done 15 times a second. Students sometimes ask my advice on how to get rich. The best advice I can give them is to dig up some old algorithm that once took forever, program it for a modern workstation, form a startup to market it and then get rich.”

Maurice Wilkes (1913–2010) British computer scientist

"A Half Century of Surprises", in Talking Back to the Machine: Computers and Human Aspiration‎, Ed. Peter J. Denning, Springer, 1999, ISBN 0387984135, p. 112

Time

“It is the experience of the speed of a plane, which was looking for an expression, a form and this caused the plane to come into existence. The plane was not built to take letters from Berlin to Moscow, but to give expression to the irresistible urge to create a form for the experience of speed.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

As quoted in: Richtingen in de hedendaagsche schilderkunst (Trends in the Present Day Art of Painting), Jacob Bendien - W.L. & J Brusse, Rotterdam,1936, p. 100 (transl. Anne Porcelijn)
1910 - 1920

“Getting C programmers to understand that they cause the computer to do less than minimum is intractable. … Ask him why he thinks he should be able to get away with unsafe code, core dumps, viruses, buffer overruns, undetected errors, etc., just because he wants "speed."”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Lisp advocacy misadventures http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/52564cc186195b05 (Usenet article). Usenet articles

Error, Understanding, Thinking

“Managers today come up against a few more communication barriers. One is the pressure of time. Listening carefully takes time, and managers have little of that to spare. In today’s business culture especially, with its emphasis on speed, already pressed managers may give short shrift to the slower art of one-on-one communication.”

Fritz Roethlisberger (1898–1974) American business theorist

Carl Rogers, and Fritz Roethlisberger. "Barriers and gateways to communication." Harvard Business Review, 1952.

Art, Communication, Business, Time

“In the morning we saw that the sea was rough, and people said there would be trouble.... Fifty men volunteered to go at once, and followed the old sailor without a word. We descended the cliffs to the beach, and there we saw a terrible sight : several vessels rushing, one after the other, at fearful speed, upon our rocks. Our men put three boats out to sea, but before they had rowed ten strokes one boat sank, another was upset by a huge breaker, while a third was thrown upon the beach.... The sea threw up hundreds of corpses, as well as quantities of cargo... Then came a fourth, fifth and sixth vessel, all of which were lost with their crew and cargo alike, upon the rocks. The tempest was furious... The next morning.... As I was passing by a hollow in the cliff, I saw a large sail spread, as I thought, over a bale of merchandise. I lifted the sail and saw a heap of corpses. I was so frightened that I ran home, and found my mother and grandmother on their knees, praying for the shipwrecked sailors.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote c. 1870; cited by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 22
taken from Millet's youth-memories, about the years he lived as an boy close to the wild coast of Normandy, written down on request of his friend and later biographer Alfred Sensier
1870 - 1875

Men, People, Fear, Home

“We had nothing to say to one another, and while I was manufacturing my phrases I felt that earth was falling through space and that I was falling with it at a speed that made me dizzy.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“Attention spans get very weak at the speed of light, and that goes along with a very weak identity.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, The Education of Mike McManus, TVOntario, December 28 1977

Light

Quotes about speed page 3

Quotes about speed
page 3