“The erection of a great public building in any city almost always engenders controversy. The maxim that there can be no disputing about matters of taste seldom deters an eager host of critics, informed and uninformed, from rushing into print. But the new buildings of London University have had the good fortune to rise undisturbed by the clamours of contention and indeed with a degree of public approval which must be almost unprecedented… I have found, as a matter of experience, that the gravamen of complaints about any public scheme may generally be found to reside not in its intrinsic demerits but in the fact that the objectors were not consulted about it.”

— Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 268

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Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan 31

British judge 1873–1952

John Prebble (1915–2001) British writer

John Prebble, in Disaster at Dundee http://books.google.co.in/books?id=WSxIAAAAMAAJ, 1956. p. 16.

“It is a distinguishing peculiarity of the Erewhonians that when they profess themselves to be quite certain about any matter, and avow it as a base on which they are to build a system of practice, they seldom quite believe in it. If they smell a rat about the precincts of a cherished institution, they will always stop their noses to it if they can.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 18

“I will not cataloge my opinions to which there have been objections since they are a matter of public record. But I must note in passing that I can't help but wonder if some of my critics can read.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

“I shall not quarrel with anybody who chooses to give these three factors a different order of importance. That is a matter for individual judgment. But I do believe that these three factors largely represent the advantages which our people have enjoyed, and which have made it possible for them to build here a great, harmonious, liberal, community of free people. Starting anew in a land of almost unlimited natural opportunity, the early settlers found that the success of their nation-building experiments must depend upon their working harmoniously together, sinking non-essential differences, cooperating frankly and sincerely in the general interest, and, above all else, forgetting the ancient antagonisms. It has been our good fortune that we have been able to shake off the old traditions, to strike hands with our neighbor in the common effort to preserve our new-found liberties. And along with this, through our system of universal education, we have been able to guard against the revival of old, or the creation of new regional or group hostilities.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)

“The cities of that period were rather shabby affairs. If you had the taste to make them splendid, which I would not be so rude as to question, the general poverty resulting from your extraordinary industrial system would not have given you the means. Moreover, the excessive individualism which then prevailed was inconsistent with much public spirit. What little wealth you had seems almost wholly to have been lavished in private luxury. Nowadays, on the contrary, there is no destination of the surplus wealth so popular as the adornment of the city, which all enjoy in equal degree.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 4.

“If when matter is destroyed other matter takes its place, the new matter must come either from something that is or from something that is not. If from that-which-is, as long as that-which-is always remains, matter always remains. But if that-which-is is destroyed, such a theory means that not the world only but everything in the universe is destroyed.
If again matter comes from that-which-is-not: in the first place, it is impossible for anything to come from that which is not; but suppose it to happen, and that matter did arise from that which is not; then, as long as there are things which are not, matter will exist. For I presume there can never be an end of things which are not.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

XVII. That the World is by nature Eternal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

“This, we have to say it, remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all of The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead … on … arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that newsflash, which in duty bound, we had to take.”

Howard Cosell (1918–1995) American sportscaster

Monday Night Football, December 8, 1980.

“Let us think of standards as a way to move from publication to innovation, to move from trying to increase a meaningless impact factor to actually having an impact and fostering new ideas that people can build upon.”

Stephen F Bush

Bush, Stephen F., Keynote Speech, First IEEE International Conference on Communications 2012 Workshop on Telecommunications: From Research to Standards July 18, 2012.

“I have always found It in mine own experience an easier matter to devise manie and profitable inventions, than to dispose of one of them to the good of the author himself.”

Hugh Plat (1552–1608) writer

Hugh Platt, 1589; Cited in: Samuel Smiles Industrial biography; iron-workers and tool-makers http://books.google.com/books?id=5trBcaXuazgC&pg=PA148, (1864) p. 148

“The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

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Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan 31

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