Source: 2021, An Open Letter to the Global Media by Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate (October 2021)
Source: Interview from Programmers at Work (1986)
Variant: If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.
“Coincidence is just the word we use when we have not yet discovered the cause.”
Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)
“Isolation is the worst possible counselor.”
Civilization is Civilism
De la supériorité des mœurs sur les lois (1831) Oeuvres complètes, vol. VIII, p. 286 https://books.google.de/books?id=yrMFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA286&dq=meilleures.
Original text:
Les meilleures lois ne peuvent faire marcher une constitution en dépit des mœurs ; les mœurs tirent parti des pires lois. C'est là une vérité commune, mais à laquelle mes études me ramènent sans cesse. Elle est placée dans mon esprit comme un point central. Je l'aperçois au bout de toutes mes idées.
1830s
Context: The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c0_Lzb1CJw#t=01h19m00s
"The IBM System/360 Revolution"
recorded by the Computer History Museum
April 7, 2004.
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 10, Counting Sheep
Context: We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze. Nonetheless, we can in the same breath deny that there is any such thing as coincidence. What's done is done, what's yet to be is clearly yet to be. In other words, sandwiched as we are between the "everything" that is behind us and the "zero" beyond us, ours is an ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence nor possibility. In actual practice, however, distinctions between the two interpretations amount to precious little. A state of affairs (as with most face-offs between interpretations) not unlike calling the same food by two different names. So much for metaphors.
Source: Philip Davis (2021) cited in: " NEW RULES: PM urges caution as omicron variant likely in country https://ewnews.com/new-rules-pm-urges-caution-as-omicron-variant-likely-in-country" in Eyewitness News, 24 December 2021.
