Quotes about bit
page 8

“One of the most interesting things about business to me is that I find so many business men who are willing to try experiments. I should like to tell you about two evenings I spent last winter and the contrast between them. I went one evening to a drawing-room meeting where economists and M. Ps. talked of current affairs, of our present difficulties. It all seemed a little vague to me, did not seem really to come to grips with our problem. The next evening it happened that I went to a dinner of twenty business men who were discussing the question of centralization and decentralization. Each one had something to add from his own experience of the relation of branch firms to the central office, and the other problems included in the subject. There I found L hope for the future. There men were not theorizing or dogmatizing; they were thinking of what they had actually done and they were willing to try new ways the next morning, so to speak. Business, because it gives us the opportunity of trying new roads, of blazing new trails, because, in short, it is pioneer work, pioneer work in the organized relations of human beings, seems to me to offer as thrilling an experience as going into a new country and building railroads over new mountains. For whatever problems we solve in business management may help towards the solution of world problems, since the principles of organization and administration which are discovered as best for business can be applied to government or international relations. Indeed, the solution of world problems must eventually be built up from all the little bits of experience wherever people are consciously trying to solve problems of relation. And this attempt is being made more consciously and deliberately in industry than anywhere else.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxi-xxii

Men, People, World, Hope

“Many schools are now introducing computers into the educational curriculum. Within 10 years it is predicted that computers will play a significant role in every classroom in North America. The question is, how will they be used? Many educators have been focusing on the use of computers for drill and programmed instruction—to provide individualized practice and instruction in the usual curriculum areas. There is another use for computers in education which some educators, myself included, find more exciting. These involve using the computer:
• to provide an environment in which learning can be intrinsically motivating and fun.
• to allow children to discover, explore and create knowledge.
• to help develop skills of thinking and problem solving.
• to make some of the most powerful ideas of the burgeoning computer culture accessible and tangible to children at an early age.
If you have ever watched a child playing good video games or if you play them yourself, then you know the powerful motivation that graphics displays can create. As I’ve watched children play these games, every bit of their attention focused on the screen, I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be to harness this motivation and channel it toward intellectual growth and learning…”

Michael Friendly (1945) American psychologist

Michael Friendly. Advanced Logo: A Language for Learning. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 1988. Preface

Children, Age, Education, School

“We have to give a sense of economic liberation to the masses and for that, I think the basic thing we have done or we attempted to do, in the beginning, and we have not yet completed that process, is that of land reforms. I think some of the Indian states have been successful in bringing about land reforms but to get a sensation of economic empowerment in society, even a bit of land of their own, is necessary for the common people and it has been shown by Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, which have achieved remarkable economic successes, that land reform was one basic prior thing they did.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

People, Thinking, Sense, Success

“He said that permitting private judgments to turn my duty in the smallest matter would be just like getting a little bit pregnant — that the consequences would very soon get beyond me.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 8 (p. 127)

“Well, if Evolution is true […] you’re just a bit of protoplasm that washed up on the beach. Matter of fact, you’re part of the problem because you’re one of the polluters of the environment and the more of you we can get rid of, the better. And by the way folks, if Evolution is true, that is normal thinking. Get rid of humanity because we’re the problem. But if Creation is true, we’re the purpose of this creation. God did it for us.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Age of the Earth

God, Way, Problem, Thinking

“We never became a mainstream band. It's kind of like we've bridged two worlds, or fallen between two stools, between alternative and mainstream. To a lot of mainstream programmers, The Cure is still a bit too weird. To an alternative programmer, sometimes we're a bit too mainstream. Sometimes we've benefited from that and sometimes we've kind of suffered. I actually enjoy that kind of position because I think it reflects what the band does”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

CMJ, December 1999

World, Thinking, Suffering

“[I]t turns out to be the case that torture's not very effective. And so if you're dealing with someone who has no moral qualms whatsoever, like Donald Rumsfeld, it might be worth pointing out that its not in his interests to continue a policy that's simply feeding us false information. I mean, somebody where you know that the moral - whatever part of the brain that deals with moral reactions, they're defunct at some point - but … it’s a good thing that we found that out. It’s a bit or argument that we can use to make abolishing torture more appealing to people. But supposing it did… I mean the whole point is… I mean you're talking about two very very different levels of objection, right? Supposing it were true that every time you tortured someone, they actually revealed what you couldn't get revealed in some other way. Would you then continue torturing? One of the problems with those arguments is that someone like Rumsfeld or whomever will be able to come up with a case - somebody who was tortured and did reveal information that intelligence wanted to know (there'll be 70 other cases where it didn't). But they'll be able to come up with one. And then what do you say? Well it's alright??”

Susan Neiman (1955) American academic

Beyond Belief conference (November 2006)

People, Way, Intelligence, Problem

“It's a bit like The Matrix… We provide the land, and the community builds the actual world, which gives everyone a huge sense of being pioneers in a great experiment.”

Philip Rosedale (1968) American businessman, founder of Second Life

Source: Marco R. della Cava, " Utopia goes digital http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2005-08-21-virtual-utopia_x.htm," USA TODAY, 8/21/2005

World, Communication, Sense

“The hardest bit of information to extract is the first piece.”

Robert Ferrigno (1947) American writer

Prayers For The Assassin (2006)

“They've found this spider, in the jungle. Three foot long, it eats chicken. Bit weird, innit. People moan saying that you shouldn't lock animals up and all the rest of it, but to be honest I wish it was locked up. The idea that it's roaming in a jungle… get it locked up.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

3 Minute Wonder, Episode 4
On Nature

People, Idea, Animals

“I is here standing outside the United Nations of Benetton. Which is where representatives from the three corners of the world come to end wars, international drug trafficking, and everything else that is a bit of a laugh.”

Sacha Baron Cohen (1971) English stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and voice actor

As quoted in "War" http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=aV3ncKB8a4s (28 February 2003), Da Ali G Show http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0508528/?ref_=ttep_ep2.

War, World

“Every bit of theorizing I’ve ever done, including my interest in Berg, has come as a consequence of discoveries I made as a composer and interests that I developed as a composer. I never thought of my theory as being a kind of irrelevant activity to my composing.”

George Perle (1915–2009) American composer

Kozinn, Allan (January 24, 2009). "George Perle, a Composer and Theorist, Dies at 93" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/24/arts/music/24perle.html, New York Times. See: Alban Berg The Listening Composer

“Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different.
Or a little bit different — which is to say, completely different.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"The Letters of the Dead"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Could Have (1972)

Dead

“If we can find the will I strongly believe we can still make Britain’s approach to talent a bit more X-factor (without Simon Cowell) and a bit less Downton Abbey.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Jo Cox: Opportunity must knock in a fairer society http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/jo-cox-opportunity-must-knock-in-a-fairer-society-1-6857022 (24 September 2014)

“I have to go back a bit in time, to explain why. Everybody thinks that we Indians first rose against British colonial rule in 1857. In 1741, Travancore was the only Asian power to defeat the Dutch when they arrived here. After the battle, all the Dutch soldiers kneeled before my ancestors. One Dutchman, Benedictus Eustachius, even joined our army. We called him the Great Kapitan. Later, I learned that he was [US president] Franklin Roosevelt's ancestor when the latter's grandson came to look at our historical records.”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

On his being to frugal in lifestyle in spite of being one of the richest families in India, and the British rule in “The riches belong to nobody, certainly not to our family.”
The riches belong to nobody, certainly not to our family, 2009

Thinking, Learning, Time

“Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits
Great propositions and their opposites,
See how they work, and let them fight it out,
To point some light on our eternal doubt.
Marat and I both advocated force
But in debate each took a different course.
Both wanted changes, but his views and mine
On using power never could combine.
On the one side, he who thinks our lives
Can be improved by axes and knives,
Or he who, submerged in the imagination,
Seeking a personal annihilation.”

Peter Weiss Marat/Sade

Sade, epilogue
Marat/Sade (1963)

Imagination, Thinking, Light, Change

“I'm a bit of a deconstructionist myself. It's kind of exciting – the last intellectual thrill left. Like sawing through the branch you're sitting on.”

David Lodge (1935) writer

Part II, ch. 2, p. 118.
Small World (1984)

“I think my experience as an adoptee who was given beautiful, loving parents, makes me sympathetic to the plight of the voiceless and those who are disregarded or tossed away or thought to not have value in a society. I feel like no one is expendable because it’s convenient. So many animals out there without homes have so much love to give, and I want to do all I can to get them in forever homes so they can give that love. … Fostering a little life is so humbling and sacred. It reminds you we’re all here to help each other and that you’re not the central character in the story of life. You’re a supporting role and your hands are meant to help get someone or something where they should be. Helping and loving an animal is the greatest gift you can give yourself. Every time you save them, you save yourself a little bit, too.”

Bellamy Young (1970) American artist

"Scandal's Bellamy Young has a soft spot for rescue pets", interview with USA Today (13 May 2017) https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2017/05/13/scandals-bellamy-young-has-soft-spot-rescue-pets/101588612/.

Love, Life, Beauty, Feeling

“.. Africa: it's a magic word that lends itselfs to suppositions and sets amateur explorers to dreaming. I want to try to be 'at home' on this bit of foreign [Arab] soil.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

as quoted by Sarah Anderson, in Between Sea and Sahara: An Orientalist Adventure, Eugène Fromentin, (1859) - in 'Preface'; transl. Blake Robinson; publisher I.B. Tauris 2004, p. 4

Dreams, Home

“Any bit of nonsense can be computerized—astrology, biorhythms, the I Ching—but that doesn’t make the nonsense any more valid.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 3, “Pseudoscience” (p. 68)

“I loved New York—every inch of it. It was a little bit scary at that time, but still, the excitement was so strong—visually and intellectually. It was like a monster.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, I have to speak for people who are afraid, 2010

Love, Strong, Time

“He was an extraordinary bloke. First of all he was very funny. He was straight but very camp. [He] came in and Visconte said, ‘Right, what are we doing?’. He said: ‘Well I haven’t got any material, I’ve just got one guitar riff’. So he played us this guitar riff. It sounded a bit like Chuck Berry to me but I didn’t say anything. He went out with the band and after two hours he said, ‘Right, got a song’. So we recorded it and took a few takes. He then said, ‘Right I’ve got a bit of a tune, just give me half an hour’. In 10 minutes he came back and said, ‘Right I’ve got the lyrics and got the tune’. So he’d written Get It On in 10 minutes basically. He went out there, sang it and in four or five takes we’d got it. There it was. The guy was absolutely astonishing.”

Martin Rushent (1948–2011) English record producer

[Serck, Linda, Legendary producer Martin Rushent, 2009, http://www.getreading.co.uk/entertainment/music/s/2061462_legendary_producer_martin_rushent, Get Reading, 6 June 2011]

Guy

“Later Buddy told me the woman was on a drug that would make her forget she'd had any pain and that when she swore and groaned she really didn't know what she was doing because she was in a kind of twilight sleep. I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 6

Pain, Secret, Feeling, Home

“Bit by bit, as the legend unfolds, the reader gets a more accurate picture of the human race. By degrees, one gains the conviction that here is a race which can be little more than pure fantasy. It is not the kind of race which could rise from humble beginnings to the eminence of culture with which it is gifted in these tales. Its equipment is too poor.
So far it lack of stability has become apparent. Its preoccupation with a mechanical civilization rather than with a culture based on some of the sounder, more worthwhile concepts of life indicates a lack of basic character.
And now, in this tale, we learn of the limited communications which it possessed, a situation which certainly is not conducive to advancement. Man’s inability to understand and appreciate the thought and the viewpoint of another man would be a stumbling block which no amount of mechanical ability could overcome.”

Clifford D. Simak book City

Notes on the Fifth Tale (p. 119)
City (1952)

Life, Communication, Understanding, Learning

“We were all in awe of Penny [Woolcock]. You feel so safe with her, you end up doing things that might seem offensive to other people. It's almost like being in a therapy session. You go a little bit further than you would normally. But in the orgy scene, where Marc's really getting a blowjob, I was like, `You've crossed the line!' Me and Alec were acting, and being loving and safe and showing the feeling of wanting to climb under someone's skin. For it to suddenly become something purely physical - I didn't think that needed to be real. But it was a situation that got out of hand. They filmed it at a swingers' club. There wasn't any way of stopping things, once they'd started. It's really gruesome and awful. But for the story, it's perfect. That scene was out of control. But by that point, so are the characters.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

FILM: Beauty and the Beasts Article http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20040312/ai_n12769890/pg_1. The London Independent. March 12, 2004. Guillory speaks about Sorted and director Penny Woolcock.

Love, People, Way, Feeling

“the most remarkable piece of reading that you may be recommended to take and try if you can study is a book by Goethe—one of his last books, which he wrote when he was an old man, about seventy years of age—I think one of the most beautiful he ever wrote, full of mild wisdom, and which is found to be very touching by those who have eyes to discern and hearts to feel it. It is one of the pieces in "Wilhelm Meister's Travels." I read it through many years ago; and, of course, I had to read into it very hard when I was translating it (applause), and it has always dwelt in my mind as about the most remarkable bit of writing that I have known to be executed in these late centuries. I have often said, there are ten pages of that which, if ambition had been my only rule, I would rather have written than have written all the books that have appeared since I came into the world.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Wisdom, Books, Age, World

“Rats and mice are not generally regarded as pets, but as pests; they have few defenders. Yet the pain a rat or a mouse feels is every bit as real as that of any pet. In laboratories, they suffer, as anybody who has heard them moan, cry, whimper and even scream knows. The experimenters dissimulate about this by insisting that they are merely vocalising. Descartes lives on.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson book When Elephants Weep

Conclusion, p. 217
When Elephants Weep (1994)

Pain, Feeling, Suffering, Cry

“The day after your departure I started a new painting at Le Cours-la-Reine, in the afternoon in a glow of sun, and another in the morning by the water below St. Paul's Church. These two canvases are fairly well advanced, but I still need one session in fine weather without too much mist to give them a little firmness. Until now I have not been able to find the effect I want, I have even been forced to change the effect a bit, which is always dangerous. I have also an effect of fog... Until now I have not been able to find the effect I want, I have even been forced to change the effect a bit, which is always dangerous. I have also an effect of fog, another, same effect, from my window, the same motif in the rain, several sketches in oils, done on the quays near the boats; the next day it was impossible to go on, everything was confused, the motifs no longer existed; one has to realize them in a single session.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter from Rouen 11 October 1883, to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 42
1880's

Departure, Water, Change, Sun

“Kisses sweeter than Tupelo honey.
Little bit crazy like New Orleans.
Memphis blue and Daytona sunny.
Soft as cotton in some cut-off jeans.
Don't you know, ain't nothing in the whole wide world like a Southern girl.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Southern Girl
Song lyrics, Two Lanes of Freedom (2013)

World, Girl, Kiss

“When you talk about yourself for 35 years, first of all, it gets repetitious. And then it seems a little bit excessive, at the least.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

The Advocate interview (2005)

“Although wanting to be an individual, the male is scared of anything about him that's the slightest bit different from other men; it causes him to suspect he's not really a "Man," that he's passive and totally sexual, a highly upsetting suspicion. If other men are A and he's not, he must be not a man; he must be a fag. So he tries to affirm his "Manhood" by being like all the other men. Differentness in other men, as well as in himself, threatens him; it means they're fags, who he must, at all costs, avoid, so he tries to ensure that all other men conform.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 8.

Men

“Certainly, for a newspaper director, to have within arm's reach a Travaglio, about whom every starring actor, supporting cast and extra of Italian political life he is ready upon cold request to provide an inquiry brief refined in the most minute details is a nice comfort. But also a bit unsettling. The day I asked him if in that archive, into which no one is allowed to stick their nose, there were a brief with my name on it, Marco changed the subject.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Preface to Il Pollaio delle Libertà by Marco Travaglio, Vallecchi, 1995.
1950s - 1990s

Life, Star, Support, Change

“Poverty and inequality like this should cause Europeans to cringe in horror, especially since (we have it on good authority) there is no safety net in America, no unemployment benefits, no retirement, no assistance for the destitute--not the slightest bit of social solidarity. In the U. S. "only the most fortunate have the right to medical care and to grow old with dignity," as one writer recently put it in Libération. University courses are reserved only for those who can pay, which partly explains the "low level of education" in the benighted US.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

2000s, Europe's Anti-American Obsession (2003)

Education, Universe

“Well, well, perhaps I am a bit of a talker. A popular fellow such as I am — my friends get round me — we chaff, we sparkle, we tell witty stories — and somehow my tongue gets wagging. I have the gift of conversation. I’ve been told I ought to have a salon, whatever that may be.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Toad, Ch. 11, "Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears"
The Wind in the Willows (1908)

“You make your appeal in Piccadilly, London, amongst those who are wallowing in luxuries, proceeding from the labour of the people. You should have gone to the gravel-pits, and made your appeal to the wretched creatures with bits of sacks around their shoulders, and with hay-bands round their legs; you should have gone to the roadside, and made your appeal to the emaciated, half-dead things who are there cracking stones to make the roads as level as a die for the tax eaters to ride on. What an insult it is, and what an unfeeling, what a cold-blooded hypocrite must he be that can send it forth; what an insult to call upon people under the name of free British labourers; to appeal to them in behalf of Black slaves, when these free British labourers; these poor, mocked, degraded wretches, would be happy to lick the dishes and bowls, out of which the Black slaves have breakfasted, dined, or supped…Talk, indeed, of transmuting the wretched Africans into this condition! …Will not the care, will not the anxiety of a really humane Englishman be directed towards the Whites, instead of towards the Blacks, until, at any rate, the situation of the former be made to be as good as that of the latter?”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Letter to Wilberforce, Political Register (30 August 1823), quoted in G. D. H. Cole, The Life of William Cobbett (Greenwood, 1971), p. 259.

Happiness, People, Dead

“Reporter: President Jiang, do you think it’ll be good for Mr. Tung to serve another consecutive term?
Jiang: That’ll be good!
Reporter: Does Central Government support him too?
Jiang: Of course yes!
Reporter: Recently European Union has published a report saying that Beijing will affect and influence the nomocracy of Hong Kong in some ways. What's your response to that?
Jiang: Never heard before.
Reporter: It’s Chris Patten who said that.
Jiang: You the media should always remember that Seeing is believing. You should judge by yourself after you have received the news, got it? In case you say these things out of thin air for him, you may share the responsibility in some way.
Reporter: Now in such an early time, you said that you supported Mr. Tung, will that give people the impression that there is already an internal decision or imperial appointment on Mr. Tung?
Jiang: There's no such implication whatsoever. Everything should be done in accordance with Hong Kong Basic Law and the election laws.
Reporter: But…
Jiang: Replying what you've just asked me, I could have said "No comment." But you guys wouldn't be happy. So what should I do?
Reporter: Then Mr. Tung…
Jiang: I did not say that imperially appointing him to serve the next term. You asked me whether I support him or not, I support him. I can tell you explicitly.
Reporter: President Jiang…
Jiang: You all… My feeling is that you the media need to learn more. You are very familiar with the Western set of value, but after all you are too young. Do you understand what I mean? Let me tell you, I've been through hundreds of battles. I've seen a lot. Which country in the West have I not been to? Every time… You should know Mike Wallace in the US. He's way above you all. He and I talked cheerfully and humorously, which is why the media need to raise your intellectual level. Got it or not?
Reporter: President Jiang…
Jiang: I'm anxious for you all truly. You really… I… You guys are good at one thing. Wherever you go to all over the world, you always run faster than Western journalists. But the questions you keep asking - are too simple, sometimes naive. Understand or not? Got it or not?
Reporter: But could you say why you support Tung Chee-hwa?
Jiang: I'm very sorry. Today I am speaking to you as an elder, not as a journalist. I am not a journalist. But I've seen too much. I have this necessity to tell you a bit of my life experience.
Jiang: I just wanted to… Every time… In Chinese we have saying, "Make a fortune quietly." If I had said nothing, that would have been the best. But I thought I've seen all of you so enthusiastic. If I said nothing, that wouldn't be good. So, a moment ago you just insisted… In spreading the news, if your reports are inaccurate, you must be responsible. I did not say giving an imperial appointment. No such meaning. But you insisted on asking me whether I supported Mr. Tung or not. He is still the current Chief Executive. How could we not support the Chief Executive?
Reporter: But if we talk about his serving another term…
Jiang: To serve another term, you must follow the law of Hong Kong. Of course, our right to make the decision is also very important, since the Hong Kong SAR belongs to the Central Government of the People's Republic of China. When it gets to the right time, we'll let you know our decision. Understand what I say? You all. Don't provoke an uproar. Don't make it a flash-news saying that "It has already been imperially appointed" and criticize me. You all! Naive! I'm angry! I just offend you today! Your behavior like this is annoying!”

Jiang Zemin (1926) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

As quoted in "Former president Jiang Zemin unleashes a long tirade after a Hong Kong reporter asks him if Beijing had issued an "imperial order" to support Tung Chee-hwa in his bid to seek a second term as Chief Executive" https://www.facebook.com/shanghaiist/videos/10152728897091030 (October 2014), Facebook. 2000s, Hong Kong reporters make Jiang see red

Life, Happiness, People, World

“Maybe I'd better call a halt to the journal for a bit. Until something crops up, that is, which it hopefully won't for a couple of decades. In the meantime: farewell, enjoy your futile lives, etc. This is Bartimaeus, care of The Other Place, signing off.”

Jonathan Stroud (1970) British writer of fantasy fiction

Closing entry
The Bartimaeus Trilogy Official Website, Bart's Journal

“The nice thing about having a brain is that one can learn, that ignorance can be supplanted by knowledge, and that small bits of knowledge can gradually pile up into substantial heaps.”

Douglas Hofstadter book Le Ton beau de Marot

Le Ton beau de Marot (1997) chapter 8 p. 234

Knowledge, Learning

“How absurd, she thought, that the sight of a man’s naked breast should be more objectionable than to see him possibly blown to bits.”

David D. Levine (1961) science fiction writer

Source: Arabella and the Battle of Venus (2017), Chapter 9, “Fleur de Lys” (p. 129)

“This is the basic trick in getting the mind to settle down in the present moment — you've got to give it something that it likes to stay with. If it's here against its will, it's going to be like a balloon you push under the water. As long as your hand has a good grasp on the balloon, it's not going to pop up, but as soon as you slip a little bit, the balloon pops up out of the water. If the mind is forced to stay on an object that it really finds unpleasant, it's not going to stay. As soon as your mindfulness slips just a little bit, it's gone.”

Thanissaro Bhikkhu (1949) Theravadin Buddhist Monk and Scholar

"Meditation: The How and the Why" (2003)

Water

“I no longer recommend dairy products after the age of two years. … Of course, there was a time when cow's milk was considered very desirable. But research, along with clinical experience, has forced doctors and nutritionists to rethink this recommendation. It is an area where there are still disagreements among scientists, but there are several points that most everyone agrees on. First of all, other calcium sources offer many advantages that dairy products do not have. Most green leafy vegetables and beans have a form of calcium that is absorbed as well as or even a bit better than that in milk. Along with this calcium come vitamins, iron, complex carbohydrates, and fiber. Calcium-enriched soy or rice drinks are just as tasty on cereal as cow's milk (once you get used to them), and they are free of animal proteins and cholesterol. These beverages, as well as calcium-enriched orange and other juices, provide as much calcium, ounce per ounce, as cow's milk. Vegetables and legumes can provide a healthy source of calcium, along with many other nutritional advantages.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Source: Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1945), Seventh edition (1998), pp. 331-332

Age, Drink, Time, Animals

“A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Arguing that living organisms could not have arisen by chance alone.
The Intelligent Universe (1983), p. 19

Universe, Chance, Flying

“We have a bit of fun now and we’ll affiliate link to a $15,000 gold dildo just to troll people, we look for products that will create that kind of reaction.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

In an interview with BBC's HARDTalk. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/gwyneth-paltrow-goop-on-being-labelled-most-hated-celebrity-a7113011.html (1 July 2016)

People

“You can be ruthless by playing football and one-touch football. Sometimes we get confused between desire and playing football. There is a fine line and sometimes we could pass the ball to each other a bit better. Football is a team effort and sometimes when you're not playing well together you need to go back to basics and play as a team.”

Thierry Henry (1977) French association football player

" Thierry Henry player profile http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,278-377977,00.html, Times Online

Effort, Football

“Everyone in the band wore their influences on their sleeves and there was not a bit of the typical L. A. vibe going on where the goal is to court a record deal. There was no concern for the proper poses or goofy choruses that might spell pop-chart success; which ultimately guaranteed endless hot chicks. That type of calculated rebellion wasn't an option for us; we were too rabid a pack of musically like-minded gutter rats. We were passionate, with a common goal and a very distinct sense of integrity. That was the difference between us and them.”

Slash (musician) book Slash

Source: Slash (2007) by Anthony Bozza & Mason Segal,, p. 99.

Music, Sense, Passion, Success

“Science Fiction Gods; Do they take much of an interest in us? I doubt it. How much entertainment does an ant's nest provide you with?
'Adepticus Sir, that bunch of Ornithoids on Artoc 4 that you asked me to observe, well they've just trashed their planet.'
'Oh that is a pity Initiatus Jones. What was it this time, ecological screw up or nuclear winter?'
'Worse than that sir, i looks lke they were mucking around with vacuum energy without having first invented the Mobius sphere.'
'Ah yes, the old classic mistake, we loose a few like that.'
'Could we not have tipped them off about it Sir?'
'I'm afraid not Jones, stupidity must remain its own reward, it's regrettable but there you are. Did you salvage anything?'
'They composed some fairly good poetry a couple of centuries ago, and some rather fine cloud sculptures fairly recently, I've logged some records in the archives.'
'Splendid Jones, I'll peruse them this evening. What about those Apes on Sol 3, how are they getting on?'
'Quit a bit of warfare as usual Sir, mostly based on chemical explosives these days, but with the occasional use of plutonium. Many of them have developed a belief in a big bang theory, and they reckon that they have the maths to prove it.'
'Really? Smith in anthropology will probably find that hilarious, I'm sure she would appreciate the data. It was one of her old Stomping grounds you know?'
'No I didnt know that Sir'
'It was a long time ago Jones, and a bit of a fiasco actually, she gave them a piece of her mind about some of their barbaric behavior which then abruptly became worse. Ever since then they have been obsessed with the number plate on her craft, it read 'JHVH'. The department gave her a desk job after that.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: The Apophenion (2008), p. 107-108

God, Stupidity, Behavior, Science

“I've looked right through the Bible, start to finish, looking for the bit saying 'Jesus was the mind behind Ikea', then there's no evidence to suggest this at all.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

6 Music Show

“In our constant struggle to believe we are likely to overlook the simple fact that a bit of healthy disbelief is sometimes as needful as faith to the welfare of our souls. I would go further and say that we would do well to cultivate a reverent skepticism. It will keep us out of a thousand bogs and quagmires where others who lack it sometimes find themselves. It is no sin to doubt some things, but it may be fatal to believe everything. Faith is at the root of all true worship, and without faith it is impossible to please God. Through unbelief Israel failed to inherit the promises. “By grace are ye saved through faith.” “The just shall live by faith.” Such verses as these come trooping to our memories, and we wince just a little at the suggestion that unbelief may also be a good and useful thing. … Faith never means gullibility. The man who believes everything is as far from God as the man who refuses to believe anything. Faith engages the person and promises of God and rests upon them with perfect assurance. Whatever has behind it the character and word of the living God is accepted by faith as the last and final truth from which there must never be any appeal. Faith never asks questions when it has been established that God has spoken. 'Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar' (Rom. 3:4). Thus faith honors God by counting Him righteous and accepts His testimony against the very evidence of its own senses. That is faith, and of such we can never have too much. Credulity, on the other hand, never honors God, for it shows as great a readiness to believe anybody as to believe God Himself. The credulous person will accept anything as long as it is unusual, and the more unusual it is the more ardently he will believe. Any testimony will be swallowed with a straight face if it only has about it some element of the eerie, the preternatural, the unearthly.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

Source: The Root of the Righteous (1955), Chapter 34.

God, Truth, Faith, Soul

“Across the narrow beach we flit,
One little sand-piper and I;
And fast I gather, bit by bit.
The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry.”

Celia Thaxter (1835–1894) American writer

"The Sand-piper" (1862).

“Suvisivakointia: Nordic walk takes quite a bit of spunk.”

Pauli Hanhiniemi (1964) Finnish musician and composer

“I've got a sister in Australia, so when I phone her up there is a slight delay on the line after I've spoken because she's a bit thick.”

Harry Hill (1964) English comedian, doctor

"Hooves" Live

Sister

“I'm genuinely and actually a bit like Jesus.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Radio 2 Show (2007–2008)

“The two sets of sources, textual and nontextual, reveal bits of history to us in different ways, like the lame man riding on the shoulders of the blind man. When it comes to history, you can’t trust anyone: The texts lie one way, while images and archeology mislead us in other ways. On the one hand, the gods did not fly around in big palaces, as the texts insist that they did, and we cannot know if women really did speak up as Gargi does in the Upanishads, or Draupadi in the Mahabharata.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

Source: The Hindus: An Alternative History, p. 34.

Women, God, Lie, Way

“The result of cutting [political power] up into little bits is simply that the man who can sweep the greatest number into one heap will govern the rest… In a pure democracy the ruling men will be the wirepullers and their friends; but they will no more be on an equality with the voters than soldiers of Ministers of State are on an equality with the subjects of monarchy.”

James Fitzjames Stephen (1829–1894) Indian judge

Source: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873-1874), Ch. 5

Men, Democracy

“Since Pharaoh’s bits were pushed into the jaws of kings, these dyings—patient or impatient, but dyings—have happened, by the hundreds of millions; they were all wasted. They taught us to kill others and to die ourselves, but never how to live. Who is “taught to live” by cruelty, suffering, stupidity, and that occupational disease of soldiers, death?”

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

“Poetry in War and Peace”, p. 129
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Death, Stupidity, Disease, Suffering

“I put the words down and push them a bit.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

As quoted in his obituary in The New York Times (11 April 1966)

“It is hard for you to appreciate that modern mathematics has become so extensive and so complex that it is essential, if mathematics is to stay as a whole and not become a pile of little bits of research, to provide a unification, which absorbs in some simple and general theories all the common substrata of the diverse branches if the science, suppressing what is not so useful and necessary, and leaving intact what is truly the specific detail of each big problem. This is the good one can achieve with axiomatics (and this is no small achievement). This is what Bourbaki is up to.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

as translated by Martin H. Krieger "A 1940 letter of André Weil on analogy in mathematics." http://www.ams.org/notices/200503/fea-weil.pdf Notices of the AMS 52, no. 3 (2005) pp. 334–341, quote on p. 341

Mathematics, Problem, Science

“Humanity will have to extricate itself from the bags created by false moralists, according to whom we taste happiness and then pass judgment on it, as if it were a piece of fruit. But I maintain that even for a piece of fruit we can do something to help it taste good. This is even truer of marriage and every other human relationship; these things are not meant to be tasted or passively accepted; they must be made. A relationship is not like a bit of shade where one is comfortable or uncomfortable depending on the weather and the way the wind is blowing. On the contrary, it is a place of miracles, where the magician makes the rain and the good weather.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

On Private Life
Alain On Happiness (1928)

Marriage, Happiness, Way, Help

“Eight simple steps of what I think caused the Flood and explain all these strange phenomena on the planet. Then we'll go into a little bit more detail and then we'll close this down.
1. Noah and the animals got safely in the ark.
2. A 300 degree below zero ice meteor came flying toward the earth and broke up in space. As it was breaking up, some of the fragments got caught and became the rings around the planets. They made the craters on the Moon, the craters on some of the planets, and what was left over came down and splattered on top of the North and South pole.
3. This super cold snow fell on the poles mostly, burying the mammoths, standing up.
4. The dump of ice on the North and South pole cracked the crust of the earth releasing the fountains of the deep. The spreading ice caused the Ice Age effects. The glacier effects that we see. It buried the mammoths. It made the earth wobble around for a few thousand years. And it made the canopy collapse, which used to protect the earth. And it broke open the fountains of the deep.
5. During the first few months of the flood, the dead animals would settle out, and dead plants, and all get buried. They would become coal, if they were plants, and oil if they're animals. And those are still found today in huge graveyards. Fossils found in graveyards. Oil found in big pockets under the ground.
6. During the last few months of the flood, the unstable plates of the earth would shift around. Some places lifted up; other places sank down. That's going to form ocean basins and mountain ranges. And the runoff would cause incredible erosion like the Grand Canyon in a couple of weeks.
7. Over the next few hundred years, the ice caps would slowly melt back retreating to their current size. The added water from the ice melt would raise the ocean level creating what's called a continental shelf. It would also absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere which allows for radiation to get in which is going to shorten people's life spans. And in the days of Peleg, it finally took affect.
8. The earth still today shows the effects of this devastating flood.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Life, People, Age, Mountain

“I didn't like movies. You see, in a play you become the play, because you start in the beginning and end up at the end of the script. Movies, you do little bits and you don't know where it fits in. You just do a little bit here and a little bit there and you never see the whole thing, you can never act out the whole thing. It has no unity. I would advise anybody-a kid-instead of doing pictures, get experience! Do theater! Get theater in his blood!”

David Manners (1900–1998) Canadian-born American actor

Interview with David Manners, Scarlet Street #26 (1997)

“I'm very pleased with each advancing year. It stems back to when I was forty. I was a bit upset about reaching that milestone, but an older friend consoled me. "Don't complain about growing old — many, many people do not have that privilege."”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Statement on celebrating his 83rd birthday (March 1974), as quoted in The Reader's Digest (1980) Vol. 116, p. 43
1970s

People

“We even copied the way the Americans walked, though Father Leonard didn't like that bit of admiration. He disapproved of rolling buttocks.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Way

“He was treated like a traitor for 30 years, so he was conditioned to just shut up and be quiet. Every bit of information I got from him, I had to drag it out of him.”

Hugh Thompson, Jr. (1943–2006) United States helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War

Trent Angers, Thompson's biographer http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?/base/news-22/1136568553158920.xml&storylist=louisiana Quotes of others about Thompson

“Not only was I fiddling around at the keyboard but there were all these other children of all backgrounds wanting to play every sort of music bits of classical, jazz, pop, improvisation.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Guardian - 26/05/2000
Childhood

Children, Music

“Sometimes when I'm having a boring interview on the telephone, and I'm trying to think about something else because the questions are too boring, and I start looking around the room where I work, you know, full of books piled up to the sky, all different kinds of topics. I start calculating how many centuries would I have to live reading twenty-four hours a day every day of the week to make a dent in what I'd like to learn about things, it's pretty depressing. […] You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything… and know that we don't, that's the important part.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview in Cardiff, Wales, UK on March 11, 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93W8II_R75Y Quotes 2010s, 2011

Life, Books, Understanding, Question

“They came up and we did Sound Of The Crowd. They were under the impression that I was going to work on what they’d done so far and improve that and carry on. I said, ‘No, I’m not doing that, we’re starting again’, which was a bit of a shock for Phil. He argued about that but I said, ‘No, if I’m going to produce you, you’re going to do what I tell you to do. I will listen to your arguments and consider them, and if I still think I’m right we do it my way or it’s the highway. This is my attitude to everybody I produce, it’s a sort of democratic dictatorship!”

Martin Rushent (1948–2011) English record producer

Way, Thinking

“Most human lives are forgotten after four generations. We build our splendid houses on the edge of the abyss then distract and dazzle ourselves with entertainers and sex while we slowly at first, then more rapidly, spin around the ever-thirsty plughole in the middle. My treasured possessions -- all the silly little mementoes and toys and special books I’ve carried with me for decades -- will wind up on flea market tables or rot on garbage heaps. Someone else will inhabit the rooms that were mine. Everything that was important to me will mean nothing to the countless generations that follow our own. In the grand sprawl of it all, I have no significance at all. I don’t believe a giant gaseous pensioner will reward or censure me when my body stops working and I don’t believe individual consciousness survives for long after brain death so I lack the consolations of religion. I wanted Annihilator to peek into that implacable moment where everything we are comes to an end so I had to follow the Black Brick Road all the way down and seriously consider the abject pointlessness of all human endeavours. I found these contemplations thrilling and I was drawn to research pure nihilism, which led me to Ray Brassier’s Nihil Unbound and back to Ligotti. I have a fundamentally optimistic and positive view of human existence and the future and I think it’s important to face intelligent, well-argued challenges to that view on a regular basis. While I agree with Ligotti that the universe is, on the face of it, a blind emergent process, driven by chance over billions of years of trial and error to ultimately produce creatures capable of little more than flamboyant expressions of the agonizing awareness of their own imminent deaths, I don’t share his slightly huffy disappointment at this state of affairs. If the universe is intrinsically meaningless, if the mindless re-arrangement of atomic debris into temporarily arising then dissipating forms has no point, I can only ask, why do I see meaning everywhere, why can I find a point in everything? Why do other human beings like me seem to see meaning in everything too? If the sun is only an apocalyptic series of hydrogen fusion reactions, why does it look like an angel and inspire poetry? Why does the flesh and fur-covered bone and jelly of my cat’s face melt my heart? Is all that surging, roaring incandescent meaning inside me, or is it out there? “Meaning” to me is equivalent to “Magic.” The more significance we bring to things, even to the smallest and least important things, the more special, the more “magical” they seem to become. For all that materialistic science and existential philosophy tells us we live in a chaotic, meaningless universe, the evidence of my senses and the accounts of other human beings seem to indicate that, in fact, the whole universe and everything in it explodes second-to-second with beauty, horror, grandeur and significance when and wherever it comes into contact with consciousness. Therefore, it’s completely down to us to revel in our ability to make meaning, or not. Ligotti, like many extreme Buddhist philosophers, starts from the position that life is an agonizing, heartbreaking grave-bound veil of tears. This seems to be a somewhat hyperbolic view of human life; as far as I can see most of us round here muddle through ignoring death until it comes in close and life’s mostly all right with just enough significant episodes of sheer joy and connection and just enough sh-tty episodes of pain or fear. The notion that the whole span of our lives is no more than some dreadful rehearsal for hell may resonate with the deeply sensitive among us but by and large life is pretty okay generally for most of us. And for some, especially in the developed countries, “okay” equals luxurious. To focus on the moments of pain and fear we all experience and then to pretend they represent the totality of our conscious experience seems to me a little effete and indulgent. Most people don’t get to be born at all, ever. To see in that radiant impossibility only pointlessness, to see our experience as malignantly useless, as Ligotti does, seems to me a bit camp.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2014
http://www.blastr.com/2014-9-12/grant-morrisons-big-talk-getting-deep-writer-annihilator-multiversity
On life

Life, Death, Pain, People

“Yeah, the good news about the move to abolish the death tax, the tax where they come and look at how much money you've got when you die, how much gold is in your teeth and they want half of it, is that — you're right, there's an exemption for — I don't know — maybe a million dollars now, and it's scheduled to go up a little bit. However, 70 percent of the American people want to abolish that tax. Congress, the House and Senate, have three times voted to abolish it. The president supports abolishing it, so that tax is going to be abolished. I think it speaks very much to the health of the nation that 70-plus percent of Americans want to abolish the death tax, because they see it as fundamentally unjust. The argument that some who played at the politics of hate and envy and class division will say, 'Yes, well, that's only 2 percent,' or as people get richer 5 percent in the near future of Americans likely to have to pay that tax. I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. 'I mean, it's not you, it's somebody else.' And this country, people who may not make earning a lot of money the centerpiece of their lives, they may have other things to focus on, they just say it's not just. If you've paid taxes on your income once, the government should leave you alone. Shouldn't come back and try and tax you again.”

Grover Norquist (1956) Conservative Lobbyist

interview with NPR's Terry Gross on the program Fresh Air, October 2, 2003.
2003

Death, Money, Hate, People

“My secret? Hm. Well, I think the secret is this. Don't come up with a really ambitious twelve-CD monster for your first project, because it'll be doomed very quickly. For your very first release, make something small. Put as much effort into it as you can muster, but don't feel pressured. Then, for every subsequent release, push yourself just a little bit harder to make a better product. By the time you've churned out your sixth or seventh, you'll have a pretty solid reputation.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

http://www.adventure-treff.de/artikel/interviews.php?id=30&lang=eng
Other Articles

Secret, Feeling, Thinking, Effort

“Acting is a bit like cycling. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you just peddle on.”

Madhuri Dixit (1967) Indian actress

Quote, When personality comes first.....

“I did all my real growing up in France, which I was almost not allowed to do at home. They liked my voice, they found me sexy, they didn't know anything about my childhood. In England, you’d come on to a bright cheerful song, do a bit of comedy, finish on a big ballad and wear a sparkly dress. That was about it. Suddenly I saw people like Aznavour and Piaf, songs coming from your heart, your soul, your guts, your sex, whatever, songs about everything, life and death, love and hate, wow! I realised you can use all of you when you perform.”

Petula Clark (1932) British actress and singer

Calgary Herald, 14 Feb 2013

Love, Life, Death, Hate

“He [Bhagwan Dass] wasn't the least bit interested in all of the extraordinary dramas that I had collected … He was the first person I couldn't seduce into being interested in all this. He just didn't care.
And yet, I never felt so profound an intimacy with another being. It was as if he were inside of my heart. And what started to blow my mind was that everywhere we went, he was at home.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

Be Here Now (1971)

Home, Heart, Personality

“Dawn was definitely pulling into the station by now, and the snow had begun to throb with an electric, new-fallen whiteness. It climbed the inside of my trousers, and clung, squeakily, to the soles of my boots, and the bit just in front seemed to say ‘don’t walk on me, please don’t walk... oh.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller (1996)

“Don’t tell me you aren’t the slightest bit curious, Norquinco.”
“I hope you burn in hell, Sky Haussmann.”

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Chapter 35 (p. 562).
Chasm City (2001)

Hope, Hell

“You build up to it, don't you? You have that bit of a chat, and you go alright? Hows it going?. You get on an' that and then a little baby pops out.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 1 Episode 3
On Sex

Baby

“The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad, and bit the man.”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Vicar of Wakefield

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 17, An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, st. 5.

Dogs, Madness

“(The Facebook campaign) "is a bit of a feel-good, but it is better than nothing"”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Quoted in the US Wired Magazine (April 2007) http://archive.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/10/myanmarfacebook Miscellaneous Quotes in the Press (2002-Present)

Feeling

“Mary: You can read?
Pocket: I was raised in a nunnery, wench. I'm a walking library of learning bound in comely leather, suitable for stroking at your service, should you fancy a bit of culture to go with your lack of breeding…or vice verse of course.”

Christopher Moore book Fool

Fool (2009)

Learning, Reading

“Look I’ve got my old pledge card a bit battered and crumpled, we said we’d provide more turches churches teachers and we have. I can remember when people used to say the Japanese are better than us, the Germans are better than us, the French are better than us — well it’s great to be able to say we’re better than them. I think Mr Kennedy well we all congratulate on his baby and the Tories are you remembering what I’m remembering boom and bust negative equity, remember Mr Howard, I mean are you thinking what I’m thinking I’m remembering, it’s all a bit wonky isn’t it?”

John Prescott (1938) Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1997–2007)

A statement made in Witham, Essex during the 2005 general election, as quoted in "Ducking and diving, ageing prize-fighter still fears the sucker punch" by Ben Macintyre, The Times (13 April 2005), p. 23

People, Thinking, Teachers, Baby

“They'll drop a cage into the water, and the shark'll be. like, "What you doin' down 'ere? What you fuckin' doin' down 'ere?" And they'll get a bit of meat on a stick and go "Oy! Wanker! Bleurgh!" And they’ll go "Oh, is that for me?" [pretends to shove meat in shark’s mouth] "You fuckin’…"”

Lee Evans (1964) English stand-up comedian and actor

Live from the West End (1995)

Water

“There are times when you come across somebody that’s really impressive, someone that’s got a proper living and really does make a difference to people’s lives. Then I do feel a bit of a wanker, admitting I’m an actress. That’s hard to say to someone who may be making a difference. But I don’t know how I could change things.”

Michelle Gomez (1966) Scottish actress

An interview with the Sunday Herald saying why she thinks acting is not as worthy as other professions.

People, Feeling, Change, Time

“As we have said, the bankers are for bullets—for the fool patriots that enlist at paupers' wages to stop the bullets, while the bankers clip coupons, boost food prices, increase dividends, and pile up millions and billions for themselves. Say, Mr. Workingman, suppose you have sense enough to be as patriotic as the banker, but not a bit more so. When you see the bankers on the firing line with guns in their hands ready to stop bullets as well as start them, then it is time enough for you to be seized with the patriotic itch and have yourself shot into a crazy-quilt for their profit and glory. Don't you take a fit and rush to the front until you see them there. They own the country and if they don't set the example of fighting for it, why should you?”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

As quoted in "American State Trials: A Collection of the Important and Interesting Criminal Trials which Have Taken Place in the United States, from the Beginning of Our Government to the Present Day", Vol. 13, 1921

Food, Fools, Sense, Time

“[In America] people are a little bit more scared to show their bodies. I grew up different. Nudity was a common thing. We went camping on nude beaches in Italy. When my parents were still sleeping, I'd just go outside and run to the beach without anything on.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Quoted by Eric Thurnauer for Stuff Magazine (November/December 1998)

People, Parent, Sleep

“I had started to become interested in the punk scene and started to dress differently than a lot of the kids in Grand Rapids, Michigan were dressing. And I got my nose pierced and I started to shave my head and dye my hair and wear a lot of black. And so I looked like somebody that might be arrested… I was a bit of a class clown, usually the one that people would get to do the things that they were afraid to get in trouble for… On graduation night, I was arrested… I had a boyfriend at the time who was a couple centuries older than I was and I'd convinced him that we should go and glue the locks of the school so that people couldn't get in the morning. And lo and behold, they had a security guard because it was graduation night and they were concerned that idiots like me might try and do something like that.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On her teenage punk years and being arrested on graduation night — NPR "Gillian Anderson On 'The Fall' And Getting Arrested In High School" http://www.npr.org/2013/12/07/249240231/gillian-anderson-on-the-fall-and-getting-arrested-in-high-school/ (December 7, 2013) 2010s

People, School, Time, Night

“Nobody wants to be dancing to political songs. Every bit of music out there that’s making it into the mainstream is really about nothing. I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing. And it kind of worked.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Interview http://niralimagazine.com/2004/10/not-so-missing-in-action/ with Nirali magazine (October 2004) Sourced quotes

Music, Dance

“I had been journeying to and fro on the face of a fine broad bit of English earth, seeking what wages I could earn, what work I could get, and what facts I could devour. I found, I got, I devoured, every morsel which came in my way. I read, marked, learned and inwardly digested, as the prayer book says somewhere, all I could lay my hands or ears or eyes on. At the same time I was taking in a supply of facts which would not be digested—tough facts about the land and the labourer, that accumulated and lay within my mind, heavy as a lump of lead, and hard as a stone. No matter what I did, whether I was working with my hands or my head, that mass of indigestible facts was always in the background, worrying and bothering me. I got no peace; it worried and bothered me more and more as each year went by.”

Joseph Arch (1826–1919) British politician

Source: The Story of his Life Told by Himself (1898), pp. 42-43

Books, Peace, Way, Learning

“Each and every loss becomes an instance of ultimate tragedy—something that once was, but shall never be known to us. The hump of the giant deer—as a nonfossilizable item of soft anatomy—should have fallen into the maw of erased history. But our ancestors provided a wondrous rescue, and we should rejoice mightily. Every new item can instruct us; every unexpected object possesses beauty for its own sake; every rescue from history's great shredding machine is—and I don't know how else to say this—a holy act of salvation for a bit of totality.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"A Lesson from the Old Masters", p. 195
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Beauty, History, Loss

“I don't want to do anything to change my face, I like the fact that I'm 41, that I've been through everything I've been through. And I like my lines, but at the same time you want to look the best version of yourself as you age. You want to age gracefully. And I think it's beautiful to get older, and to embrace the life that you've lived, but I also think part of that is wanting to look after your skin a little bit more, and just be a little more proactive.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

In an interview to the website PopSugar. http://www.popsugar.com/beauty/Gwyneth-Paltrow-Restorsea-Interview-34384830#opening-slide (March 28, 2014)

Life, Age, Beauty, Thinking

“Still reeling from the buzzing of German-designed appliances, and desperately trying to find a stall that served coffee and muffins instead of edible knickers and herbal elixirs, I watched bemused at the Sexpo as the craggy Pricasso dipped his dangly bit into paint and dabbed at a piece of paper on the easel.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Cape Argus staff, Put an end to dangling conversations, Cape Argus, South Africa, 16 September 2008, 13, Independent Online]
About

Coffee, Painting

“Assigning human personalities to animals is the chief trait of the pet owner—the doting dog-lover with his baby talk, the smug stay-at-home with a fat lump of fur on her lap who says, "Me, I'm a cat person," and the granny who puts her nose against the tin cage and makes kissing noises at her parakeet. Their affection is often tinged with a sense of superiority. Deer and duck hunters never talk this way about their prey, though big game hunters— Hemingway is the classic example — often sentimentalize the creatures they blow to bits and then lovingly stuff to hang on the wall.”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Living With Geese.

Dogs, Way, Home, Game

“"I distrusted him from the start! Still, who could imagine such protean depravity?"
Bunderwal, the supercargo, concurred. "Cugel, while plausible, nonetheless is a bit of a scoundrel."”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 2, section 2, "Lausicaa"

Imagination

“The somewhere we're goin' to, and got to go to if we don't want to get wiped out, it's somewhere everlastingly and eternally ahead! It's like to-morrow; when we get there we aren't there; we got to keep goin', and we got to everlastingly and eternally keep goin' – and goin' fast! If we don't, the Almighty hasn't got a bit o' use for us; He turns us right into dust and scattered old bones, and nothin's left of our whole country and our finest cities except some street paving and a few cellars with weeds in 'em.”

Booth Tarkington (1869–1946) American novelist

The Plutocrat (1927), chapter 30 (Earl Tinker speaking to Jean-Edouard Le Seyeux)

Country

“It is over twenty years since I first heard of Hong-lou meng and the great fascination it holds for its readers (despite the fact that there has never been a complete or definitive text). I was once lucky enough to borrow a copy from a friend. Reading it (in this incomplete state) was indeed a tantalizing experience.
In the spring of this year, my friend Cheng Weiyuan came to see me and showed me the complete text that he had purchased. 'This,' he said, 'is the fruit of my labours over several years. Bit by bit I have pieced it together, with a view to publishing it for fellow-lovers of the novel. As you are at a bit of a loose end, and in need of a restorative, will you share the labour [of preparing the manuscript for the press] with me?'
Although it was only a novel, the book contained nothing contrary to the tenets of Confucian teaching, and so I gladly accepted, and fell upon the task with the eagerness of the Persian slave when he saw his pearl! Now that the work is done, I have described these circumstances for the reader's information.”

Gao E (writer)

Preface (dated 27 December 1791) to the first Cheng-Gao edition of Dream of the Red Chamber, as translated by John Minford in The Story of the Stone: The Debt of Tears (Penguin, 1979), Appendix I, p. 386

Books, Spring, Lovers, Reading

“Kurt got to the point where he eventually had to sacrifice every bit of who he was to his art, because the world demanded it of him," Frances says bluntly at one point. "I think that was one of the main triggers as to why he felt he didn't want to be here and everyone would be happier without him."But "in reality, if he had lived," she goes on, "I would have had a dad. And that would have been an incredible experience.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

David Fricke quoting Frances Bean Cobain " Frances Bean Cobain on Life After Kurt's Death: An Exclusive Q&A http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/frances-bean-life-after-kurt-cobain-death-exclusive-interview-20150408" (2015)

World, Art, Thinking, Reality

“In physics you have a bit of everything: you need to be good at solving puzzles, but you also need to see the big picture, to separate important from unimportant things, to quickly understand new materials and quickly see the essence of a paper.”

Carlo Beenakker (1960) Dutch physicist

In Interview with Professor Carlo Beenakker. Interviewers: Ramy El-Dardiry and Roderick Knuiman (February 1, 2006).

Understanding

“Hewson: I ask the Prime Minister: if you are so confident about your view of Fightback, why will you not call an early election?
Keating: The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm out of this load of rubbish over a number of months. There will be no easy execution for you. You have perpetrated one of the great mischiefs on the Australian public with this thing, trying to rip away our social wage, trying to rip away the Australian values which we built in our society for over a century.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Question Time, Australian House of Representatives, 1992, Labor in Power (w:Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1993), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_CHXDBq9Ps

Confidence, Sport

“I'm really not worried about the president's birth certificate. It's fun to poke at him a little bit and say, how 'bout let's see your grades and your birth certificate.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

CNBC interview, 2011-10-25, quoted in * 2011-10-25
Rick Perry: Obama Birth Certificate 'A Good Issue To Keep Alive' (Video)
Luke
Johnson
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/25/rick-perry-obama-birth-certificate_n_1030157.html
on President Obama's birth certificate
2011

Birth

“I came to MIT from Harvard University, where I was a lecturer. I had been at the Harvard Psychoacoustic Laboratory during World War II and stayed on at Harvard as a lecturer, mainly doing research, but also a little bit of teaching—statistics and physiological psychology—subjects like that.
Then there came a time that I thought that I had better go pay attention to my career. I had just been having a marvelous time there. I am not a good looker for jobs; I just came to the nearest place I could, which was in our city. I arranged to come down here and start up a psychology section, which we hoped would eventually become a psychology department. For the purposes of having a base of some kind I was in the Electrical Engineering Department. I even taught a little bit of electrical engineering.
I fell in love with the summer study process that MIT had. They had one on undersea warfare and overseas transport—a thing called Project Hartwell. I really liked that. It was getting physicists, mathematicians—everybody who could contribute—to work very intensively for a period of two or three months. After Hartwell there was a project called Project Charles, which was actually two years long (two summers and the time in between). It was on air defense. I was a member of that study. They needed one psychologist and 20 physicists. That led to the creation of the Lincoln Laboratory. It got started immediately as the applied section of the Research Laboratory for Electronics, which was already a growing concern at MIT.”

J. C. R. Licklider (1915–1990) American psychologist and computer scientist

Licklider in: " An Interview with J. C. R. LICKLIDER http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107436/1/oh150jcl.pdf" conducted by William Aspray and Arthur Norberg on 28 October 1988, Cambridge, MA.

Love, War, World, Hope

“But just because I believe that religion is a cynical perversion of the human spirit that exists purely for the benefit of the parasites we know as clergy, doesn't mean I'm not looking for answers to the big questions just like everybody else — you know, the questions that religion pretends it has answers to, because it knows that for some people, anyone answer is better than no answer at all. Questions like, Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going?…Is there an afterlife, and if so, is it fully licensed for alcoholic drinks? That last bit may seem like a trivial concern to you, but not to me, because I live in a society where many people enjoy a social drink from time to time — not a huge amount, just enough to kill a horse. And in these enlightened days of the twenty-first century, when everyone's human rights and cultural identity are so very important, I don't see why I should have to abandon my culture, just because I'm dead. It's only the afterlife, not Saudi Arabia. Let's keep things in perspective. Of course in reality, we know that there will be beer in heaven, and lots of it, otherwise it wouldn't be heaven, would it? It's almost not even worth pointing that out, but I thought I would anyway, just in case someone wants to take the opportunity to be offended.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"God is not enough" (23 May 2008) http://youtube.com/watch?v=1czXvHSjDac&feature=related) 2008

People, Alcohol, Religion, Drink

“I'm trying to stay as healthy as possible but there's no pressure to be really skinny. No. That's just a bit wrong.”

Leona Lewis (1985) British singer-songwriter

Interview with Liz Jones http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/you/article.html?in_article_id=517492&in_page_id=1908, Daily Mail, March 2008

Quotes about bit page 8

Quotes about bit
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