Quotes about bridge
page 3

“Humor bridges the weight of serious reflection.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

interview with Lorin Morgan-Richards by Rose Traul of Columbia College Chicago (22 January 2013).

“Four strings across the bridge,
Ready to carry me over,
Over the quavers, drunk in the bars,
Out of the realm of the orchestra…”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

“Either build functional houses and bridges or create pure art or both. Don't confuse one with the other. Such art is not pure constructive art, but merely an imitation of the machine.”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

quote, 1919; as cited in: Ruth Latta (1948) Naum Gabo. Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), p. 18
Here Gabo publicly criticized Tatlin's design for the 'Monument to the Third International' (1919)
1918 - 1935

Art, Housing

“You also remember well who first burned the bridges of your railroad, who forced Union men to give up their slaves to work on the rebel forts at Bowling Green, who took wagons and horses and burned houses of persons differing with them honestly in opinion, when I would not let our men burn fence rails for fire or gather fruit or vegetables though hungry, and these were the property of outspoken rebels. We at that time were restrained, tied by a deep seated reverence for law and property. The rebels first introduced terror as a part of their system, and forced contributions to diminish their wagon trains and thereby increase the mobility and efficiency of their columns. When General Buell had to move at a snail's pace with his vast wagon trains, Bragg moved rapidly, living on the country. No military mind could endure this long, and we are forced in self defense to imitate their example. To me this whole matter seems simple. We must, to live and prosper, be governed by law, and as near that which we inherited as possible. Our hitherto political and private differences were settled by debate, or vote, or decree of a court. We are still willing to return to that system, but our adversaries say no, and appeal to war. They dared us to war, and you remember how tauntingly they defied us to the contest. We have accepted the issue and it must be fought out. You might as well reason with a thunder-storm.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

1860s, 1864, Letter to James Guthrie (August 1864)

Men, War, Law, Time

“I can't wait 'til you draw something really complicated, like the Brooklyn Bridge or a lobster. You'll probably send me a singing telegram.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Jace to Clary, pg. 325
The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Singing, Waiting, Drawing

“There is imagery. Symbolism is a difficult idea. I'm not a symbolist. In other words, these are painting experiences. I don't decide in advance that am going to paint a definite experience, but in the act of painting, it becomes a genuine experience for me. It's not symbolism any more than it's calligraphy. I'm not painting bridge constructions, skyscrapers or laundry tickets.... I don't paint a given object – a figure or a table; I paint an organization that becomes a painting.... it's not these things that get me started on a painting.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1958
1960's, Talks with Seventeen Artists, 1962

Idea, Painting

“Just as we respect the right of each nation to determine its own future, we also recognize the responsibility of each nation to secure its own future.
Just as America's role is indispensable in preserving the world's peace, so is each nation's role indispensable in preserving its own peace.
Together with the rest of the world, let us resolve to move forward from the beginnings we have made. Let us continue to bring down the walls of hostility which have divided the world for too long, and to build in their place bridges of understanding — so that despite profound differences between systems of government, the people of the world can be friends.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1970s, Second Inaugural Address (1973)

Hostility, People, World, Peace

“The greatest threat to a robust, autonomous civil society is the ever-growing Leviathan state and those like Obama who see it as the ultimate expression of the collective. Obama compounds the fallacy by declaring the state to be the font of entrepreneurial success. How so? It created the infrastructure — roads, bridges, schools, Internet — off which we all thrive. Absurd. We don't credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, July 20, 2012, "Did the state make you great? : Virtues Obama discounts" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer072012.php3#.U4HWbMJOWUk at jewishworldreview.com. 2010s, 2012

School, Success

“Pietism and methodism reemphasized personal guilt, personal experience, and individual perfection. They were not intended to deviate from ecclesiastical conformity, but unavoidably they did deviate; subjective piety became the bridge of the victorious reappearance of autonomous reason. Pietism was the bridge to Enlightenment. But even Enlightenment did not consider itself individualistic. One believed not in a conformity which is based on biblical revelation but in one which should be based on the power of reason in every individual. The principles of practical and theoretical reason were supposed to be universal among men and able to create, with the help of research and education, a new conformity.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 114

Men, Education, Universe, Victory

“The human condition can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all experiences are of the past, all decisions are about the future. It is the great task of human knowledge to bridge this gap and to find those patterns in the past which can be projected into the future as realistic images.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding in the foreword of: Fred Polak (1972) The image of the future http://storyfieldteam.pbworks.com/f/the-image-of-the-future.pdf, p. V 1970s

Knowledge, Decision, Past, Future

“Men don't like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives—agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. xxi-xxii

Men, Way, Passion, Change

“The Opera House is a splendid edifice, and I wish to take nothing away from it, but my heart belongs to the Harbour Bridge. It's not as festive, but it is far more dominant – you can see it from every corner of the city, creeping into frame from the oddest angles, like an uncle who wants to get into every snapshot. From a distance it has a kind of gallant restraint, majestic but not assertive, but up close it is all might. It soars above you, so high that you could pass a ten-storey building beneath it, and looks like the heaviest thing on earth. Everything that is in it – the stone blocks in its four towers, the latticework of girders, the metal plates, the six-million rivets (with heads like halved apples) – is the biggest of its type you have ever seen. This is a bridge built by people who have had an Industrial Revolution, people with mountains of coal and ovens in which you could melt down a battleship. The arch alone weighs 30,000 tons. This is a great bridge.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Pages 80-81
In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

People, Mountain, Heart, Housing

“Constrained by habits and acculturalization, we have less choice than we imagine. Many apparently momentous decisions were actually determined within us long ago. In the long run, the most powerful choice we can make is where to focus our attention. Attention is healing. Attention is the bridge in relationship. And attention facilitates change and learning.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

Charles Eisenstein, Oral presentation in Baltimore, MD March 2012

Imagination, Decision, Learning, Change

“What constitutes the primordium of the adult parasite [ Rhizocephala ]? What can be injected through the narrow opening of the dart's hypodermic device? …Imagine going through such complexity as nauplius, cyprid, and kentrogon - and then paring yourself down to just a few cells for a quick and hazardous transition to the adult stage. What a minimal bridge at such a crucial transition! …But other species have achieved the ultimate reduction to a single cell! The dart injects just one cell into the host's interior, and the two parts of the life cyle maintain their indispensable continuity by an absolutely minimal connection - as though, within the rhizocephalan life cycle, nature has inserted a stage analogous to the fertilized egg that establishes minimal connection between generations in ordinary sexual organisms.”

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

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 363
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Life, Imagination, Nature, Parting

“I got those, Data’s chair and console, the side walls, and some panels from Vegas. And though I didn’t know I'd have the entire bridge someday, I knew they were an invaluable history of Trek,
I couldn't allow it to bring me down. I spent almost a year trying to convince people to help me. If worst came to worst it could go to a rich guy’s house but then no one would see it.
Once this happened, that's how this bridge got forgotten about—people changed hands, people got fired,
I didn't know if he had standing assembled walls or what,
My whole thing was: this is good, it's great to have a dream, but it’s great to have your feet on the floor too.
They said: ‘You have to do something. This can't remain in this condition.”

Huston Huddleston

December 2012 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/12/captain-i-saved-the-bridge-boldly-going-where-no-tv-set-has-gone-before/

People, Dreams, Guy, History

“The growing complexity of software is the motivation behind work on industrializing software development. In particular, current research in the area of model driven engineering (MDE) is primarily concerned with reducing the gap between problem and software implementation domains through the use of technologies that support systematic transformation of problem-level abstractions to software implementations. The complexity of bridging the gap is tackled through the use of models that describe complex systems at multiple levels of abstraction and from a variety of perspectives, and through automated support for transforming and analyzing models. In the MDE vision of software development, models are the primary artifacts of development and developers rely on computer-based technologies to transform models to running systems.”

Bernhard Rumpe (1967) German computer scientist

Source: Model-driven development of complex software: A research roadmap (2007), p. 37

Motivation, Support, Problem

“There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.”

Eugene Chadbourne (1954) American musician

Mark Michaels Quoted in The Billboard Book of Rock Arranging (1990)

“You know not that the earth was given in marriage to the sun, and that earth it is who sends us forth to the mountain and the desert.
There is a gulf that yawns between those who love Him and those who hate Him, between those who believe and those who do not believe.
But when the years have bridged that gulf you shall know that He who lived in us is deathless, that He was the Son of God even as we are the children of God; that He was born of a virgin even as we are born of the husbandless earth.”

Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man

Mary Magdalen (Thirty years later): On the Resurrection of the Spirit
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)

Love, God, Hate, Marriage

“Considering the part played by the sciences in the story of our Western civilization, it is hardly possible to doubt the importance which the history of science will sooner or later acquire both in its own right and as the bridge which has been so long needed in between the Arts and the Sciences.”

Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) British historian

The Origins of Modern Science (1957) Introduction

Art, History, Science, Parting

“The Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople can become a spiritual and cultural bridge among Yerevan, Ankara and the Armenian Diaspora.”

Sebouh Chouldjian (1959) Archbishop Sebouh Chouldjian is the primate of the Diocese of Gougark of the Armenian Apostolic Church

[We Must Continue What Dink Started: Dialogue with Turkey, Says Bishop, Tert.am, 2010-02-15, http://tert.am/en/news/2010/02/15/bishop/, 2010-02-16, English]
On Armenia-Turkey relations

“People are disenfranchised because they don’t vote, they are disengaged because we don’t talk to them, and we don’t listen, not directly. There is a sense of being disowned, and therefore, there’s a deep sense of distrust between the people and the government, or by the people of government. I want to bridge that gap and I want to re-engage with the people.”

Leung Chun-ying (1954) Hong Kong politician

2012
Source: http://world.time.com/2012/06/28/qa-hong-kongs-new-leader-is-a-divisive-figure-but-aims-to-build-bridges-2/

People, Sense

“Dark Helmet [after everyone on the bridge announces that their last name is "Asshole."]: I knew it, I'm surrounded by Assholes.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

Spaceballs

“Harry Dresden: The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold. But in my corner of the country, I'm trying to nail things down. I don't want to live in Victor's jungle, even if it did eventually devour him. I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Storm Front (2000), Chapter 27, final lines of the book

Children, Books, World, Hell

“This mercy will be your ruin; you will be at the bridge across which the Spaniards will enter this land.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

Statement to his friend, the Count of Egmont, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison p. 76

“I sank Atlantis," he said, "personally. It was about three years ago. And God! it was lovely! It was all ivory towers and golden minarets and silver balconies. There were bridges of opal, and crimson pennants and a milk-white river flowing between lemon-colored banks. There were jade steeples, and trees as old as the world tickling the bellies of clouds, and ships in the great sea-harbor of Xanadu, as delicately constructed as musical instruments, all swaying with the tides. The twelve princes of the realm held court in the dozen-pillared Coliseum of the Zodiac, to listen to a Greek tenor sax play at sunset.”

Roger Zelazny book He Who Shapes

He Who Shapes (1965)

Love, God, World, Music

“He wandered for a long time along the canals and over the bridges... Steam rose from one boat where men were heating their tea water. He shouted to them and asked them to give him some tea. They asked who he was and he said that he was from Iceland, where Hell is. They invited him out to the boat and gave him something to drink and questioned him about Mount Hekla. He said that he was born and raised at the foot of the mountain and for that reason was called van Hekkenfeld. They asked whether a man could see down into Hell from the summit of Hekla, through the swarm of noxious birds that hovers eternally, shrieking and quarreling, over the crater. He said no, but added that he'd once caught one of these birds with a hooked pole that he'd brought with him up onto the mountain; they were similar to ravens, he said, except for their claws and beaks, which were iron. They asked whether such birds could be eaten and he laughed at their foolishness, but said on the other hand that one could use the claws for hooks and the beak for a pick.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

Men, Mountain, Hell, Drink

“The coming together of rhythm and melody bridges our cerebellum and our cerebral cortex.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

“In all these products, whether iron bridges, locomotives, automobiles, telescopes, cottages, airport-hangars, funicular railways, skyscrapers, or children's toys, the will towards a new style expresses itself. The similarity of these examples to the new creations in art consists in the same striving for clear, pure form which expresses truth in the objects.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from 'The will to Style', in Dutch art-magazine De Stijl February-March 1922; as quoted in 'Theo van Doesburg', Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, p. 123
1920 – 1926

Children, Truth, Art

“For the yearners know that the life of flesh is but the bridge to the fleshless Life. And the yearners know that the coarse and inadequate senses are but the peepholes into the world of the infinitely fine and adequate sense. And the yearners know that every flesh they tear they must inevitably repair, sooner or later, with their own flesh; and every bone they crush they must rebuild with their own bone; and every drop of blood they spill they must replenish with their own blood. For, that is the law of flesh.”

Mikha'il Na'ima book The Book of Mirdad

The Book of Mirdad (1948)

Life, World, Law, Sense

“I've trained myself to propose solutions instead of ask for them, to elicit responses instead of react, and to be assertive without burning bridges. To have an uncommon lifestyle, you need to develop the uncommon habit of making decisions, both for yourself and for others.”

Timothy Ferriss book The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek (2007)

Decision, Training

“My philosophy is to use the stones hurled at me to make a bridge for myself; I believe in proving my critics wrong through my work. I keep saying, the more muck you throw at me, the brighter will the BJP lotus bloom. That is the nature of the lotus, it rises out of keechhad (slush) to create exquisite beauty.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Narendra Modi in interview 2013, quoted from Kishwar, Madhu (2014). Modi, Muslims and media: Voices from Narendra Modi's Gujarat. p.164
2013

Beauty, Nature

“One of the most important revelations about a period comes in its theory of language, for that informs us whether language is viewed as a bridge to the noumenal or as a body of fictions convenient for grappling with transitory phenomena.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 150.

“The enemy have possession of Fort Independence, on the heights above King's Bridge. They made their appearance the night before last. We had got every thing of value away. The bridges are cut down, and I gave Colonel Magaw orders to stop the road between the mountains.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (31 October 1776)

Mountain, Appearance, Night

“Bridges are a troll's specialty. Whether because of some magic or just because of aptitude, you never get across the bridge without facing the troll. That's life, I guess.”

Jim Butcher (1971) American author

The Dresden Files short stories, Restoration of Faith

Life

“The legend of King Midas has been generally misunderstood. Most people think the curse that turned everything the old miser touched into gold, leaving him unable to eat or drink, was a lesson in the perils of avarice. But Midas’s true sin was his failure to understand monetary economics. What the gods were really telling him is that gold is just a metal. If it sometimes seems to be more, that is only because society has found it convenient to use gold as a medium of exchange—a bridge between other, truly desirable, objects. There are other possible mediums of exchange, and it is silly to imagine that this pretty, but only moderately useful, substance has some irreplaceable significance.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"The Gold Bug Variations", Originally published in Slate (Nov. 23, 1996)
The Accidental Theorist: And Other Dispatches From The Dismal Science (1998)

God, People, Imagination, Failure

“I reckon that the Bailey Bridge and the bulldozer were the greatest advances in military engineering in the years between World War I and World War II.”

Christopher Vokes (1904–1985) Canadian general

My Service Before The War, p. 56
Vokes - My Story (1985)

War, World

“The scene has thoroughly changed. The six weeks' march to Paris has come world drama. Mass murder has become a monotonous task, and yet the final solution is not one step nearer. Capitalist rule is caught in its own trap, and cannot ban the spirit that it has Gone is the first mad delirium. Gone are the patriotic street demonstrations, the chase after suspicious-looking automobiles; the false telegrams, the cholera-poisoned wells. Gone the mad stories of Russian students who hurl bombs from every bridge of Berlin, or French men flying over Nuremberg; gone the excesses of spy-hunting populace, the singing through, the coffee shops with their patriotic songs; gone the violent mobs, ready to denounce, ready to persecute women, ready to whip themselves into a delirious frenzy over every wild rumor; gone the atmosphere of ritual murder, the Kishinev air that left the policeman at the corer as the only remaining representative of human dignity.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Source: The Junius Pamphlet (1915), Ch.1

Women, Men, World, Coffee

“BEAUTIFUL Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!
With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array
And your central girders, which seem to the eye
To be almost towering to the sky.”

William McGonagall (1825–1902) weaver, actor, poet

Written before the disaster.
Poetry, The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay (1878)

Beauty

“This light is for the world.
Send out from this wooden frame
a beacon made of holy flame
like a bridge across the morning sky
from candle to the hills of high
this light is for the world.”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"This Light Is for the World"
Universal Hall (2003)

World, Light

“He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 2 (at page 16 – Page numbers as per the 1996 Penguin Classics Edition)

Life, Way

“I controlled [Rodan's] wings with my arms. While we were shooting the scene in which Rodan flies over the bridge in Saikai Village in Kyushu, the pulley from which I was suspended broke. I fell from a height of twenty-five feet, but the wings and the water, which was about one and a half feet deep, absorbed much of the impact.”

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)

Water

“The most important document at Ugarit for both Biblical and Homeric studies is the Epic of Kret. It anticipates the Helen-of-Troy motif in the Iliad and Genesis, thus bridging the gap between the two literatures.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible

Literature, Study

“This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks is to other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest would be to a garden. It is a thing grown up, not made. It recalls a jungle by the confused, varied, and impenetrable aspect of the buildings that line the shore, not according to a planned purpose, but as if sprung up by accident from scattered seeds. Like the matted growth of bushes and creepers veiling the silent depths of an unexplored wilderness, they hide the depths of London’s infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life. In other river ports it is not so. They lie open to their stream, with quays like broad clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick timber for the convenience of trade… But London, the oldest and greatest of river ports, does not possess as much as a hundred yards of open quays upon its river front. Dark and impenetrable at night, like the face of a forest, is the London waterside. It is the waterside of watersides, where only one aspect of the world’s life can be seen, and only one kind of men toils on the edge of the stream. The lightless walls seem to spring from the very mud upon which the stranded barges lie; and the narrow lanes coming down to the foreshore resemble the paths of smashed bushes and crumbled earth where big game comes to drink on the banks of tropical streams.Behind the growth of the London waterside the docks of London spread out unsuspected, smooth, and placid, lost amongst the buildings like dark lagoons hidden in a thick forest. They lie concealed in the intricate growth of houses with a few stalks of mastheads here and there overtopping the roof of some four-story warehouse.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

London Bridge to the Royal Albert Dock
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

Life, Men, Lie, World

“A leader’s most important job is creating and constantly adjusting this strategic bridge between goals and objectives.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

Source: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 2011, p. 52

“The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, convinced by general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks incessantly occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridæ—between the elephant and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and other mammals. But all these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter VI: "On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man", pages 200-201 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=213&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image The sentence "At some future period … the savage races" is often quoted out of context to suggest that Darwin desired this outcome, whereas in fact Darwin simply held that it would occur. The Descent of Man (1871)

World, Hope, Distant, Appearance

“Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it.”

Truman Capote book Local Color

Local Color (1950)

Wisdom, Age, Past, Childhood

“About ancient mathematics (whether Greek or Mesopotamian) and medieval mathematics (Western or Oriental), the would-be historian must of necessity confine himself to the description of a comparatively small number of islands accidentally emerging from an ocean of ignorance, and to tenuous conjectural reconstructions of the submerged continents which at one time must have bridged the gaps between them.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

Number Theory: An approach through history from Hammurapi to Legendre (Springer, 2006), p. 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=XSV0hDFj3loC&pg=PA3

Mathematics, Time

“The descriptive sciences rely on skill and connoisseurship. At all these points the act of knowing includes an appraisal; and this personal coefficient, which shapes all factual knowledge, bridges in doing so the disjunction between subjectivity and objectivity. It implies the claim that man can transcend his own subjectivity by striving passionately to fulfil his personal obligations to universal standards.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 17

Knowledge, Universe, Passion, Science

“The Venetian Bridge and the fine cliff walks are a handsome background for a wealth of entertainment which most visitors find irresistible.”

Arthur Mee (1875–1943) British journalist and writer

Page 63, Clacton on Sea.
The King's England: Essex

Wealth

“The courage to be as oneself within the atmosphere of Enlightenment is the courage to affirm oneself as a bridge from a lower to a higher state of rationality. It is obvious that this kind of courage to be must become conformist the moment its revolutionary attack on that which contradicts reason has ceased, namely in the victorious bourgeoisie.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 116

Courage, Victory

“Some time ago I saw a painting by Thijs Maris [= Matthijs Maris, one of the three brothers Maris, all three famous Dutch impressionist painters of the Hague School ] that reminded me of it. An old Dutch town with rows of brownish red houses with step-gables and tall flights of steps, grey roofs, and white or yellow doors, window-frames and cornices; canals with ships and a large white drawbridge, a barge with a man at the tiller going under it... Some distance away a stone bridge over the canal, with people and a cart with white horses crossing it. And everywhere movement, a porter with his wheelbarrow, a man leaning against the railing, gazing into the water, women in black with white caps... A greyish white sky over everything…”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

quote from Vincent's Letter #031 to Theo van Gogh (London, 6 April 1875) http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let031/letter.html 1870s

Women, People, School, Water

“Ask yourself, if you or a loved one is to undergo brain or heart surgery, does it matter whether the surgeons who will operate had been selected for medical school for any other reason than their aptitude for medicine and surgery? Even if there were no quotas, should race have been "taken into consideration" in their selection? Consider the hairline life and death decisions that surgeons make all the time. Does not every consideration, however slight, apart from aptitude, dilute the qualifications of surgeons for surgery? The next time you are crossing a great bridge, do you not rely upon the qualifications of the engineers and builders to ensure your safety? What does the skin color of the classmates of doctors or engineers have to do with their medicine or their engineering? Is it not their professional qualification that matters, and not either the sameness or the differences from which they came? Is not the same true if we are seeking mathematicians, physicists, economists, or generals? In each case, what is apt for the end in view may be regarded as good, what is inapt may be regarded as bad.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Is Diversity Good? (2003)

Love, Life, Death, School

“I put down the oars and float endlessly as if to the eternal shore. Blue light of the moon shines on my sail. My boat is gliding to a secure haven. Only silent waves break against it. Deepest silence surrounds me and my soul builds a golden bridge to a star.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Ich lege die Ruder ein und fahre endlos, wie einem ewigen Gestade zu. Mondlicht spielt blau auf meinem Segel. Mein Nachen gleitet in einen sicheren Hafen. Nur leise schlagen die Wellen an meinen Kahn. Die tiefste Stille ist um mich, und meine Seele spannt eine goldene Brücke zu einem Stern.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Soul, Star, Light, Silence

“It is a strange irony, but no small compensation, that the making of weapons of destruction should afford the occasion to humanise industry. Yet such is the case. Old prejudices have vanished, new ideas are abroad; employers and workers, the public and the State, are favourable to new methods. This opportunity must not be allowed to slip. It may well be that, when the tumult of war is a distant echo, and the making of munitions a nightmare of the past, the effort now being made to soften asperities, to secure the welfare of the workers, and to build a bridge of sympathy and understanding between employer and employed, will have left behind results of permanent and enduring value to the workers, to the nation and to mankind at large.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech (February 1916), quoted in War Memoirs: Volume I (London: Odhams, 1938), pp. 209-210
Minister of Munitions

War, Idea, Understanding, Effort

“The three towering geniuses of European culture, Shakespeare, Mozart and Leonardo da Vinci were not allowed to appear on the euro note as they might, in their separate ways, cause offense: Mozart because he was a "womanizer," Shakespeare because he wrote The Merchant of Venice, a play judged to be anti-Semitic, and Leonardo because he was reported to fancy boys. Now the euro note carries a picture of a rather dull bridge.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 13 : Causing Offence

Way, Boy, Appearance

“The national debt has doubled. And you know the bad part about that? You think if the national debt has doubled, our infrastructure would be great, our country would be in great shape. We'd have beautiful roads, beautiful highways. You see where like 50 percent of the bridges are in danger in this country. And the roadways are a mess.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

Beauty, Thinking, Parting, Country

“The promoters of every private bill have to satisfy the [Parliamentary] Committee that their proposals are sufficiently beneficial to the public to justify the Committee in entrusting them with the special powers necessary to carry them out; it is only on this condition that private rights and interests can be required to give way to public necessity. The task of the Committee is to examine the proposals from this point of view and for this purpose to hear the arguments and evidence both of the promoters and of thhe opponents, being specially vigilant to see that justice is done by way of compensation and protection to those who may be called upon to make sacrifices for the public benefit. The range of the subjects which may come before Parliament by way of private bill is immensely varied, including such matters as the construction of railways, the building of harbours and bridges, the extension of city boundaries, the development of water power and electricity, the provision of water supplies, and the alteration of the constitution and objects of charitable and educational institutions.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 58

Education, Justice, Way, Water

“It's not healthy for the country to have parties with polar opposite views without that bridge that you need to build consensus.”

Olympia Snowe (1947) United States Senator from Maine

Statement of April 2009, as quoted in "US Sen. Olympia Snowe in her own words" by The Associated Press (28 February 2012) http://web.archive.org/20120229071826/www.seattlepi.com/news/article/US-Sen-Olympia-Snowe-in-her-own-words-3368674.php.

Country

“Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.”

William McGonagall (1825–1902) weaver, actor, poet

The death toll was actually 75.
Poetry, The Tay Bridge Disaster (1880)

Beauty, Time

“Dana Perino: And believe me, there were some people who really wanted me from the podium to go after MSNBC. And I just thought it was a bridge too far, not something that should be done from the White House. If they want to have the DNC bash Fox News all they want, you know, so be it. But, I would not do it from the White House. I don't think it's presidential, and I think people would see through it.
Brian Kilmeade: And not only did you not go after them, you gave them interviews, as did the president.
Steve Doocy: Sure.
Brian Kilmeade: Gave them all interviews. Read Ronald Reagan’s diaries…
Dana Perino: Well, towards the end we didn’t do a lot with MSNBC. That’s, that is the case.”

Dana Perino (1972) Former White House Press Secretary

Fox & Friends, October 19, 2009 http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/19/perino-msnbc/

People, Thinking, Reading, Housing

“It's a book about the history of the Hindus, from 50 million B. C. E. to the present. It says that there is no evidence that Rama was born in the place that is now known as Ayodhya and there is no evidence that there was a Hindu temple on the spot where the Babur Mosque was. And that there is no evidence that Rama and a bunch of monkeys built a bridge from India to Sri Lanka, as the Hindu Right have claimed. That's just mythology, which is lovely, I've studied it all my life, but you don't legislate on the basis of mythology.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

About her book [ The Hindus: An Alternative History].
Q&A with Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor and author of The Hindus

Love, Life, Books, History

“Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of shifting consciousness. They are passageways, conduits, and connectors that connote transitioning, crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces between worlds, spaces I call nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio. Transformations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious, always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries. Nepantla es tierra desconocida, and living in this liminal zone means being in a constant state of displacement--an uncomfortable, even alarming feeling. Most of us dwell in nepantla so much of the time it’s become a sort of “home.””

Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1942–2004) Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory

Though this state links us to other ideas, people, and worlds, we feel threatened by these new connections and the change they engender.
Original: (Un)natural bridges from This bridge we call home

People, World, Feeling, Home

“London Bridge is safe and soundNo matter what you keep repeatingNothing's gonna drag me downTo a death that's not worth cheating”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Baby Britain.
Lyrics, XO (1998)

Death, Cheating

“Male makeup is men’s titles, status and paying for dates. Makeup is what both sexes use to bridge the gap between the power they have and the power they’d like to have. Both male and female makeup are compensations for feelings of powerlessness.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 215.

Men, Sex, Feeling

“Art is a universal language, a mighty bridge that transcends religiosity. It is embraced and appreciated not by adherents, devotees, believers, or converts of any certain sort, but by members of the religion that is Love.”

Lydia Canaan Lebanese singer-songwriter

From Diplomacy and Art http://diplomatartist.com/diplomacy-art/, a contributer article for Diplomat Artist, October 10, 2015

Love, Religion, Art, Universe

“Our agrarian revolution has been a process in which the landlord class owning the land is transformed into a class that has lost its land, while the peasants who once lost their land are transformed into small holders who have acquired land, and it will be such a process once again. In given conditions having and not having, acquiring and losing, are interconnected; there is identity of the two sides. Under socialism, private peasant ownership is transformed into the public ownership of socialist agriculture; this has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will take place everywhere else. There is a bridge leading from private property to public property, which in philosophy is called identity, or transformation into each other, or interpenetration.”

Mao Zedong book On Contradiction

On Contradiction (1937)
Original: (zh-CN) 我们实行过的土地革命，已经是并且还将是这样的过程，拥有土地的地主阶级转化为失掉土地的阶级，而曾经是失掉土地的农民却转化为取得土地的小私有者。有无、得失之间，因一定条件而互相联结，二者具有同一性。在社会主义条件之下，农民的私有制又将转化为社会主义农业的公有制，苏联已经这样做了，全世界将来也会这样做。私产和公产之间有一条由此达彼的桥梁，哲学上名之曰同一性，或互相转化、互相渗透。

“Oh shall I see the Thames again?
The prow-promoted gems again,
As beefy ATS
Without their hats
Come shooting through the bridge?
And "cheerioh" and "cheeri-bye"
Across the waste of waters die,
And low the mists of evening lie
And lightly skims the midge.”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

"Henley-on-Thames", from New Bats in Old Belfries.
Poetry

Lie, Water

“Our so-called Society people, instead of going in for sport, persist in holding conversations in their drawing rooms, generally in a foreign tongue. They engage nurse maids, personal maids and governesses of all nationalities except Italian. They play poker and bridge with the accompanying drinks, certainly not Italian brands!”

Achille Starace (1889–1945) Italian Fascist general

About disloyal people in Italian society. Quoted in "Activist on Society" - Time Magazine - August 5, 1935.

People, Drink, Sport, Drawing

“A successful relationship bridges the gap between men and women and that bridge is built with respect.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 116

Women, Men, Success

“She [the Roman Catholic Church] may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On Ranke's History of the Popes (1840)

Travel, Solitude

“I imagine that as one penetrated out from some enormous forest of the tropics, the wild beasts would become fewer, the gloom would lighten, and the horror of the place would slowly lift. Yet as one emerges nearer to the edge of London, and nearer to the beautiful influence of the hills, the houses become uglier, the streets viler, the gloom deepens, the errors of civilisation stand bare to the scorn of the fields.
Where ugliness reaches the height of its luxuriance, in the dense misery of the place, where one imagines the builder saying, "Here I culminate. Let us give thanks to Satan," there is a bridge of yellow brick, and through it, as through some gate of filigree silver opening on fairyland, one passes into the country.”

Lord Dunsany (1878–1957) Irish writer and dramatist

A Dreamer's Tales http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8drem10.txt, The Field

Beauty, Error, Imagination, Housing

“Peat preserves timber, animals, and such unexpected treasure-troves as hoards of acorns and firkins of beech butter from the forests which preceded the bogs. A whole archaeology may very well lie in peat, and the pollen record may reveal past history. At the base of Irish bogs the Fir Bolg (the little people), their axes, bridges, butter, and forest life are well preserved. They and their forests were banished, as if by magic, by the Tuatha de Danan (the Children of Diana) who now dig the peat. Diana was displaced in turn by Mary, mother of God. But all are mixed in the peat and the tongue of Ireland.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 9.9

Life, God, Children, People

“Something must be done, and that speedily, to bridge the widening chasm between the Executive and the Congress. Our experience with President Wilson has demonstrated this. As a self-centered autocrat, confident of himself and suspicious of others, hostile to advice or discussion, he became the absolute master of the Congress while his party was in the majority. The Congress, instead of being a co-ordinate branch, was really in session only to accept, adopt and put into laws the imperious will of the president. When, however, the majority changed, there being no confidence between the executive and the legislative branch of the government, the necessary procedure was almost paralyzed. The president was unyielding and the Congress insisted upon the recognition of its constitutional rights. Even if the president is, as McKinley was, in close and frequent touch with the Senate and the House of Representatives, the relation is temporary and unequal, and not what it out to be, automatic. Happily we have started a budget system; but the Cabinet should have seats on the floor of the Houses, and authority to answer questions and participate in debates.”

Chauncey Depew (1834–1928) American politician

My Memories of Eighty Years (1922), p. 189

Hostility, Law, Confidence, Question

“The INFOSPHERE we are heading towards invokes the inherent risk of being the sphere of the developed, the few. Unless we can bridge the technological gap between the 20% and the 80% of the global population, we will be heading towards an ugly world with ugly consequences.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

November 16, 1999, Amman, Jordan, Speech entitled : Technology in the Next Millennium.

World

“Because their possessions were great, the appeasers had much to lose should the Red flag fly over Westminster. That was why they had felt threatened by the hunger riots of 1932. It was also the driving force behind their exorbitant fear and distrust of the new Russia. They had seen a strong Germany as a buffer against Bolshevism, had thought their security would be strengthened if they sidled up to the fierce, virile Third Reich. Nazi coarseness, anti-Semitism, the Reich's darker underside, were rationalized; time, they assured one another, would blur the jagged edges of Nazi Germany. So, with their eyes open, they sought accommodation with a criminal regime, turned a blind eye to its iniquities, ignored its frequent resort to murder and torture, submitted to extortion, humiliation, and abuse until, having sold out all who had sought to stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain and keep the bridge against the new barbarism, they led England herself into the cold damp shadow of the gallows, friendless save for the demoralized republic across the Channel. Their end came when the House of Commons, in a revolt of conscience, wrenched power from them and summoned to the colors the one man who had foretold that all had passed, who had tried, year after year, alone and mocked, to prevent the war by urging the only policy which would have done the job. And now, in the desperate spring of 1940, with the reins of power at last now firm in his grasp, he resolved to lead Britain and her fading empire in one last great struggle worthy of all they had been and meant, to arm the nation, not only with weapons but also with the mace of honor, creating in every English breast a soul beneath the ribs of death.”

William Manchester (1922–2004) (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) American author, journalist and historian

Source: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone 1932-1940 (1988), p. 688-689

Death, Hunger, War, Fear

“So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep:
So pledge my waking from the gift of sleep,
And, sacramental, raise me the Divine:
Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine (1932)

God, Sleep, Strong, Wine

“I think the destiny of all men is not to sit in the rubble of their own making but to reach out for an ultimate perfection which is to be had. At the moment, it is a dream. But as of the moment we clasp hands with our neighbor, we build the first span to bridge the gap between the young and the old. At this hour, it’s a wish. But we have it within our power to make it a reality. If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Speech at Moorpark College, Moorpark, California (3 December 1968).
Other

Men, God, Dreams, Thinking

“If a ship runs into a large bridge, destroying both the bridge and ship, as happened recently in Tasmania, it is very difficult to see what either the naval architect or the bridge designer could have been expected to do about it from the structural point of view. The problem is not one for the structural engineer but for the local Pilotage Association. Again, aircraft cannot be designed to be flown into mountains.”

J.E. Gordon (1913–1998) Materials scientist

Source: Structures (or, Why Things Don't Fall Down) (1978), Chapter 15, A Chapter of accidents

Mountain, Problem

“South America had been an island continent, far bigger and far more diverse than Australia, for tens of millions of years before the Isthmus of Panama rose just a couple of million years ago. The resulting flood of North American mammals across the new land bridge corresponds in time with the decimation of the native South American fauna. In fact, most large mammals generally considered distinctly South American… are all recent migrants from North America.”

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

"Can We Truly Know Sloth and Rapacity?" pp. 390
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Time

“Dear citizens. Now I plan to jump off a bridge over the Han River. I hope you give us the last chance. Please lend us 100 million won which will be used for paying back debt and seed money of our organization… I know this is shameful. I'm sorry. I'll repent for the last of my life.”

Sung Jae-gi (1967–2013) South Korean masculism activist

As quoted in "Activist's 'suicide' causes huge stir" http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2013/07/116_140028.html Koreatimes 2013.07.26

Life, Money, Hope, Chance

“Prayer is a bridge from despair to hope.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Hope, Despair

“We to a little ale-house on the Bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow; and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. Barbary and her husband away before us. We stayed till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it.”

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) English naval administrator and member of parliament

September 2, 1666
Of the Great Fire of London.
Diary

Appearance, Housing

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.”

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

Hymn sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

World

“Good literature erects bridges between different peoples, and by having us enjoy, suffer, or feel surprise, unites us beneath the languages, beliefs, habits, customs, and prejudices that separate us.”

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936) Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist

Nobel Lecture (2010)

People, Feeling, Literature, Suffering

“For the intimate fusion of touch, temperature and sometimes also taste and smell sensations into a single unified total impression raises the question of whether we do not have here Gestalt qualities which are built up upon a foundation belonging to several sensory regions. As can easily be recognized, it is just as possible that a complex of, say, touch and temperature sensations should provide the foundation for a Gestalt quality as should a complex of sound sensations. Indeed no a priori objection can be raised even against the idea that there should exist sound-colour-Gestalten spanning the data of the senses of sound and vision as something like a bridge - even though we do not believe that we can detect anything of this sort in sensation.”

Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932) Austrian philosopher

Source: "On Gestalt Qualities," 1890, p. 97

Idea, Question, Sense

“Like many fields in their early stages, the software field has had its share of project disasters: the software equivalents of Beauvais Cathedral, the S. S. Titanic, and the "Galloping Gertie" Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The frequency of these disaster projects is a serious concern: a recent survey of 600 firms indicated that 35% of them had at least one "runaway' software project.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Source: Software risk management: principles and practices (1991), p. 32

“All the bridges in the world won't save you if there is no other side to cross to”

Daniel Johns (1979) Australian musician

World Upon Your Shoulders
Song lyrics, Diorama (2002)

World

“Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.”

Mary Schmich (1953) American columnist

"Wear Sunscreen" (1997)

People, Understanding

“I was opposed to us going to Iraq from the very beginning. I really thought that there was no threat to our national security, I really thought that if we went into Iraq we would find ourselves in a civil war to which there would be no end, and I thought we had the military surveillance capability to see Iraq roll out any weapons of mass destruction and if they had done that we could have gone in and dealt with that. Afghanistan, originally, I was completely supportive of that. We were attacked, we attacked back. That's what our military is for and after about six months I think we had pretty effectively taken care of al Qaeda. But that was ten years ago! We're building roads, schools, bridges, and highways in Iraq and Afghanistan and we're borrowing forty-three cents out of every dollar to do that. In my opinion, this is crazy. And in looking at Libya right now… my opinion is I'm opposed to it A through Z.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement at FOX News Debate
YouTube
2011-05-05
http://youtu.be/QRPrZxHUqsA
2012-02-24
Foreign Policy

War, School, Support, Thinking

“The clean power plan is something that Senator Sanders has said he would delay implementing, which makes absolutely no sense. We need to implement all of the president’s executive actions and quickly move to make a bridge from coal to natural gas to clean energy. That is the way we will keep the lights on while we are transitioning to a clean energy future. And when I talk about resilience, I think that is an area we can get Republican support on.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Way, Support, Nature, Thinking

“A nervous blonde nymphet who thought that politics was some kind of game played by old people, like bridge.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)

People, Game

“A boy of ten or eleven has a few great sexual experiences—he thinks they’re great—but then he has the bad luck to get caught and get in trouble. They try to persuade him by punishment and other explanations that some different behavior is much better, but he knows by the evidence of his senses that nothing could be better. … The basic trouble here is that they do not really believe he has had the sexual experience. That objective factor is inconvenient for them; therefore it cannot exist. … The sensible course would be to accept it as a valuable part of further growth. But if this were done, they fear that the approved little hero would be a rotten apple to his peers, who now would suddenly all become precocious, abnormal, artificially stimulated, and prone to delinquency. The sexual plight of these children is officially not mentioned. The revolutionary attack on hypocrisy by Ibsen, Freud, Ellis, Dreiser, did not succeed this far. … The question here is not whether the sexuality should be discouraged or encouraged. That is an important issue, but far more important is that it is hard to grow up when existing facts are treated as though they do not exist. For then there is no dialog, it is impossible to be taken seriously, to be understood, to make a bridge between oneself and society.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 38-39.

Bad luck, Children, Fear, Behavior

“The higher the trail the steeper it grows
Ten thousand tiers of dangerous cliffs
The stone bridge is slippery with green moss
Cloud after cloud keeps flying by
Waterfalls hang like ribbons of silk
The moon shines down on the bright pool
I climb the highest peak once more
To wait where the lone crane flies”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Waiting, Flying

“The general election of 1983 has produced one important result that has passed virtually without comment in the media. It is that, for the first time since 1945, a political party with an openly socialist policy has received the support of over eight and a half million people. This is a remarkable development by any standards and it deserves some analysis … the 1983 Labour manifesto commanded the loyalty of millions of voters and a democratic socialist bridge-head in public understanding and support can be made.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

The Guardian (20 June 1983).
1980s

People, Understanding, Support, Time

“I once said cynically of a politician, "He'll double-cross that bridge when he comes to it."”

Oscar Levant book The Memoirs of an Amnesiac

The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965), p. 13; also quoted in The Quotable Politician (2003) by William B. Whitman, p. 31.

“Sometimes a god comes,” Selver said. “He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Section 8
Hainish Cycle, The Word for World Is Forest (1972)

Death, God, World, Dreams

“And I came [to New York, 1945]... It was just after the war and I thought it was a little early to get over there [to Europe]. So I spent the winter under the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Brooklyn side, living with Barney Rosset, and I came here [to New York] to study with Hofmann... And I went to Hofmann's class and I couldn't understand a word he said so I left, terrified. But he and I became friends later on. Friends, but I never studied with him..”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

first side of the first tape
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

War, Understanding, Study, Winter

“Nobody ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this. The rain was misty enough to be almost fog-like, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhattan by night was reduced to a few sleepy, yellow lights off in the distance.
Some place over there I had left my car and started walking, burying my head in the collar of my raincoat, with the night pulled in around me like a blanket. I walked and I smoked and I flipped the spent butts ahead of me and watched them arch to the pavement and fizzle out with one last wink. If there was life behind the windows of the buildings on either side of me, I didn't notice it. The street was mine, all mine. They gave it to me gladly and wondered why I wanted it so nice and all alone.
There were others like me, sharing the dark and the solitude, but they were huddled in the recessions of the doorways not wanting to share the wet and the cold. I could feel their eyes follow me briefly before they turned inward to their thoughts again.
So I followed the hard concrete footpaths of the city through the towering canyons of the buildings and never noticed when the sheer cliffs of brick and masonry diminished and disappeared altogether, and the footpath led into a ramp then on to the spidery steel skeleton that was the bridge linking two states.
I climbed to the hump in the middle and stood there leaning on the handrail with a butt in my fingers, watching the red and green lights of the boats in the river below. They winked at me and called in low, throaty notes before disappearing into the night.
Like eyes and faces. And voices.
I buried my face in my hands until everything straightened itself out again, wondering what the judge would say if he could see me now. Maybe he'd laugh because I was supposed to be so damn tough, and here I was with hands that wouldn't stand still and an empty feeling inside my chest.”

Mickey Spillane book One Lonely Night

One Lonely Night (1951)

Life, Cars, Feeling, Solitude

“Here at this bridge we'll go our separate ways—
forlorn beside the road, I watch flags fly.”

Đặng Trần Côn (1710–1745) writer

Source: Chinh phụ ngâm, Lines 43–44

Way, Flying

“The gap that separated the holy and righteous God from sincful humanity has been bridged through…Jesus Christ. Hence, in eternity God will dwell intimately with redeemed mankind. **p. 25”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011)

God, Christ

Quotes about bridge page 3

Quotes about bridge
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