Quotes about coin page 3
Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States
Source: 2000s, The Age of Turbulence (2008), Chapter Twenty-Five, "The Delphic Future", p. 465.
Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist
in Jackson Pollock: An Artists Symposium, ARTnews Vol. 66 no. 2 April 1967; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, pp. 147-148
1960 - 1970
Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist
"The ugly attractions of ISIS’ ideology" http://nypost.com/2014/11/02/the-ugly-attractions-of-isis-ideology/, New York Post (November 2, 2014). <br class="br">New York Post
“The German Reunification and unification of Europe are two sides of the same coin.”
Helmut Kohl (1930–2017) former chancellor of West Germany (1982-1990) and then the united Germany (1990-1998)
Die deutsche Einheit und die europäische Einigung sind zwei Seiten ein und derselben Medaille.
In a speech on the 15th party congress of the CDU, in Frankfurt an Main (June 17, 2002)
Frederic Dan Huntington (1819–1904) American bishop
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 314.
Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter
"The Clock"
Lyrics, The Eraser (2006)
Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian
Audio lectures, Creationism and Psychology (n. d.)
“Titus complained of the tax which Vespasian had imposed on the contents of the city urinals. Vespasian handed him a coin which had been part of the first day's proceeds: "Does it smell bad?" he asked. And when Titus said "No" he went on: "Yet it comes from urine."”
Reprehendenti filio Tito, quod etiam urinae vectigal commentus esset, pecuniam ex prima pensione admovit ad nares, sciscitans num odore offenderetur; et illo negante: "Atqui," inquit, "e lotio est."
Sueton book The Twelve Caesars
Sometimes misquoted as Pecunia non olet, "Money doesn't smell".
Source: The Twelve Caesars, Vespasian, Ch. 23
John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States
17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 409 and 416-418. Regarding the Necessary and Proper Clause in context of the powers of Congress.
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
W. Richard Scott (1932) American sociologist
Source: Institutions and Organizations., 1995, p. 89 (2001: 103)
Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer
Cognitive Surplus : Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)
William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician
Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter VIII, Unlimited Sequences Of Bernoulli Trials, p. 202.
Jack Benny (1894–1974) comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor
The Jack Benny Program (Radio: 1932-1955), The Jack Benny Program (Television: 1950-1965)
Kalle Lasn (1942) Estonian-Canadian film maker, author, magazine editor and activist
Cultural Jam (2000)
Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 104.
William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician
Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter I, The Sample Space, p. 7
Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel
Et guerre faicte sans bonne provision d'argent, n'a qu'un souspirail de vigueur. Les nerfz des batailles sont les pecunes.
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 44.
Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer
Source: Information and Decision Processes (1960), p. vii
Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy
Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)
Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general
Chachnama, E.D. vol. I, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher
hence one actually or potentially open
Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 38.
Rémi Brague (1947) French historian
"Aristotle's Definition of Motion and its Ontological Implications," Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, p. 12
Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States
1870s, Eighth State of the Union Address (1876)
William Poundstone (1955) American writer
Part One, Entropy, Toy Room, p. 46
Fortune's Formula (2005)
Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi
Battuta, Mahdi Husain, 235; Quaunah Turks, 155 n. ; Masalik-ul-Absar, E.D., III, 580-81. (Shihabuddin al-Umri, Masalik-ul-Absar fi Mumalik-ul-Amar) quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 10
Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality
[The Way Things Ought to Be, Pocket Books, October 1992, 193, 978-0671751456, 92028659, 26397008, 1724938M]
“Sit not, like the figure on our silver coin, looking ever backward.”
Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer
1880s, The Scholar in a Republic (1881)
“The Manatee (coined by John Cleese)”
Keith Olbermann (1959) American sports and political commentator
Catch Phrases
Michael Moorcock book The Mad God's Amulet
Book 1, Chapter 5 “The Machine” (p. 160)
The Mad God's Amulet (1968)
Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680) English clergyman
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 78.
Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer
Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Travels in Asia and Africa (Rehalã of Ibn Battûta)
Tommy Robinson (1982) English right-wing activist
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10123375/I-am-not-a-Nazi-says-EDL-leader-Tommy-Robinson.html ( video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opy5fXrTGEA) On BBC's Sunday Politics (16 June 2013) <br class="br">2013
“Nothing matters at all. Survival is the coin of the realm. Time is a river with banks.”
Barry N. Malzberg (1939) American novelist, short story writer
Source: Corridors (1982), p. 144 in The Nebula Awards 18 edited by Robert Silverberg
Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer
Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953)
Context: The way is open, comrades, free as Space
Alone is free. The only gold is love,
A coin that we have minted from the light
Of others who have cared for us on Earth
And who have deposited in us the power
That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.
William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State
Address at Illinois College (1881)
Context: Appearance too often takes the place of reality — the stamp of the coin is there, and the glitter of the gold, but, after all, it is but a worthless wash. Sham is carried into every department of life, and we are being corrupted by show and surface. We are too apt to judge people by what they have, rather than by what they are; we have too few Hamlets who are bold enough to proclaim, "I know not seem!"
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
The American Credo: A Contribution toward the Interpretation of the National Mind (1920)
1920s
Context: The American of today, in fact, probably enjoys less personal liberty than any other man of Christendom, and even his political liberty is fast succumbing to the new dogma that certain theories of government are virtuous and lawful, and others abhorrent and felonious. Laws limiting the radius of his free activity multiply year by year: It is now practically impossible for him to exhibit anything describable as genuine individuality, either in action or in thought, without running afoul of some harsh and unintelligible penalty. It would surprise no impartial observer if the motto “In God we trust” were one day expunged from the coins of the republic by the Junkers at Washington, and the far more appropriate word, “verboten,” substituted. Nor would it astound any save the most romantic if, at the same time, the goddess of liberty were taken off the silver dollars to make room for a bas-relief of a policeman in a spiked helmet. Moreover, this gradual (and, of late, rapidly progressive) decay of freedom goes almost without challenge; the American has grown so accustomed to the denial of his constitutional rights and to the minute regulation of his conduct by swarms of spies, letter-openers, informers and agents provocateurs that he no longer makes any serious protest.
“Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!”
Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
Context: "Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"
"The what?" said Richard.
"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a..."
"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."
"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissive shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." …
"You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap … ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi
Source: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 142.
Context: By willing endurance we cause suffering to pass. Evil becomes a spent force when we put up no resistance. By refusing to pay back the enemy with his own coin, and preferring to suffer without resistance, the Christian exhibits the sinfulness of contumely and insult. Violence stands condemned by its failure to evoke counter-violence.
Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician
Segment 67
Peoples Archive interview
Context: The word fractal, once introduced, had an extraordinary integrating effect upon myself and upon many people around. Initially again it was simply a word to write a book about, but once a word exists one begins to try to define it, even though initially it was simply something very subjective and indicating my field. Now the main property of all fractals, put in very loose terms, is that each part — they're made of parts — each part is like the whole except it is smaller. After having coined this word I sorted my own research over a very long period of time and I realised that I had been doing almost nothing else in my life.
Vannevar Bush book As We May Think
As We May Think (1945)
Context: Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, memex will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.
David Gemmell book The Swords of Night and Day
Source: Drenai series, The Swords of Night and Day, Ch. 18
William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre
No Maps for These Territories (2000)
Context: All I knew about the word "cyberspace" when I coined it, was that it seemed like an effective buzzword. It seemed evocative and essentially meaningless. It was suggestive of something, but had no real semantic meaning, even for me, as I saw it emerge on the page.
Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter
Letter to his fiancée Lee, (31 July 1978), published in Gerald Durrell: An Authorized Biography by Douglas Botting (1999)
Context: I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers.
I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously. … I have known silence: the cold earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends.
I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. … I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills fling home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their winds smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things… but —
All this I did without you. This was my loss.
All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain.
All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.
Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author
The Glass Forest (1986)
Context: Here is what I wrote about SF. If it has a familiar ring, my publishers liked it well enough to make it into a postcard for publicity purposes. 'I love SF for its surrealist verve, its loony non-reality, its piercing truths, its wit, its masked melancholy, its nose for damnation, its bunkum, its contempt for home comforts, its slewed astronomy, its xenophilia, its hip, its classlessness, its mysterious machines, its gaudy backdrops, its tragic insecurity.'
Science fiction has always seemed to me such a polyglot, an exotic mistress, a parasite, a kind of new language coined for the purpose of giving tongue to the demented twentieth century.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation
Context: We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because the criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy, and does not come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in visible nature. There is no stunning confutation of his nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted the law? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie with him, he so far deceases from nature. In some manner there will be a demonstration of the wrong to the understanding also; but should we not see it, this deadly deduction makes square the eternal account.
Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to love; none to knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism.
His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is trust. Our instinct uses "more" and "less" in application to man, of the presence of the soul, and not of its absence; the brave man is greater than the coward; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a man, and not less, than the fool and knave. There is no tax on the good of virtue; for that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute existence, without any comparative. Material good has its tax, and if it came without desert or sweat, has no root in me, and the next wind will blow it away. But all the good of nature is the soul's, and may be had, if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the head allow. I no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for example, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings with it new burdens. I do not wish more external goods, — neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the knowledge that the compensation exists, and that it is not desirable to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the wisdom of St. Bernard, — "Nothing can work me damage except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault."
Gene Spafford (1956) American computer scientist
Web Security & Commerce (O'Reilly, 1997, S. Garfinkel & G. Spafford), pp 9.
Context: Secure web servers are the equivalent of heavy armored cars. The problem is, they are being used to transfer rolls of coins and checks written in crayon by people on park benches to merchants doing business in cardboard boxes from beneath highway bridges. Further, the roads are subject to random detours, anyone with a screwdriver can control the traffic lights, and there are no police.
Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji Turkic military general of Qutb al-Din Aibak
About Ikhtiyãru’d-Dîn Muhammad Bakhtiyãr Khaljî (AD 1202-1206) Bengal The Tabqãt-i-Akbarî translated by B. De, Calcutta, 1973, Vol. I, p. 51. Tabqãt-i-Akharî by Nizamuddin Ahmad.
Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare (1856–1924) British orientalist
p. 139 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015005727337;view=1up;seq=163 <br class="br">Myth, Magic, and Morals (1909)
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician
"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)
Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist
Source: Pilgrim of the Absolute (1947), pp. 89-90
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India
Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works Volume 66, New Delhi, 1976, pp. 163-64. As quoted in Goel, S.R. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)
Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs
Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 476
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic
The Deliverance from Error https://www.amazon.com/Al-Ghazalis-Path-Sufism-Deliverance-al-Munqidh/dp/1887752307
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist
"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi
Source: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 142
Esperanza Spalding (1984) American jazz bassist and singer
On how recording in the studio can be a double-edged sword in “Esperanza Spalding: Insubordinate by Nature” https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/9830-esperanza-spalding-insubordinate-by-nature/ in Pitchfork (2016 Mar 8)
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad book Malfoozat
When a man is a sinner, his friends are different from those who are going to be his friends when he adopts Taqwa(fear of God).
The mystics have termed this change as 'death'.
Source: Malfoozat, Vol.1, p.2
Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist
Innkeeper's wife
Source: A Child is Born (1942)
Damien Hirst (1965) artist
Shaw, Anny, NFT breakthrough: Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin creates 99% energy efficient blockchain—and Damien Hirst is its first artist https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/nft-breakthrough-ethereum-co-founder-joe-lubin-creates-energy-efficient-blockchain-and-damien-hirst-is-its-first-artist, The Art Newspaper, 30 March 2021
“Good and evil are one. Just like a coin, the head and the tail.”
Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author
The House of the Dead https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=8PhfAAAAMAAJ&rdid=book-8PhfAAAAMAAJ&rdot=1 (1915), as translated by Constance Garnett, p. 16 <br class="br">General
“Loving and hating were so close, two sides of a coin whose name was Need.”
Barbara Hambly (1951) American fiction writer
Source: The Rainbow Abyss (1991), Chapter 9 (p. 153)