Quotes about facility
page 2

Daniel Levitin photo
Francis Escudero photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo

“The natural leaning of our minds is in favour of prisoners; and in the mild manner in which the laws of this country are executed, it has rather been a subject of complaint by some that the Judges have given way too easily to mere formal objections on behalf of prisoners, and have been too ready on slight grounds to make favourable representations of their cases. Lord Hale himself, one of the greatest and best men who ever sat in judgment, considered this extreme facility as a great blemish, owing to which more offenders escaped than by the manifestation of their innocence." We must, however, take care not to carry this disposition too far, lest we loosen the bands of society, which is kept together by the hope of reward, and the fear of punishment. It has been always considered, that the Judges in our foreign possessions abroad were not bound by the rules of proceeding in our Courts here. Their laws are often altogether distinct from our own. Such is the case in India and other places. On appeals to the Privy Council from our colonies, no formal objections are attended to, if the substance of the matter or the corpus delicti sufficiently appear to enable them to get at the truth and justice of the case.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

King v. Suddis (1800), 1 East, 314. Lord Kenyon is later reported to have written, "I once before had occasion to refer to the opinion of a most eminent Judge, who was a great Crown lawyer, upon the subject, I mean Lord Hale; who even in his time lamented the too great strictness which had been required in indictments, and which had grown to be a blemish and inconvenience in the law; and observed that more offenders escaped by the over easy ear given to exceptions in indictments than by their own innocence". King v. Airey (c. 1800), 2 East, 34.

Robert Charles Wilson photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Stanislaw Ulam photo

“I am always amazed how much a certain facility with a special and apparently narrow technique can accomplish.”

Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 5, Harvard Years, p. 96

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Dylan Moran photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Tom Lehrer photo
Tim Buck photo
André Breton photo
Arthur James Balfour photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Michel De Montaigne photo
Ausonius photo
Michael Shea photo
Charles Symmons photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Charles Abbott, 1st Baron Tenterden photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Akio Morita photo

“We want everybody to have the best facilities in which to work, but we do not believe in posh and impressive private offices.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 182.

Thomas Beecham photo

“Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.”

Thomas Beecham (1879–1961) British conductor and impresario

[Beecham admitted to Neville Cardus that he had made this up on the spur of the moment to satisfy an importunate journalist; he acknowledged that it was an oversimplification. (Neville Cardus: 'Sir Thomas Beecham, A Memoir', 1961)]

Pauline Kael photo
Joe Biden photo
C. N. R. Rao photo
Camille Pissarro photo

“It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character... So much the better if it is painful for you to take even the first step, the more toilsome the work, the stronger you will emerge from it... I repeat, guard against facility.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter to his son Lucien (1894); as quoted in Painting Outside the lines, Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, David W. Galenson, Harvard University Press, 30 Jun 2009, p. 84
1890's

Hugh Downs photo
Hans von Bülow photo

“The editor of this selection from Chopin’s Pianoforte Studies has, however, no such intention; on the contrary. he wishes to make some of them, which owing to their difficulty have hitherto remained unpopularised, more accessible, particularly to the amateur, by pointing out the way to their correct study. And thus, on the basis of the technical facility to be acquired through these pieces, to enable even the non-professional to enjoy a more intimate acquaintance with those works of the classical romanticist, which, though representing the best and most undying side of his genius, have found till now but a small, though daily increasing circle of admirers; for the “Ladies’-Chopin”, which for forty years has blossomed in the pale and sickly rays of dilettantism; the “talented, languishing, Polish youth” to whom the most modest place on the Parnassus of musical literature was denied by the amateurish criticism of German professors, is as little the genuine entire Chopin, as is the Beethoven of “Adelaide” and the “Moonlight Sonata”, the god of Symphony. Truly a span of time must yet elapse before the matured and manly Chopin, the author of the two Sonatas, the 3rd and 4th Scherzos, the 4th Ballade, the Polonaise in F# minor, the later Mazurkas and Nocturnes etc., will be completely and generally appreciated at his full worth. At the same time much may be done by preparing and clearing the way; and one of the best means towards this end is sifting the material, and replacing favourite and unimportant works, by those less known though more important.”

Hans von Bülow (1830–1894) German musician

Preface to Instructive ausgabe. Klavier-Etuden von Fr. Chopin, 1880.

Akio Morita photo

“I have always made it a point to know our employees, to visit every facility of our company, and to try to meet and know every single employee.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 148.

Naomi Klein photo
Nick Bostrom photo
Brook Taylor photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
George W. Bush photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo

“Corps, division, and post commanders will afford all facilities for the completion of the Negro regiments now organizing in this department. Commissioners will issue supplies, and quarter-masters will furnish stores, on the same requisitions and returns as are required for other troops. It is expected that all commanders will especially exert themselves in carrying out the policy of the Administration, not only in organizing colored regiments and rendering them efficient, but also in removing prejudices against them.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Order to corps, division, and post commanders https://books.google.com/books?id=wqJBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=%22but+also+in+removing+prejudices+against+them%22+%22grant%22&source=bl&ots=zG336mXnGl&sig=GPSCXL3D9zfrVo9I7G2ZcBv2j_o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCgQ6AEwA2oVChMI3KSiwcSkxwIVi6CACh1v9gF-#v=onepage&q=%22but%20also%20in%20removing%20prejudices%20against%20them%22%20%22grant%22&f=false, Milliken's Bend, Louisiana.
1860s

Thomas Chatterton photo
Muharrem İnce photo
Philippe Starck photo
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo

“That reform of the land laws, that abolition of the present system of entail, together with just facilities for the transfer of land, is absolutely necessary in order to do anything like common justice to those who inhabit the rural parts of this country, and whom, instead of seeing them, as we now see them, dwindle from one census to another, I, for my part, and I believe you, along with me, would heartily desire to see maintained, not in their present number only, but in increasing numbers over the whole surface of the land.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (2 October 1891), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches of The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh and Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. 1888–1891 (London: Methuen, 1902), p. 386.
1890s

William Wordsworth photo
Julien Offray de La Mettrie photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“SWA Magazine: Talking about spacecraft, what do you think about the shuttle program?
Asimov: Well, I hope it does get off the ground. And I hope they expand it, because the shuttle program is the gateway to everything else. By means of the shuttle, we will be able to build space stations and power stations, laboratory facilities and habitations, and everything else in space.
SWA Magazine: How about orbital space colonies? Do you see these facilities being built or is the government going to cut back on projects like this?
Asimov: Well, now you've put your finger right on it. In order to have all of these wonderful things in space, we don't have to wait for technology - we've got the technology, and we don't have to wait for the know-how - we've got that too. All we need is the political go-ahead and the economic willingness to spend the money that is necessary. It is a little frustrating to think that if people concentrate on how much it is going to cost they will realize the great amount of profit they will get for their investment. Although they are reluctant to spend a few billions of dollars to get back an infinite quantity of money, the world doesn't mind spending $400 billion every years on arms and armaments, never getting anything back from it except a chance to commit suicide.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

An Interview with Isaac Asimov (1979)

Carl Sagan photo
James Joseph Sylvester photo
William L. Shirer photo
Jacob M. Appel photo

“Much as we do not permit convicted pedophiles to teach kindergarten or convicted hijackers to board airplanes, common sense dictates that individuals who have been imprisoned for plotting violence against abortion clinics should never again be permitted anywhere near such facilities.”

Jacob M. Appel (1973) American author, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic

"The Case for an Anti-Abortion Violence Registry," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel/the-case-for-an-anti-abor_b_222559.html The Huffington Post (2009-06-29)

Charlotte Brontë photo
Chester Bowles photo

“I believe that we should take every opportunity to challenge the assumption that our European allies are doing us a favor whenever they provide us with the necessary facilities from which to defend their own continent.”

Chester Bowles (1901–1986) American politician

Chester Bowles, "The Azores," White House Memorandum to President John F. Kennedy, Washington, DC, June 4, 1962. Quoted in Alexander Cooley and Hendrik Spruyt, Contracting States: Sovereign Transfers in International Relations, Princeton University Press (2009), pg. 100.

Vannevar Bush photo
Halldór Laxness photo
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo
Richard Rohr photo
John C. Calhoun photo
David Crystal photo

“Micro computers used as word processors complement the audio facilities, enabling the interactive teaching of all four language skills reading, listening, speaking and writing.”

David Crystal (1941) British linguist and writer

Source: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 1987, p. 377

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher photo

“It would seem at first sight as if the rapid expansion of the region of mathematics must be a source of danger to its future progress. Not only does the area widen but the subjects of study increase rapidly in number, and the work of the mathematician tends to become more and more specialized. It is, of course, merely a brilliant exaggeration to say that no mathematician is able to understand the work of any other mathematician, but it is certainly true that it is daily becoming more and more difficult for a mathematician to keep himself acquainted, even in a general way, with the progress of any of the branches of mathematics except those which form the field of his own labours. I believe, however, that the increasing extent of the territory of mathematics will always be counteracted by increased facilities in the means of communication. Additional knowledge opens to us new principles and methods which may conduct us with the greatest ease to results which previously were most difficult of access; and improvements in notation may exercise the most powerful effects both in the simplification and accessibility of a subject. It rests with the worker in mathematics not only to explore new truths, but to devise the language by which they may be discovered and expressed; and the genius of a great mathematician displays itself no less in the notation he invents for deciphering his subject than in the results attained…. I have great faith in the power of well-chosen notation to simplify complicated theories and to bring remote ones near and I think it is safe to predict that the increased knowledge of principles and the resulting improvements in the symbolic language of mathematics will always enable us to grapple satisfactorily with the difficulties arising from the mere extent of the subject”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 466 : On the expansion of the field of mathematics, and on the importance of a well-chosen notation

Tim Berners-Lee photo

“We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities. The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

"Information Management: A Proposal" https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html (March 1989), the original proprosal for the software project at CERN that became the World Wide Web.
Context: We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities. The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards. The result should be sufficiently attractive to use that it the information contained would grow past a critical threshold, so that the usefulness the scheme would in turn encourage its increased use. The passing of this threshold accelerated by allowing large existing databases to be linked together and with new ones.

Bill Bailey photo

“Success but sharpens his avidity, and facility but augments his impatience.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

Lecture I. Introductory.
A Treatise on Language: Or, The Relation which Words Bear to Things, in Four Parts (1836)
Context: Man exists in a world of his own creation. He cannot step, but on ground transformed by culture; nor look, but on objects produced by art. The animals which constitute his food are unknown to nature, while trees, fruits, and herbs, are the trophies of his labour. In himself nearly every natural impulse is suppressed as vicious, and every mortification solicited as a virtue. His language, actions, sentiments, and desires are nearly all factitious. Stupendous in achievement, he is boundless in attempt. Having subdued the earth's surface, he would explore its centre; having vanquished diseases, he would subdue death. Unsatisfied with recording the past, he would anticipate the future. Uncontented with subjugating the ocean, he would traverse the air. Success but sharpens his avidity, and facility but augments his impatience.

Camille Paglia photo

“The computer, with its multiplying forums for spontaneous free expression from e-mail to listservs and blogs, has increased facility and fluency of language but degraded sensitivity to the individual word and reduced respect for organized argument, the process of deductive reasoning.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age (2004)
Context: The computer, with its multiplying forums for spontaneous free expression from e-mail to listservs and blogs, has increased facility and fluency of language but degraded sensitivity to the individual word and reduced respect for organized argument, the process of deductive reasoning. The jump and jitter of us commercial television have demonstrably reduced attention span in the young.

Charles Evans Hughes photo

“The only real progress to abiding peace is found in the friendly disposition of peoples and … facilities for maintaining peace are useful only to the extent that this friendly disposition exists and finds expression.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

The Pathway of Peace (1923)
Context: The only real progress to abiding peace is found in the friendly disposition of peoples and … facilities for maintaining peace are useful only to the extent that this friendly disposition exists and finds expression. War is not only possible, but probable, where mistrust and hatred and desire for revenge are the dominant motives. Our first duty is at home with our own opinion, by education and unceasing effort to bring to naught the mischievous exhortation of chauvinists; our next is to aid in every practicable way in promoting a better feeling among peoples, the healing of wounds, and the just settlement of differences.

John F. Kennedy photo

“This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, materiel and facilities”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress
Context: This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, materiel and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel. New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could in fact, aggravate them further — unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo
Buckminster Fuller photo
Boris Johnson photo

“If you do that you have to answer the question what next? What if the Iranians do rush for a nuclear weapon? Are we seriously saying that we are going to bomb those facilities at Fordo and Natanz? Is that really a realistic possibility? Or do we work round what we have got and push back on Iran together?”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Iran nuclear deal: Johnson courts Trump on Fox & Friends https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44026548, BBC News, 7 May 2018
2010s, 2018

I. F. Stone photo
Fidel Castro photo
Ta-Nehisi Coates photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Sania Mirza photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo

“The natural leaning of our minds is in favour of prisoners; and in the mild manner in which the laws of this country are executed, it has rather been a subject of complaint by some that the Judges have given way too easily to mere formal objections on behalf of prisoners, and have been too ready on slight grounds to make favourable representations of their cases. Lord Hale himself, one of the greatest and best men who ever sat in judgment, considered this extreme facility as a great blemish, owing to which more offenders escaped than by the manifestation of their innocence.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

We must, however, take care not to carry this disposition too far, lest we loosen the bands of society, which is kept together by the hope of reward, and the fear of punishment. It has been always considered, that the Judges in our foreign possessions abroad were not bound by the rules of proceeding in our Courts here. Their laws are often altogether distinct from our own. Such is the case in India and other places. On appeals to the Privy Council from our colonies, no formal objections are attended to, if the substance of the matter or the corpus delicti sufficiently appear to enable them to get at the truth and justice of the case.
King v. Suddis (1800), 1 East, 314. Lord Kenyon is later reported to have written, "I once before had occasion to refer to the opinion of a most eminent Judge, who was a great Crown lawyer, upon the subject, I mean Lord Hale; who even in his time lamented the too great strictness which had been required in indictments, and which had grown to be a blemish and inconvenience in the law; and observed that more offenders escaped by the over easy ear given to exceptions in indictments than by their own innocence". King v. Airey (c. 1800), 2 East, 34.

Dadasaheb Phalke photo
Jani Allan photo

“She is not destructive - but she does have a particular facility for puncturing pomposity.”

Jani Allan (1952) South African columnist and broadcaster

Joe Sutton referring to Allan following their interview. Quoted in Face Value by Jani Allan.

Jerome photo

“Plenus venter facile de ieiuniis disputat.”

Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.
Letter 58
Letters

John Stuart Mill photo
W. H. Auden photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“What lies behind the complaint about the dearth of civil courage? In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among ourselves. To attribute this simply to personal cowardice would be too facile a psychology; its background is quite different. In a long history, we Germans have had to learn the need for and the strength of obedience. In the subordination of all personal wishes and ideas to the tasks to which we have been called, we have seen the meaning and greatness of our lives. We have looked upwards, not in servile fear, but in free trust, seeing in our tasks a call, and in our call a vocation. This readiness to follow a command from "above" rather than our own private opinions and wishes was a sign of legitimate self-distrust. Who would deny that in obedience, in their task and calling, the Germans have again and again shown the utmost bravery and self-sacrifice? But the German has kept his freedom — and what nation has talked more passionately of freedom than the Germans, from Luther to the idealist philosophers?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

by seeking deliverance from self-will through service to the community. Calling and freedom were to him two sides of the same thing. But in this he misjudged the world; he did not realize that his submissiveness and self-sacrifice could be exploited for evil ends. When that happened, the exercise of the calling itself became questionable, and all the moral principles of the German were bound to totter. The fact could not be escaped that the Germans still lacked something fundamental: he could not see the need for free and responsible action, even in opposition to the task and his calling; in its place there appeared on the one hand an irresponsible lack of scruple, and on the other a self-tormenting punctiliousness that never led to action. Civil courage, in fact, can grow only out of the free responsibility of free men. Only now are the Germans beginning to discover the meaning of free responsibility. It depends on a God who demands responsible action in a bold venture of faith, and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the man who becomes a sinner in that venture.
Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Civil Courage, p. 5

Richard Dawkins photo

“To an atheist […], there is no all-seeing all-loving god to keep us free from harm. But atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of the next life, we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have, an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life-affirming, in a way religion can never be. Look around you. Nature demands our attention, begs us to explore, to question. Religion can provide only facile, ultimately unsatisfying answers. Science, in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in all its complexity. People sometimes say "There must be more than just this world, than just this life."”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

But how much more do you want? We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here, the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world.
End of the part 2: "The Virus of Faith" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMUG6qd98wc
The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

Dan Abnett photo
William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim photo

“...any Japanese officer wishing to commit suicide would be given every facility.”

William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim (1891–1970) former Governor-General of Australia

Source: Defeat Into Victory (1961), p. 442

“…I have discovered that plays are easier to write than novels if the writer has a certain verbal facility, a certain capacity for the colloquial, an ear for the secret cadences of the spoken word. A play can be written with more ease than a novel…”

Luis Rafael Sánchez (1936) Puerto Rican playwright and novelist

On plays versus novels in “Luis Rafael Sánchez: Counterpoints" https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00096005/00024/14j (Sargasso, 1984)

Francis Bacon photo

“A single life doth well with churchmen; for charity will hardly water the ground, where it must first fill a pool. It is indifferent for judges and magistrates; for if they be facile and corrupt, you shall have a servant, five times worse than a wife.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Marriage and Single Life

Frederick Douglass photo
Stokely Carmichael photo
Woodrow Wilson photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Ralph Torres photo

“We just don't have the facility to give proper care for all of our patients (in the Northern Mariana Islands), and that's the reason why we have this medical referral program, to send our patients out.”

Ralph Torres (1979) an American Republican politician from Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands

Source: Ralph Torres (2021) cited in: " Torres: At least $10M needed for medical referral program https://www.postguam.com/news/cnmi/torres-at-least-10m-needed-for-medical-referral-program/article_8005ba4e-c681-11eb-bd3d-3f3499b70b2e.html" in The Guam Daily Post, 7 June 2021.