Quotes about hole
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Josh Billings photo

“The man who kan ware a paper collar a hole week and keap, it klean, aint fit for enny thing else.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Jonah Goldberg photo
Roberto Bolaño photo
James Rivière photo

“After three years spent in a small goldsmith factory, I had nothing left to learn. A colleague who was looking for a new job as goldsmith, tells me: look I went to a small shop, figured that they do not even use the electric drill, but they make holes with bows, like the primitives. I understood that this was the place for me.”

James Rivière (1949) Italian Jewellery and sculptor

Marta Bravi in : [s.n.] (2009). " Dalla bottega al Vaticano con i gioielli per il Papa http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/bottega-vaticano-i-gioielli-papa.html" in ilgiornale.it

Chris Cornell photo
Noel Coward photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Nick Cave photo
James Anthony Froude photo

“I cut a hole in my heart and wrote with the blood.”

James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine

On the writing of his novel The Nemesis of Faith (1849), in a letter to Charles Kingsley, as quoted in Doubting Clerics : From James Anthony Froude to Robert Elsmere via George Eliot (1989) by Rosemary Ashton

John Ralston Saul photo
Thomas Friedman photo

“The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

Imbalances of Power http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/opinion/21friedman.html, May 21, 2008.

Henry Hazlitt photo

“Let us begin with the simplest illustration possible: let us, emulating Bastiat, choose a broken pane of glass.A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker’s shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Fifty dollars? That will be quite a sum. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $50 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $50 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion. This little act of vandalism will in the first instance mean more business for some glazier. The glazier will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper will be out $50 that he was planning to spend for a new suit. Because he has had to replace a window, he will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need or luxury). Instead of having a window and $50 he now has merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the window and no suit. If we think of him as a part of the community, the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer.The glazier’s gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor’s loss of business. No new “employment” has been added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye.”

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Broken Window (ch. 2)

Christopher Titus photo
Louis C.K. photo
Frank McCourt photo
Lee Smolin photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
Jack Vance photo
Scott Adams photo
Steven M. Greer photo
Kodo Sawaki photo
George Steiner photo

“When the modern scholar cites from a classic text, the quotation seems to burn a hole in his own drab page.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: The Death of Tragedy (1961), Ch. IX: (p. 314).

Aldous Huxley photo
Jacob Bekenstein photo

“People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”

Theodore Levitt (1925–2006) American economist and professor at Harvard Business School

Theodore Levitt, cited in: Clayton Christensen (2016), The Clayton M. Christensen Reader. p. 46

John Muir photo
Tom McCarthy (writer) photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Clarence Darrow photo

“Life cannot be reconciled with the idea that back of the universe is a Supreme Being, all merciful and kind, and that he takes any account of the human beings and other forms of life that exist upon the earth. Whichever way man may look upon the earth, he is oppressed with the suffering incident to life. It would almost seem as though the earth had been created with malignity and hatred. If we look at what we are pleased to call the lower animals, we behold a universal carnage. We speak of the seemingly peaceful woods, but we need only look beneath the surface to be horrified by the misery of that underworld. Hidden in the grass and watching for its prey is the crawling snake which swiftly darts upon the toad or mouse and gradually swallows it alive; the hapless animal is crushed by the jaws and covered with slime, to be slowly digested in furnishing a meal. The snake knows nothing about sin or pain inflicted upon another; he automatically grabs insects and mice and frogs to preserve his life. The spider carefully weaves his web to catch the unwary fly, winds him into the fatal net until paralyzed and helpless, then drinks his blood and leaves him an empty shell. The hawk swoops down and snatches a chicken and carries it to its nest to feed its young. The wolf pounces on the lamb and tears it to shreds. The cat watches at the hole of the mouse until the mouse cautiously comes out, then with seeming fiendish glee he plays with it until tired of the game, then crushes it to death in his jaws. The beasts of the jungle roam by day and night to find their prey; the lion is endowed with strength of limb and fang to destroy and devour almost any animal that it can surprise or overtake. There is no place in the woods or air or sea where all life is not a carnage of death in terror and agony. Each animal is a hunter, and in turn is hunted, by day and night. No landscape is beautiful or day so balmy but the cry of suffering and sacrifice rends the air. When night settles down over the earth the slaughter is not abated. Some creatures are best at night, and the outcry of the dying and terrified is always on the wind. Almost all animals meet death by violence and through the most agonizing pain. With the whole animal creation there is nothing like a peaceful death. Nowhere in nature is there the slightest evidence of kindness, of consideration, or a feeling for the suffering and the weak, except in the narrow circle of brief family life.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), p. 383

Daniel Lyons photo

“Steve Jobs has created his own precious little walled garden. He's looking more and more like Howard Hughes, holed up in his penthouse, making sure he doesn't come in contact with any germs. Now Google is saying, hey, nice garden, have fun sitting in it. By yourself.”

Daniel Lyons (1960) American writer

Sayonara, iPhone: Why I'm Switching to Android http://newsweek.com/sayonara-iphone-why-im-switching-android-210354 in Newsweek (19 May 2010)

John Ruskin photo
John Hagee photo

“God says in Jeremiah 16 — "Behold I will bring them the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave unto their fathers" — that would be Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - "Behold I will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them" — that will be the Jews — "from every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks." If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust — you can't see that. So think about this — I will send fishers and I will send hunters. A fisher is someone who entices you with a bait. How many of you know who Theodore Herzl was? How many of you don't have a clue who he was? Woo, sweet God! Theodore Herzl is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew that at the turn of the 19th century said, "this land is our land, God wants us to live there". So he went to the Jews of Europe and said, "I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel". So few went, Herzl went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the Holocaust. Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says — Jeremiah righty? — "they shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks", meaning: there's no place to hide. And that will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended: I didn't write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, "my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel". Today Israel is back in the land and they are at Ezekiel 37 and 8. They are physically alive but they're not spiritually alive. Now how is God going to cause the Jewish people to come spiritually alive and say, "the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He is God"?”

John Hagee (1940) American pastor, theologian and saxophonist

late 2005 sermon at Cornerstone Church, quoted in

Joseph Strutt photo
George Herbert photo

“200. The hole calls the thiefe.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex photo
Russell Brand photo
Algernon Charles Swinburne photo
Ginger Stanley photo
Barbara Hepworth photo

“For out of every hole the rats came tumbling.”

English Fairy Tales (1890), More English Fairy Tales (1894), Pied Piper

Antonio Negri photo
Colin Meloy photo

“Find him, bind him, tie him to a pole and break his fingers to splinters,
Drag him to a hole until he wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling of his grave.”

Colin Meloy (1974) American musician

The Mariner's Revenge Song (Picaresque - 2005)
Lyrics

Garth Brooks photo

“And the white line's getting longer and the saddle's getting cold.
I'm much too young to feel this damn old.
All my cards are on the table with no ace left in the hole,
I'm much too young to feel this damn old.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

Much Too Young, written by G. Brooks and Randy Taylor
Song lyrics, Garth Brooks (1989)

Robert Burns photo

“If there's a hole in a' your coats,
I rede you tent it;
A chield's aman you takin' notes,
And faith he'll prent it.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

On the Late Captain Grose's Peregrinations Thro' Scotland, st. 1 (1793)

Bill Thompson photo
Freeman Dyson photo
Patti Smith photo
Lana Turner photo
Tommy Douglas photo

“I felt something like the man on the resurrection morning who was reading his own tombstone and said either someone is an awful liar or I'm in the wrong hole.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

August 3,1961, NDP Leadership Convention http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFmD3U2s7tI.

Julio Cortázar photo

“"Hair loss and retrieval" (Translation of "Pérdida y recuperación del pelo")


To combat pragmatism and the horrible tendency to achieve useful purposes, my elder cousin proposes the procedure of pulling out a nice hair from the head, knotting it in the middle and droping it gently down the hole in the sink. If the hair gets caught in the grid that usually fills in these holes, it will just take to open the tap a little to lose sight of it.


Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.


The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.


Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.


But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Donald Rumsfeld photo

“We do have a saying in America: if you're in a hole, stop digging ….. erm, I'm not sure I should have said that.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

http://www.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,,1943315,00.html
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/09/24/schroeder.blair/index.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20030621143902/http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s865620.htm
2000s

William March photo
Erich Ludendorff photo
Apsley Cherry-Garrard photo
Russell Brand photo
Alexander Rodchenko photo
Jayant Narlikar photo

“A black hole is the ultimate manifestation of a region of strong gravity. The pull of gravity in a black hole is so strong that even light cannot escape from it and time stands still.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Source: Jayant Narlikar Black Holes http://books.google.com/books?id=8qi55iSSeiwC, National Book Trust, India, 1 January 2006

Ani DiFranco photo
Jay Leiderman photo
Noel Gallagher photo
José Maria Eça de Queiroz photo

“Even the pot-bellied abbot, who in the evening sits on his veranda with a paternal air, enjoying his coffee and picking the holes in his teeth, has in his innermost soul the makings of a Torquemada.”

E o abade pançudo que à tardinha, à varanda, palita o dente furado saboreando o seu café com um ar paterno, traz dentro em si os indistintos restos dum Torquemada.
O Crime do Padre Amaro (1875), ch. 8; translation by Nan Flanagan from The Sin of Father Amaro ([1962] 1985) p. 98.

Edward Witten photo
Pete Doherty photo
Andy Goldsworthy photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Trent Reznor photo
Alexander Pope photo

“The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole
Can never be a mouse of any soul.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

"The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer" (c.1704, published 1713), lines 298-299. Compare: "I hold a mouses wit not worth a leke, That hath but on hole for to sterten to", Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "The Wif of Bathes Prologue", line 6154; "The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken", George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum.

Eliezer Yudkowsky photo
Zadie Smith photo
Kate Bush photo
Bill Hicks photo
Gerald Ford photo

“I would hope that understanding and reconciliation are not limited to the 19th hole alone.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Dedication speech at the World Golf Hall of Fame, Pinehurst North Carolina, as quoted in The New York Times (12 September 1974)
1970s

Michael T. Flynn photo

“One night at Socko and a year of probation were no comparison to the punishment at home. My rehabilitation was one of the fastest in adolescent history. I had it coming, and it taught me that moral rehab is possible. I behaved during my term of probation and stopped all of my criminal activity. But I would always retain my strong impulse to challenge authority and to think and act on my own whenever possible. There is room for such types in America, even in the disciplined confines of the United States Army. I’m a big believer in the value of unconventional men and women. They are the innovators and risk takers. Apple, one of the world’s most creative and successful high-tech companies, lives by the vision of transformation through exception. “Here’s to the crazy ones,” Apple’s campaign says. “The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” If you talk to my colleagues, they’ll tell you that I’m cut from the same cloth. My military biography starts badly. I was a miserable dropout in my freshman year of college (1.2 GPA), enlisted in a delayed-entry Marine Corps program, went to work as a lifeguard at a local beach, and then came the first of several miracles: an Army ROTC scholarship. Little did I know that my rebellious activities, such as skipping class and sundry other mistakes, would lead me to playing basketball (which I was very good at) with an ROTC instructor who saw something in me. Not only that, he took surprising initiative.”

Michael T. Flynn (1958) 25th United States National Security Advisor

Introduction
The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies (2016)

James Van Allen photo

“After a vast research program, which depended very heavily upon the use of a number of highspeed computers, I am pleased to offer you the result: "Space is that in which everything else is." In other words, "Space is the hole that we are in."”

James Van Allen (1914–2006) American nuclear physicist

On the definition of space: Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

Michael Chabon photo
Ted Nugent photo
Pete Doherty photo
Serge Lang photo

“I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground.”

Serge Lang (1927–2005) mathematician

"HIV and AIDS: Have We Been Misled?; Questions of Scientific and Journalistic Responsibility," http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/slquestions.htm Yale Scientific (Fall 1994), reprinted in Challenges (Springer, 1997, ISBN 0387948619, p. 70

Thom Yorke photo

“Far up above, aliens hover
Making home movies for the folks back home
Of all these weird creatures that lock up their spirits
Drill holes in themselves and live for their secrets”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

"Subterranean Homesick Alien"
Lyrics, OK Computer (1997)

Edgar Degas photo
Sarah Monette photo
Ray Nagin photo

“It's all right. You guys in New York City can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later, so let's be fair.”

Ray Nagin (1956) politician, businessman

Response to a reporters question addressing the length of the Katrina rebuilding efforts http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,210604,00.html (August 2006)
2006

Paul-Jean Toulet photo
Freeman Dyson photo
Alauddin Khalji photo

“The Sultan requested the wise men to supply some rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus, and for depriving them of that wealth and property which fosters disaffection and rebellion. … The people were brought to such a state of obedience that one revenue officer would string twenty khiits, mukaddims, or chaudharis together by the neck, and enforce payment by blows. No Hindu could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver, tonkas or jitals, or of any superfluity was to be seen. These things, which nourish insubordination and rebellion, were no longer to be found. Driven by destitution, the wives of the khuls and mukaddims went and served for hire in the houses of the Musulmans…. The Hindu was to be so reduced as to be left un- able to keep a horse to ride on, to carry arms, to wear fine clothes, or to enjoy any of the luxuries of life. …. I have, therefore, taken my measures, and have made my subjects obedient, so that at my command they are ready to creep into holes like mice. Now you tell me that it is all in accordance with law that the Hindus should be reduced to the most abject obedience. I am an unlettered man, but I have seen a great deal; be assured then that the Hindus will never become submissive and obedient till they are reduced to poverty. I have, therefore, given orders that just sufficient shall be left to them from year to year, of corn, milk, and curds, but that they shall not be allowed to accumulate hoards and property.”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Tarikh-i Firoz Shahi, of Ziauddin Barani in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 182 ff.
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

Bill Engvall photo
Franz Halder photo
Edward de Bono photo

“You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper.”

Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician

Source: Lateral Thinking : Creativity Step by Step (1970), p. 8.