Quotes about map
page 2

Jane Yolen photo
Eliezer Yudkowsky photo

“But ignorance exists in the map, not in the territory. If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my own state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself. A phenomenon can seem mysterious to some particular person. There are no phenomena which are mysterious of themselves. To worship a phenomenon because it seems so wonderfully mysterious, is to worship your own ignorance.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

Mysterious Answers To Mysterious Questions http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu/mysterious_answers_to_mysterious_questions/ (August 2007); Yudkowsky credits the map/territory analogy to physicist/statistician Edwin Thompson Jaynes.

Scott Lynch photo
Paul Joseph Watson photo
Geoffrey Moore photo
Raymond Poincaré photo
Henry Miller photo
Oswald Spengler photo
Albert Speer photo
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz photo
David Allen photo

“My daily meta-map lists: events coming up; major projects for me; emerging interests; my accountabilities.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

21 April 2012 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/193919597991301123
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

James Howard Kunstler photo
Plutarch photo
Charles Stross photo
Jean Baudrillard photo

“It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours: The desert of the real itself.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

The Precession of Simulcra
1980s, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)

Tony Buzan photo
Francis Bacon photo
Larry Andersen photo

“We're still in the driver's seat. We just lost our map.”

Larry Andersen (1953) American baseball player

Larry Andersen cited in: Gordon Edes "Get That Man A Compass" in Sun Sentinel. September 19, 1993.
Phillies pitcher on their shrinking lead in the N East.

William Cowper photo

“What is it but a map of busy life,
Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?”

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 55.

William Pitt the Younger photo

“Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these ten years.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

Upon seeing a map of Europe in January 1806 after hearing of the Battle of Austerlitz. Quoted in Stanhope, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt https://archive.org/stream/lifeofwilliampit03stan/lifeofwilliampit03stan_djvu.txt. See also the Yale Book of Quotations.
Attributed

Terence McKenna photo
Warren Farrell photo
Daniel Dennett photo
Italo Svevo photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“Nazi forces are not seeking mere modifications in colonial maps or in minor European boundaries. They openly seek the destruction of all elective systems of government on every continent-including our own; they seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers who have seized power by force. These men and their hypnotized followers call this a new order. It is not new. It is not order.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Address to the Annual Dinner for White House Correspondents' Association, Washington, D.C. (15 March 1941). A similar (but misleading 'quote') is inscribed on the FDR memorial, in Washington D. C., which says "They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers... Call this a New Order. It is not new and it is not order".
1940s

Robert Andrews Millikan photo
William L. Shirer photo

“What Wilson and Lloyd George failed to see was that the terms of peace which they were hammering out against the dogged resistance of Clemenceau and Foch, while seemingly severe enough, left Germany in the long run relatively stronger than before. Except for the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France in the west and the loss of some valuable industrialized frontier districts to the Poles, form whom the Germans had taken them originally, Germany remained virtually intact, greater in population and industrial capacity than France could ever be, and moreover with her cities, farms, and factories undamaged by the war, which had been fought in enemy lands. In terms of relative power in Europe, Germany's position was actually better in 1919 than in 1914, or would be as soon as the Allied victors carried out their promise to reduce their armaments to the level of the defeated. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had not been the catastrophe for Germany that Bismarck had feared, because there was no Russian empire to take advantage of it. Russia, beset by revolution and civil war, was for the present, and perhaps would be for years to come, impotent. In the place of this powerful country on her eastern border Germany now had small, unstable states which could not seriously threaten her and which one day might easily be made to return former German territory and even made to disappear from the map.”

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

Monte Melkonian photo
Shimon Peres photo

“The president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map.”

Shimon Peres (1923–2016) Israeli politician, 8th prime minister and 9th president of Israel

Remarks 8 May 2006, as quoted in "Iran can also be wiped off the map", in The Jerusalem Post (9 May 2006) http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1145961301962

Tony Buzan photo

“The mind map will change your life.”

Tony Buzan (1942–2019) British psychologist

The Mind Map Book, Buzan and Buzan (1991)

Muammar Gaddafi photo
Dean Acheson photo

“No change (Marshall replacing former SecDef. Louis Johnson, who, soon after he resigned, was diagnosed with a fatal "brain malady") could have been more welcome to me. It brought only one embarrassment. The General (Marshall) insisted, overruling every protest of mine, in meticulously observing the protocol involved in my being the senior Cabinet officer. Never would he go through a door before me, or walk anywhere but on my left; he would go around an automobile to enter it after me and sit on the left; in meetings he would insist on my speaking before him. To be treated so by a revered and beloved former chief was a harrowing experience. But the result in government was, I think, unique in the history of the Republic. For the first time and perhaps, though I am not sure, the last, the Secretaries of State and Defense, with their top advisors, met with the Chiefs of Staff in their map room and discussed common problems together. At one of these meetings General Bradley and I made a treaty, thereafter scrupulously observed. The phrases 'from a military point of view' and 'from a political point of view' were excluded from our talks. No such dichotomy existed. Each of us had our tactical and strategic problems, but they were interconnected, not separate.”

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

Ulysses S. Grant photo
Phillip Guston photo
Otto von Bismarck photo

“Your map of Africa is really quite nice. But my map of Africa lies in Europe. Here is Russia, and here… is France, and we're in the middle — that's my map of Africa.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

Discussing the w:Emin Pasha Relief Expedition with Eugen Wolf on 5 December 1888
:„Ihre Karte von Afrika ist ja sehr schön, aber meine Karte von Afrika liegt in Europa. Hier liegt Rußland, und hier" - nach links deutend - "liegt Frankreich, und wir sind in der Mitte; das ist meine Karte von Afrika."
::Eugen Wolf: Vom Fürsten Bismarck und seinem Haus. Tagebuchblätter. 2nd edition Berlin 1904, p. 16 archive.org http://archive.org/stream/vomfrstenbismar00wolfgoog#page/n34/mode/2up
1880s

Hugo Chávez photo

“The abstract properties of this mapping are defined precisely, and its appropriateness and adequacy for the task at hand are demonstrated.”

David Marr (1945–1980) British neuroscientist and psychologist

p, 24
Vision, 1982

Charles Stross photo
Vanessa L. Williams photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
Gary Gygax photo
Turgut Özal photo

“In all these countries, (Özal swept his hand across the map from Afghanistan to Algeria) too many people have too little hope.”

Turgut Özal (1927–1993) Turkish politician

The Washington Institute's Second Annual Turgut Ozal Memorial Lecture. (October 14, 1998) http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07.php?CID=141
Comment made 8 years earlier to Strobe Talbott during an interview for Time (Jan. 28, 1991) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972205,00.html about the phenomenon of extremism in the Islamic world, as told by Strobe Talbott during The Washington Institute's Second Annual Turgut Ozal Memorial Lecture.

Scott Lynch photo

“Only gods-damned fools die for lines drawn on maps.”

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007), Chapter 11 “All Else, Truth” section 5 (p. 513)

Sigmund Freud photo

“Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Anxiety and Instinctual Life (Lecture 32)
1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

“Maps, due to their melding of scientific and artistic approaches, always involve complex interaction between the denotative and the connotative meanings of signs they contain.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 337

Michael McIntyre photo
Richard Long photo
TotalBiscuit photo

“Don't even tell me about the map. Don't even. Where's the keyhole?”

TotalBiscuit (1984–2018) British game commentator

WTF Is…? series, Guise of the Wolf (January 26, 2014), Research stream

Michel Danino photo
Mary Antin photo
Richard Feynman photo
TotalBiscuit photo

“What do you think you're doing?! Helps to have a map!' Also, 'Can you find the missing parts of my face?”

TotalBiscuit (1984–2018) British game commentator

WTF Is…? series, Guise of the Wolf (January 26, 2014), Research stream

Peter Greenaway photo
Pat Condell photo
Jakaya Kikwete photo
Daniel Levitin photo
Eric R. Kandel photo
John Donne photo

“Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and their map, who lie
Flat on this bed.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness, stanza 2

Michael Moore photo

“They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet… in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks. We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing. National Geographic produced a survey which showed that 60 percent of 18-25 year olds don't know where Great Britain is on a map. And 92 percent of us don't own a passport.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

On the American public, as quoted in "The Awkward Conscience of a Nation" in The Daily Mirror (3 November 2003); also partly quoted in "The company they keep" by Michael Barone, in U.S.News & World Report (12 July 2004) http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/040712/12barone.htm
2004

Ken Wilber photo
John Adams photo
Hans Reichenbach photo

“The surfaces of three-dimensional space are distinguished from each other not only by their curvature but also by certain more general properties. A spherical surface, for instance, differs from a plane not only by its roundness but also by its finiteness. Finiteness is a holistic property. The sphere as a whole has a character different from that of a plane. A spherical surface made from rubber, such as a balloon, can be twisted so that its geometry changes…. but it cannot be distorted in such a way as that it will cover a plane. All surfaces obtained by distortion of the rubber sphere possess the same holistic properties; they are closed and finite. The plane as a whole has the property of being open; its straight lines are not closed. This feature is mathematically expressed as follows. Every surface can be mapped upon another one by the coordination of each point of one surface to a point of the other surface, as illustrated by the projection of a shadow picture by light rays. For surfaces with the same holistic properties it is possible to carry through this transformation uniquely and continuously in all points. Uniquely means: one and only one point of one surface corresponds to a given point of the other surface, and vice versa. Continuously means: neighborhood relations in infinitesimal domains are preserved; no tearing of the surface or shifting of relative positions of points occur at any place. For surfaces with different holistic properties, such a transformation can be carried through locally, but there is no single transformation for the whole surface.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Arthur Guiterman photo
S. I. Hayakawa photo
David Mitchell photo

“What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”

"The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish", p. 389
Cloud Atlas (2004)

“To make maps that work, we must depict categories using methods that match the structures of human mental categorization.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 152. As cited in: V.P. Filippakopoulou et al. (2002)

S. I. Hayakawa photo
Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer photo

“Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O'Hara's birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker's guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, with Das Ende written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn't remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll's-house-sized books with titles like Lilliput On $2 A Day; a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from North Central railway terminus, Ruritania; Bartholomew's Road Atlas of Oz (one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed To Be Opened On My Death: E. A. Presley, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board O-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969-85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute-books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars; Unicorn-Calling, For Pleasure & Profit by J. R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2019; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck's {back]”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

The Portable Door (2003)

Samuel R. Delany photo
Vladimir Putin photo

“I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

interview with TF-1 Television Channel (France) http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/text/speeches/2006/07/12/1829_type82916_108548.shtml, taken on July 12, 2006
2006- 2010

Richard Long photo