Quotes about motion
page 6

Douglas Coupland photo
Don DeLillo photo
Carl Maria von Weber photo
Edward Fredkin photo
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot photo

“Heat can evidently be a cause of motion only by virtue of the changes of volume or of form which it produces in bodies.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

p, 125
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

Pierre Louis Maupertuis photo
Yogi Berra photo

“Lopat was the cutest of the gang, the easiest to catch because he had almost perfect control of every pitch at different speeds. He made batters impatient. They couldn't wait for what looked so easy to hit and they'd swing at his motion.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

As quoted in "Raschi Was Best Hurler: Yogi" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=2rEfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PdcEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1965%2C6170607.

James Bradley photo
Adam Roberts photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Roger Shepard photo
Thomas Hobbes photo
Auguste Rodin photo

“In sculpture the projection of the fasciculi must be accentuated, the foreshortening forced, the hollows deepened; sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump, not of clear, well-smoothed, unmodelled figures. Ignorant people, when they see close-knitted true surfaces, say that 'it is not finished.' No notion is falser than that of finish unless it be that of elegance; by means of these two ideas people would kill our art. The way to obtain solidity and life is by work carried out to the fullest, not in the direction of achievement and of copying détails, but in that of truth in the successive schemes. The public, perverted by académie préjudices, confounds art with neatness. The simplicity of the 'École' is a painted cardboard ideal, A cast from life is a copy, the exactest possible copy, and yet it has neither motion nor eloquence. Art intervenes to exaggerate certain surfaces, and also to fine down others. In sculpture everything depends upon the way in which the modelling is carried out with a constant thought of the main line of the scheme, upon the rendering of the hollows, of the projections and of their connections; thus it is that one may get fine lights, and especially fine shadows that are not opaque. Everything should be emphasised according to the accent that it is desired to render, and the degree of amplification is personal, according to the tact and the temperament of each sculptor; and for this reason there is no transmissible process, no studio recipe, but only a true law. I see it in the antique and in Michael Angelo. To work by the profiles, in depth not by surfaces, always thinking of the few geometrical forms from which all nature proceeds, and to make these eternal forms perceptible in the individual case of the object studied, that is my criterion. That is not idealism, it is a part of the handicraft. My ideas have nothing to do with it but for that method; my Danaids and my Dante figures would be weak, bad things. From the large design that I get your mind deduces ideas.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 61-63

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo

“We passed on the email to the Eastern India Motion Pictures Association. They have informed Lalbazar’s anti-piracy cell. We’ve also informed Bhawani Bhavan and will write to the copyright authorities.”

Arin Paul (1980) Indian film director

On Music Piracy of 10:10 http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081117/jsp/calcutta/story_10119609.jsp(2008)

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. photo
L. Ron Hubbard photo
Rick Baker photo

“When you have a good actor, in a good makeup, and he's been sitting in the makeup chair looking at himself in the mirror, seeing himself become something else, and then he walks onto a set and he knows where he is, he knows what he looks like, he gives a performance that he's never going to give on a motion-capture stage.”

Rick Baker (1950) American special makeup effects artist

Legendary Special-Effects Artist Rick Baker on How CGI Killed His Industry https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jma87d/legendary-rick-bakers-retirement-auction-marks-the-end-of-the-non-cgi-era-888 (June 8, 2015)

Adam Smith photo

“In the languor of disease and the weariness of old age, the pleasures of the vain and empty distinctions of greatness disappear. To one, in this situation, they are no longer capable of recommending those toilsome pursuits in which they had formerly engaged him. In his heart he curses ambition, and vainly regrets the ease and the indolence of youth, pleasures which are fled for ever, and which he has foolishly sacrificed for what, when he has got it, can afford him no real satisfaction. In this miserable aspect does greatness appear to every man when reduced either by spleen or disease to observe with attention his own situation, and to consider what it is that is really wanting to his happiness. Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. …
But though this splenetic philosophy, which in time of sickness or low spirits is familiar to every man, thus entirely depreciates those great objects of human desire, when in better health and in better humour, we never fail to regard them under a more agreeable aspect. Our imagination, which in pain and sorrow seems to be confined and cooped up within our own persons, in times of ease and prosperity expands itself to every thing around us. We are then charmed with the beauty of that accommodation which reigns in the palaces and economy of the great; and admire how every thing is adapted to promote their ease, to prevent their wants, to gratify their wishes, and to amuse and entertain their most frivolous desires. If we consider the real satisfaction which all these things are capable of affording, by itself and separated from the beauty of that arrangement which is fitted to promote it, it will always appear in the highest degree contemptible and trifling. But we rarely view it in this abstract and philosophical light. We naturally confound it, in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the machine or economy by means of which it is produced. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the imagination as something grand, and beautiful, and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it.
And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.”

Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part IV

Willem de Sitter photo

“Both the law of inertia and the law of gravitation contain a numerical factor or a constant belonging to matter, which is called mass. We have thus two definitions of mass; one by the law of inertia: mass is the ratio between force and acceleration. We may call the mass thus defined the inertial or passive mass, as it is a measure of the resistance offered by matter to a force acting on it. The second is defined by the law of gravitation, and might be called the gravitational or active mass, being a measure of the force exerted by one material body on another. The fact that these two constants or coefficients are the same is, in Newton's system, to be considered as a most remarkable accidental coincidence and was decidedly felt as such by Newton himself. He made experiments to determine the equality of the two masses by swinging a pendulum, of which the bob was hollow and could be filled up with different materials. The force acting on the pendulum is proportional to its active mass, its inertia is proportional to its passive mass, so that the period will depend on the ratio of the passive and the active mass. Consequently the fact that the period of all these different pendulums was the same, proves that this ratio is a constant, and can be made equal to unity by a suitable choice of units, i. e., the inertial and the gravitational mass are the same. These experiments have been repeated in the nineteenth century by Bessel, and in our own times by Eötvös and Zeeman, and the identity of the inertial and the gravitational mass is one of the best ascertained empirical facts in physics-perhaps the best. It follows that the so-called fictitious forces introduced by a motion of the body of reference, such as a rotation, are indistinguishable from real forces…. In Einstein's general theory of relativity there is also no formal theoretical difference, as there was in Newton's system…. the equality of inertial and gravitational mass is no longer an accidental coincidence, but a necessity.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

p, 125
"The Astronomical Aspect of the Theory of Relativity" (1933)

Thomas Aquinas photo
Michael Swanwick photo
William Gilbert (astronomer) photo
Ray Harryhausen photo

“I am often asked if I would have liked to have been involved with Jurassic Park. The plain answer is no. Although excellent, it is not with all its dollars what I would have wished to do with my career. I was always a loner and worked best that way. Since the very beginning I fought and struggled under constant pressure to keep the design and final result within my hands. As time moved on this became more difficult, until I was forced to bow to the fact that my method of working, in the financial sense, was no longer practical. Model animation has been relegated to a reflection, or a starting point for creature computer effects that has reached a high few could have anticipated. However, for all the wonderful achievements of the computer, the process creates creatures that are too realistic and for me that makes them unreal because they have lost one vital element - a dream quality. Fantasy, for me, is realizing strange beings that are so removed from the 21st century. These beings would include not only dinosaurs, because no matter what the scientists say, we still don't know how dinosaurs looked or moved, but also creatures of the mind. Fantastical creatures where the unreal quality becomes even more vital. Stop-motion supplies the perfect breath of life for them, offering a look of pure fantasy because their movements are beyond anything we know.”

Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013) American animator

Ray Harryhausen & Tony Dalton (2003), An Animated Life, Aurum Press, p. 8

Samuel Adams photo

“If you, or Colonel Dalrymple under you, have the power to remove one regiment you have the power to remove both. It is at your peril if you refuse. The meeting is composed of three thousand people. They have become impatient. A thousand men are already arrived from the neighborhood, and the whole country is in motion. Night is approaching. An immediate answer is expected. Both regiments or none!”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Address to acting governor Thomas Hutchinson, 6 March 1770, the day following the Boston Massacre. Hutchinson had offered to remove one of the two British regiments stationed in Boston. http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0395825105&id=EQriRekKKPMC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=%22Night+is+approaching.+An+immediate+answer+is+expected.+Both+regiments+or+none%22&sig=P3liJRs37lVSpjUrLHv7bPdEuXk

John Crowley photo
Isaac Barrow photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Pierre Louis Maupertuis photo

“After so many great men have worked on this subject, I almost do not dare to say that I have discovered the universal principle upon which all these laws are based, a principle that covers both elastic and inelastic collisions and describes the motion and equilibrium of all material bodies.
This is the principle of least action, a principle so wise and so worthy of the supreme Being, and intrinsic to all natural phenomena; one observes it at work not only in every change, but also in every constancy that Nature exhibits. In the collision of bodies, motion is distributed such that the quantity of action is as small as possible, given that the collision occurs. At equilibrium, the bodies are arranged such that, if they were to undergo a small movement, the quantity of action would be smallest.
The laws of motion and equilibrium derived from this principle are exactly those observed in Nature. We may admire the applications of this principle in all phenomena: the movement of animals, the growth of plants, the revolutions of the planets, all are consequences of this principle. The spectacle of the universe seems all the more grand and beautiful and worthy of its Author, when one considers that it is all derived from a small number of laws laid down most wisely. Only thus can we gain a fitting idea of the power and wisdom of the supreme Being, not from some small part of creation for which we know neither the construction, usage, nor its relationship to other parts. What satisfaction for the human spirit in contemplating these laws of motion and equilibrium for all bodies in the universe, and in finding within them proof of the existence of Him who governs the universe!”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

Nicomachus photo
Vātsyāyana photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Rufus Wainwright photo

“I don't want to hold you and feel so helpless
I don't want to smell you and lose my senses
And smile in slow motion
With eyes in love.”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

Foolish Love
Song lyrics, Rufus Wainwright (1998)

Charles Darwin photo
James Jeans photo
Alfred Hitchcock photo

“The Birds could be the most terrifying motion picture I have ever made.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Movie trailer for the 1960s film The Birds.

Julia Gillard photo
Herbert Spencer photo

“Evolution is definable as a change from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Pt. II, The Knowable; Ch. XV, The Law of Evolution (continued)
First Principles (1862)

William Faulkner photo

“…life is not so much motion as an inventless repetition of motion.”

Charles Mallinson in Ch. 8
The Mansion (1959)

Carl Barus photo
Johannes Kepler photo
Felix Ehrenhaft photo

“What about the orbiting of the so-called electrons around their central nucleus? What has really been observed unequivocally? Nothing of the moving particle; what has rather been observed are phenomena which at first glance have nothing to do at all with the motion of bodies. Everything else that leads to the atomic model, is a long chain of inferences.”

Felix Ehrenhaft (1879–1952) Austrian physicist

Wie steht es bei dem Kreisen der sogenannten Elektronen um ihren zentralen Kern? Was ist hier wirklich unmittelbar wahrgenommen worden? Nichts von den bewegten Teilchen; was vielmehr beobachtet wurde, sind Erscheinungen, welche auf den ersten Blick mit der Bewegung von Körpern gar nichts zu tun haben. Alles übrige, was zum Atommodell geführt, ist eine lange Kette von Schlüssen.
In an address to the Viennese Chemisch-Physikalische Gesellschaft http://www.cpg.univie.ac.at/, April 26, 1932, as quoted by [Joseph Braunbeck, Der andere Physiker: das Leben von Felix Ehrenhaft, Leykam Buchverlagsgesellschaft, 2003, 3701174709, 51]

George William Curtis photo
James Clerk Maxwell photo

“We may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.”

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Scottish physicist

Introductory Lecture on Experimental Physics held at Cambridge in October 1871, re-edited by W. D. Niven (2003) in Volume 2 of The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, Courier Dover Publications, p. 243.

“Today’s laziness consists in lifeless motion.”

Ludwig Hohl (1904–1980) Swiss writer

Die wahre heutige Faulheit besteht in einer toten Bewegung.
Die Notizen (1981), I, 3

“Money alone sets all the world in motion.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 656
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

François Englert photo

“Three distinct geometries on S7 arise as solutions of the classical equations of motion in eleven dimensions. In addition to the conventional riemannian geometry, one can also obtain the two exceptional Cartan-Schouten compact flat geometries with torsion.”

François Englert (1932) Belgian theoretical physicist

[10.1016/0370-2693(82)90684-0, 1982, Spontaneous compactification of eleven-dimensional supergravity, Physics Letters B, 119, 4–6, 339–342]

Frank Wilczek photo
Paul Klee photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Hermann Hesse photo

“For a long time one school of players favored the technique of stating side by side, developing in counterpoint, and finally harmoniously combining two hostile themes or ideas, such as law and freedom, individual and community. In such a Game the goal was to develop both themes or theses with complete equality and impartiality, to evolve out of thesis and antithesis the purest possible synthesis. In general, aside from certain brilliant exceptions, Games with discordant, negative, or skeptical conclusions were unpopular and at times actually forbidden. This followed directly from the meaning the Game had acquired at its height for the players. It represented an elite, symbolic form of seeking for perfection, a sublime alchemy, an approach to that Mind which beyond all images and multiplicities is one within itself — in other words, to God. Pious thinkers of earlier times had represented the life of creatures, say, as a mode of motion toward God, and had considered that the variety of the phenomenal world reached perfection and ultimate cognition only in the divine Unity. Similarly, the symbols and formulas of the Glass Bead Game combined structurally, musically, and philosophically within the framework of a universal language, were nourished by all the sciences and arts, and strove in play to achieve perfection, pure being, the fullness of reality. ”

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

James Jeans photo
James Jeans photo
Pierre Louis Maupertuis photo
Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. photo
William Wordsworth photo

“When his veering gait
And every motion of his starry train
Seem governed by a strain
Of music, audible to him alone.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

The Triad.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Orson Scott Card photo
James Howard Kunstler photo

“Motion is a great tranquilizer.”

Source: World Made By Hand (2008), Chapter 6, p. 34

Lee Child photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“What [is] the prevailing attitude today among those who call themselves religious but vigorously advocate tolerance? There are three main options, ranging from the disingenuous Machiavellian--1. As a matter of political strategy, the time is not ripe for candid declarations of religious superiority, so we should temporize and let sleeping dogs lie in hopes that those of other faiths can gently be brought around over the centuries.--through truly tolerant Eisenhowerian "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply religious belief — and I don't care what it is" --2. It really doesn't matter which religion you swear allegiance to, as long as you have some religion.--to the even milder Moynihanian benign neglect--3. Religion is just too dear to too many to think of discarding, even though it really doesn't do any good and is simply an empty historical legacy we can afford to maintain until it quietly extinguishes itself sometime in the distant and unforeseeable future.It it no use asking people which they choose, since both extremes are so undiplomatic we can predict in advance that most people will go for some version of ecumenical tolerance whether they believe it or not. …We've got ourselves caught in a hypocrisy trap, and there is no clear path out. Are we like families in which the adults go through all the motions of believing in Santa Claus for the sake of the kids, and the kids all pretend still to believe in Santa Claus so as not to spoil the adults' fun? If only our current predicament were as innocuous and even comical as that! In the adult world of religion, people are dying and killing, with the moderates cowed into silence by the intransigence of the radicals in their own faiths, and many afraid to acknowledge what they actually believe for fear of breaking Granny's heart, or offending their neighbors to the point of getting run out of town, or worse.If this is the precious meaning our lives are vouchsafed thanks to our allegiance to one religion or another, it is not such a bargain, in my opinion. Is this the best we can do? Is it not tragic that so many people around the world find themselves enlisted against their will in a conspiracy of silence, either because they secretly believe that most of the world's population is wasting their lives in delusion (but they are too tenderhearted — or devious — to say so), or because they secretly believe that their own tradition is just such a delusion (but they fear for their own safety if they admit it)?”

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Javad Alizadeh photo
Robert Boyle photo

“I cannot conceive, how a body, destitute of understanding and sense, truly so called, can moderate and determine its own motions; especially so as to make them conformable to laws that it has no knowledge of.”

Robert Boyle (1627–1691) English natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor

"A Free Inquiry into the Vulgar Notion of Nature" Sect.1 ibid.

Mike Tyson photo
Pierre Louis Maupertuis photo

“A true philosopher does not engage in vain disputes about the nature of motion; rather, he wishes to know the laws by which it is distributed, conserved or destroyed, knowing that such laws is the basis for all natural philosophy.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

Emil Nolde photo
Oliver Lodge photo

“Motion and force are our primary objects of experience and consciousness; and in terms of them all other less familiar occurrences may conceivably be studied and grasped.”

Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) British physicist

The Ether of Space https://books.google.com/books?id=ycgEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA15, p. 15
The Ether of Space (1909)

André Derain photo
Alexander Calder photo

“The sense of motion in painting and sculpture has long been considered as one of the primary elements of the composition.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1930s - 1950s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture', (1933)

Carl Friedrich Gauss photo

“Arc, amplitude, and curvature sustain a similar relation to each other as time, motion, and velocity, or as volume, mass, and density.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

"Gauss's Abstract of the Disquisitiones Generales circa Superficies Curvas presented to the Royal Society of Gottingen" (1827) Tr. James Caddall Morehead & Adam Miller Hiltebeitel in General Investigations of Curved Surfaces of 1827 and 1825 http://books.google.com/books?id=SYJsAAAAMAAJ& (1902)

Jon Courtenay Grimwood photo
Marguerite Yourcenar photo

“The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.”

La lettre écrite m'a enseigné à écouter la voix humaine, tout comme les grandes attitudes immobiles des statues m'ont appris à apprécier les gestes.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 21

Frederic Dan Huntington photo
Louis Brownlow photo
David Eugene Smith photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Bruce Palmer Jr. photo
James Fenimore Cooper photo
Albert Jay Nock photo
James Joseph Sylvester photo
Albert A. Michelson photo

“It appears, from all that precedes, reasonably certain that if there be any relative motion between the earth and the luminiferous ether, it must be small; quite small enough entirely to refute Fresnel's explanation of aberration.”

Albert A. Michelson (1852–1931) American physicist

Concluding that there is no stationary ether with respect to which the earth moves while orbiting around the sun. On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether by Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley. American Journal of Science, 1887, 34 (203): 333–345.

John C. Wright photo

“Everything is inanimate, if by that you mean things that operate according to cause and effect. Free will is an epiphenomenon, a misjudgment impressed upon us and sustained by the actions of brain molecules in motion.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Fugitives of Chaos (2006), Chapter 16, “Remember Next Time Not to Look” (p. 252)

Christopher Hitchens photo
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin photo
William Thomson photo
Rudolf Clausius photo
Frederick Buechner photo

“Words spoken in deep love or deep hate set things in motion within the human heart that can never be reversed.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (2006)

John Ramsay McCulloch photo
William Herschel photo