Quotes about paper
page 10

Leo Igwe photo
Poul Anderson photo

“Yeah. ‘Environment’ was very big for a while. Ecology Now stickers on the windshields of cars belonging to hairy young men—cars which dripped oil wherever they parked and took off in clouds of smoke thicker than your pipe can produce…Before long, the fashionable cause was something else, I forget what. Anyhow, that whole phase—the wave after wave of causes—passed away. People completely stopped caring…
I feel a moral certainty that a large part of the disaster grew from this particular country, the world’s most powerful, the vanguard country for things both good and ill…never really trying to meet the responsibilities of power.
We’ll make halfhearted attempts to stop some enemies in Asia, and because the attempts are halfhearted we’ll piss away human lives—on both sides—and treasure—to no purpose. Hoping to placate the implacable, we’ll estrange our last few friends. Men elected to national office will solemnly identify inflation with rising prices, which is like identifying red spots with the measles virus, and slap on wage and price controls, which is like papering the cracks in a house whose foundations are sliding away. So economic collapse brings international impotence…As for our foolish little attempts to balance what we drain from the environment against what we put back—well, I mentioned that car carrying the ecology sticker.
At first Americans will go on an orgy of guilt. Later they’ll feel inadequate. Finally they’ll turn apathetic. After all, they’ll be able to buy any anodyne, any pseudo-existence they want.”

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (pp. 53-54)

John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Ossip Zadkine photo

“In October 1945 I returned from America, where I had stayed during the war. I arrived in Le Havre, full of ruins, a carcass of a city. It took one night to reach Paris on a train with no windows. That night I got the idea for the monument. I sketched it on paper and forgot about it, until I visited Rotterdam for the first time in 1947. I saw a city without a heart. I saw a crater in the body of a city. And I remembered that night, the sketches. I made a small terracotta model and sent it to an exhibition of French art in Germany.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Quote of Zadkine from interview in 'Het Vrije Volk', (Dutch newspaper), 4 July 1950; as cited in 'Unveiling of the Dutch City https://www.wederopbouwrotterdam.nl/en/tijdlijn/unveiling-of-the-destroyed-city/
Ossip Zadkine explained in 1950 the genesis of his large bronze sculpture 'Destroyed City', commissioned by the city Rotterdam
1940 - 1960

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Conversations with Eckermann (23 March 1829) - Often quoted as "Architecture is frozen music."

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Jacek Tylicki photo
Stephenie Meyer photo

“I'll play you for it," Alice suggested. "Rock, paper, scissors." […]
"Why don't you just tell me who wins?" Edward said wryly.
Alice beamed. "I do. Excellent.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Alice and Edward Cullen, p. 472
Twilight series, Breaking Dawn (2008)

C. N. R. Rao photo

“My hero is Nobel Laureate Neville Mott who published four papers at the age of 92 when he died.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

After his getting the August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann Medal for chemistry quoted in Need young scientists to lead: C N R Rao, 11 January 2011, 22 December 2013, Nature Publishing Group http://www.nature.com/nindia/2010/100111/full/nindia.2009.365.html,

Robert Sheckley photo
Leonid Hurwicz photo
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo

“Whenever I was upset by something in the papers, [Jack] always told me to be more tolerant, like a horse flicking away flies in the summer.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Quoted in A Hero for Our Time (1983) by Ralph G Martin

Vannevar Bush photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo

“Write a paper promising salvation, make it a 'structured' something or a 'virtual' something, or 'abstract', 'distributed' or 'higher-order' or 'applicative' and you can almost be certain of having started a new cult.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1979) My hopes of computing science http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD07xx/EWD709.html (EWD 709).
1970s

Edmund Burke photo

“I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Koenraad Elst photo
Richard Rumelt photo
J.M.W. Turner photo

“Well, Gaffer [his early friend Mr. Wells, artist] I see there will be no peace till I comply; so give me a piece of paper. There, now, rule the size for me, and tell me what I am to do. [Mr. Wells told him: 'Well divide your subject into classes, say: Pastoral, Marine, Elegant Pastoral, and so forth..']”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote of Turner, c. 1806?; told by Mr Wells' daughter, Mrs. Wheeler; included in The life of J.M.W. Turner, Volume II, George Walter Thornbury; Hurst and Blackett Publishers, London, 1862, p. 55
the first drawings for the publication of Turners's famous print-collection Liber Studiorum started here; Mrs. Clara Wheeler as a young girl sat by his side while Turner was making those drawings. A few years later she have gone out many times, sketching with Turner
1795 - 1820

Eric Temple Bell photo

“Out of fifty mathematical papers presented in brief at such a meeting, it is a rare mathematician indeed who really understands what more than half a dozen are about.”

Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) mathematician and science fiction author born in Scotland who lived in the United States for most of his li…

Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 7

Diogenes Laërtius photo

“Apollodorus says, "If any one were to take away from the books of Chrysippus all the passages which he quotes from other authors, his paper would be left empty."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Chrysippus, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 7: The Stoics

Hillary Clinton photo

“I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Quoted in Blood Sport: The President and His Adversaries (p. 368), James B. Stewart, December 1993
White House years (1993–2000)

Willem de Sitter photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Hugh Laurie photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“I can say, if I wish, extremely mean and hateful things. I have read a great many religious papers and discussions and think that I now know all the infamous words in our language.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Willy Brandt photo

“I put it down on paper again in the summer of this year: ‘Berlin will live, and the Wall will fall.”

Willy Brandt (1913–1992) German social-democratic politician; Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

[...] ich habe es noch in diesem Sommer erneut zu Papier gebracht: Berlin wird leben, und die Mauer wird fallen.
speech at the Rathaus Schöneberg in Berlin on 10 November 1989, hdg.de/lemo http://www.hdg.de/lemo/html/dokumente/DieDeutscheEinheit_redeBrandt1989/index.html

Leighton W. Smith, Jr. photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Bill Mollison photo
Jason Biggs photo

“On paper, it was all there. It's unlike anything else on television or streaming and that can either bode well for it, or work against it. And it has worked for this show in an incredible way.”

Jason Biggs (1978) American actor

On success of the show Orange Is the New Black, interviewed in: — December 4, 2014, Jason Biggs: I always win, The Belfast Telegraph, Heat magazine, June 15, 2014 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/news/jason-biggs-i-always-win-30355396.html,

Johannes Warnardus Bilders photo

“I worked hard the whole day, so that I am very tired now. Yesterday I made the sketch of the castle [in Vorden] on the canvas and today I painted the sky, the whole day long. I made the composition even more simple by leaving out the creel; the air is painted in the spirit of the [ Swartzwald [? ], but much more stronger and sadder. I hope to show the people how beautiful, how profoundly poetical the castle [is].... please save this thumbnail-sketch [drawn in the letter, on the same paper] and also my previous letter. Who knows the descendants - when reading them, and looking at the sketch - will say: Look, it was in this way how Bilder's very lovely painting was discussed at the House 't Velde, and how it came into life in Vorden. Good-by, my dear Lady..”

Johannes Warnardus Bilders (1811–1890) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Johannes Warnardus Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik heb den gehelen dag hart gewerkt. Zoo dat ik erg moede ben. gisteren had ik de schets van t kasteel [in Vorden] op t' doek gebracht en vandaag heb ik de gehelen dag aan de lucht geschildert , ik heb de compositie nog eenvoudiger gemaakt door de vischkaar weg te laten; de lucht is in de geest van t [Swartzwald[?], maar nog veel sterker en droeviger, ik hoop de menschen te laten zien, hoe schoon, hoe diep poetisch, het kasteel bi.. ..bewaar de krabbel èn ook mijn voorgaande brief, wie weet als het nageslacht, die dan leest, en de krabbel ziet of ze dan niet zeggen, zie op deze wijze kwam dit schoonste schilderij van Bilders in t leven, t werd op ’t Velde besproken, en te Vorden in 't leven geroepen, dag zeer geliefde juffrouw..
J.W. Bilders, in his letter [including a sketch by pen of the landscape with the castle, seen from the garden of the hotel where he stayed] to Georgina van Dijk van 't Velde, from Vorden, 1 Sept. 1868; from an excerpt of the letter https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/excerpts/751236 in the RKD-Archive, The Hague
1860's + 1870's

Ron Paul photo
Frances Kellor photo
Brandon Boyd photo

“If you let them make you,
They'll make you paper mache.
At a distance, you're strong, until the wind comes
Then you crumble and blow away.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Make Yourself (1999)

Jean Chrétien photo
Joseph Hayne Rainey photo
Louis Brownlow photo
Todd Snider photo

“Making money out of paper, making paper out of trees
We’re making so much money we can hardly breathe”

Todd Snider (1966) American singer

Stuck on a Corner
Peace Queer (2008)

Piet Mondrian photo

“Though I do, of course agree with the principles you have mentioned, I am returning the paper unsigned, as I do not want to belong to a group. A group of people with one aim is not as yet a single-minded group and as this does not exist, a consistent group remains impossible. And a larger group only makes sense for joint exhibitions and for spreading ideas. I will therefore not participate in the other group either, but I have promised my collaboration in this respect. If you definitely want to form a group, you can always invite myself and others who are proved to be suitable. Only on such a basis I will collaborate with the other group as well.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of Mondrian, in a letter to Theo van Doesburg, 1930; as cited in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, by H.L.C. Jaffé http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01.pdf; J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956, p. 30
Van Doesburg had attempted to form a small union of Parisian painters and sculptors who all subscribed to the principles of abstraction, the group was to be called 'Abstraction-création'. A periodical of this group appeared under the title 'Art Concret'
1930's

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“The work of Dr. Nares has filled us with astonishment similar to that which Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt when first he landed in Brobdingnag, and saw corn as high as the oaks in the New Forest, thimbles as large as buckets, and wrens of the bulk of turkeys. The whole book, and every component part of it, is on a gigantic scale. The title is as long as an ordinary preface: the prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary book; and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary library. We cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous mass of paper which lies before us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand closely printed quarto pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure, and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book might, before the deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpa and Shallum. But unhappily the life of man is now three-score years and ten; and we cannot but think it somewhat unfair in Dr. Nares to demand from us so large a portion of so short an existence. Compared with the labour of reading through these volumes, all other labour, the labour of thieves on the treadmill, of children in factories, of negroes in sugar plantations, is an agreeable recreation.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Review of a life of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley by Edward Nares, Edinburgh Review, 1832)
Attributed

Charles Darwin photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Jason Mewes photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Samuel Goldwyn photo

“A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.”

Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) American film producer (1879-1974).

A misreporting of an actual quote praising the trustworthiness of a colleague: "His verbal contract is worth more than the paper it's written on". The identity of the colleague is variously reported as Joseph M. Schenk in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 42, or as Joseph L. Mankiewicz in Carol Easton, The Search for Sam Goldwyn (1976). Goldwyn himself was reportedly aware of - and pleased by - the misattribution.
Misattributed

Helen Keller photo

“The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labour. Surely we must free men and women together before we can free women. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands -- the ownership and control of their lives and livelihood -- are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind are ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. How can women hope to help themselves while we and our brothers are helpless against the powerful organizations which modern parties represent and which contrive to rule the people? They rule the people because they own the means of physical life, land, and tools, and the nourishers of intellectual life, the press, the church, and the school. You say that the conduct of the woman suffragists is being disgracefully misrepresented by the British press. Here in America the leading newspapers misrepresent in every possible way the struggles of toiling men and women who seek relief. News that reflects ill upon the employers is skillfully concealed -- news of dreadful conditions under which labourers are forced to produce, news of thousands of men maimed in mills and mines and left without compensation, news of famines and strikes, news of thousands of women driven to a life of shame, news of little children compelled to labour before their hands are ready to drop their toys. Only here and there in a small and as yet uninfluential paper is the truth told about the workman and the fearful burdens under which he staggers.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Out of the Dark (1913), To a Woman-Suffragist

Billy Joel photo
John Banville photo

“I was shamed into helping the unborn after 12 years of silence, in 1986. Since then, my only client has been the unborn. I don't work for a movement. I don't work for a party. I don't work for candidates. I work for the unborn, and I don't give a flying flick about what people want to do on paper with bylaws, and all that kind of stuff, because it's just like the Pharisees, who had all their rules about the Sabbath, but they didn't know that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath! I will stand for the unborn, and I will not relent! I don't know Mr. Clymer, but Howard Phillips has lost ALL of my respect, because he stands for people who want to kill ONE, only ONE, innocent child, and that's all that counts! If you want ONE innocent child, GO with this man, but I'll tell you what- I've got my paperwork filled out. All it lacks is my signature, and my wife's signature, and we're the hell out of here, if you vote to stay with a national party that will put up with ONE dead baby, much less many thousands of dead babies. And you sir [pointing at Jim Clymer] need to repent! Because the blood will be on your hands when you stand before God. You won't be able to argue about procedural votes, and keeping the party together before God! You'll be standing there quaking in your boots, wishing you'd washed yourself in the blood of the Lamb. That's all I've got to say…The only thing that matters to me is doing my job to stop the killing of the unborn.”

Paul deParrie (1949–2006) American activist

The Last Words of Paul deParrie http://www.constitutionpartyoregon.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=111&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Dimitris Lyacos photo
Garrison Keillor photo
John Fante photo
Clive Barker photo
Gary Gygax photo

“Pen-and-paper role-playing is live theater and computer games are television. People want the convenience and instant gratification of turning on the TV rather than getting dressed up and going out to see a live play. In the same way, the computer is a more immediately accessible way to play games.”

Gary Gygax (1938–2008) American writer and game designer

As quoted in "Dungeon Masters in Cyberspace" in The New York Times (27 February 2006) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/arts/27drag.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

Berenice Abbott photo
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Jan Toporowski photo
A. J. Liebling photo
Jeffrey D. Sachs photo

“I will not ask my wife to buy toilet paper.”

Lim Keng Yaik (1939–2012) Minister of Energy, Water and Member of ParliamentCommunications

disparaging comment on The Star
Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things [Vol I]

Elton John photo

“Yeah I'm gonna kill myself,
Get a little headline news.
I'd like to see what the papers say
On the state of teenage blues.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

I Think I'm Going to Kill Myself
Song lyrics, Honky Château (1972)

Rāmabhadrācārya photo

“I have not even touched paper, nor have I even taken a pen in hand. In the Bhṛṅgadūta, only the Lord of mother Sītā has spoken.”

Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader

citation needed
Masi kāgada chūyo nahīṃ kalama gahī nahiṃ hātha ।
bhṛṃgadūta mahaँ saba kahyo eka jānakīnātha ॥

Wassily Kandinsky photo
Andrew Dickson White photo
Raymond Kethledge photo
Eva Mendes photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
Norbert Wiener photo
Annie Proulx photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?"
And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood — that's the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the Whites Plains High School." She said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn't sneeze.
1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

John Anderson (Australian politician) photo
Alan Grayson photo
Harry Turtledove photo

“"Let's dicker, Lord Lyons," Lincoln said; the British minister needed a moment to understand he meant bargain. Lincoln gave him that moment, reaching into a desk drawer and drawing out a folded sheet of paper that he set on top of the desk. "I have here, sir, a proclamation declaring all Negroes held in bondage in those areas now in rebellion against the lawful government of the United States to be freed as of next January first. I had been saving this proclamation against a Union victory, but circumstances being as they are-" Lord Lyons spread his hands with genuine regret. "Had you won such a victory, Mr. President, I should not be visiting you today with the melancholy message I bear from my government. You know, sir, that I personally despise the institution of chattel slavery and everything associated with it." He waited for Lincoln to nod before continuing. "That said, however, I must tell you that an emancipation proclamation issued after the series of defeats Federal forces have suffered would be perceived as a cri de coeur, a call for servile insurrection to aid your flagging cause, and as such would not be favorably received in either London or Paris, to say nothing of its probable effect in Richmond. I am sorry, Mr. President, but this is not the way out of your dilemma." Lincoln unfolded the paper on which he'd written the decree abolishing slavery in the seceding states, put on a pair of spectacles to read it, sighed, folded it again, and returned it to its drawer without offering to show it to Lord Lyons. "If that doesn't help us, sir, I don't know what will," he said. His long, narrow face twisted, as if he were in physical pain. "Of course, what you're telling me is that nothing helps us, nothing at all."”

Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 7

Charles Lamb photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Charles Darwin photo
Ellsworth Kelly photo
Bill Hybels photo
Wolfgang Pauli photo

“Already in my original paper I stressed the circumstance that I was unable to give a logical reason for the exclusion principle or to deduce it from more general assumptions. I had always the feeling, and I still have it today, that this is a deficiency.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

"Exclusion Principle and Quantum Mechanics," Nobel Prize acceptance lecture for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle (Dec. 13, 1946)

Wassily Kandinsky photo
Louis Brandeis photo