Quotes about rock
page 11

Aaron Sorkin photo
Luther Burbank photo
Brian Cox (physicist) photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“A neurosurgeon once told me about operating on the brain of a young man with epilepsy. As is customary in this kind of operation, the patient was wide awake, under only local anesthesia, while the surgeon delicately explored his exposed cortex, making sure that the parts tentatively to be removed were not absolutely vital by stimulating them electrically and asking the patient what he experienced. Some stimulations provoked visual flashes or hand-raisings, others a sort of buzzing sensation, but one spot produced a delighted response from the patient: "It's 'Outta Get Me' by Guns N'Roses, my favorite heavy metal [sic] band!"I asked the neurosurgeon if he had asked the patient to sing or hum along with the music, since it would be fascinating to learn how "high fidelity" the provoked memory was. Would it be in exactly the same key and tempo as the record? Such a song (unlike "Silent Night") has one canonical version, so we could simply have superimposed a recording of the patient's humming with the standard record and compare the results. Unfortunately, even though a tape recorder had been running during the operation, the surgeon hadn't asked the patient to sing along. "Why not?" I asked, and he replied: "I hate rock music!"Later in the conversation the neurosurgeon happened to remark that he was going to have to operate again on the same young man, and I expressed the hope that he would just check to see if he could restimulate the rock music, and this time ask the fellow to sing along. "I can't do that," replied the neurosurgeon, "since I cut out that part." "It was part of the epileptic focus?"”

I asked, and he replied, "No, I already told you — I hate rock music."</p>
Source: Consciousness Explained (1991), p. 58-59

“Through the hurrying rocks the brand with thin flame takes its flight.”
Illa volans tenui per concita saxa luce fugit.

Source: Argonautica, Book IV, Lines 672–673

Charles Dickens photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
GG Allin photo

“I'm trying to bring danger back in to rock 'n' roll and there are no limits and no laws and I break down every barrier put in front of me till the day I die.”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

Todd Phillips: Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies, Skinny Nervous Guy Prod, 1994. 2007 DVD re-release watched March 1, 2010.

Henry Ward Beecher photo
Henry Moore photo

“I prefer Mexican to Mayan sculpture. Mexican stone sculptures have largeness of scale & a grim, sublime, austerity, a real stoniness. They were the true sculptors in sympathy with their material & their sculpture has some of the character of mountains, of boulders, rocks & sea worn pebbles.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

in 'Unpublished notes', c. 1925-1926, HMF archive; as quoted in Henry Moore writings and Conversations, ed. Alan Wilkinson, University of California Press, California 2002, p. 97
1925 - 1940

Maia Mitchell photo
Chris Rea photo
Wesley Willis photo
Shane Claiborne photo

“Rocking the vote may mean going to the booths and writing in our Candidate, because he doesn't seem to be on the ballot.”

Shane Claiborne (1975) American activist

Source: Jesus for President (2008), p. 335

Bono photo
John Muir photo

“I drifted about from rock to rock, from stream to stream, from grove to grove. Where night found me, there I camped. When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its acquaintance and hear what it had to tell. … I asked the boulders I met, whence they came and whither they were going.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" Explorations in the Great Tuolumne Cañon http://books.google.com/books?id=ZikGAQAAIAAJ&pg=P139", Overland Monthly, volume XI, number 2 (August 1873) pages 139-147 (at page 141); modified slightly and reprinted in John of the Mountains (1938), page 69
1870s

Charlie Daniels photo
Stevie Nicks photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Van Morrison photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Michelle Obama photo

“Sometimes it makes your hips move. Sometimes it makes you rock your head. Sometimes it helps you just kick back and relax and soak it in. But no matter what form it comes in, you know this music always comes straight from the heart. You know you’re listening to someone who’s found her own unique voice, and isn’t afraid to show it to the world. And these women are perfect examples of just that.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Statements at "I'm every woman: The History of Women in Soul" event (06 March 2014) http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/03/michelle-obama-hangs-out-with-soul-sisters-melissa-etheridge-and-pattie-labelle/
2010s

Raymond Chandler photo
Ken Ham photo

“We at Answers in Genesis have been saddened by recent news of a devastating earthquake that rocked Nepal on April 25. This earthquake and its aftershocks have killed thousands, levelled buildings, and left countless thousands homeless and hungry. It even triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest that resulted in fatalities. Now, the headline of an article in the New York Times declares, “Ancient Collision Made Nepal Earthquake Inevitable.” The author writes, “More than 25 million years ago, India, once a separate island on a quickly sliding piece of the Earth’s crust, crashed into Asia. The two land masses are still colliding, pushed together at a speed of 1.5 to 2 inches a year. The forces have pushed up the highest mountains in the world, in the Himalayas, and have set off devastating earthquakes.” But starting from the history recorded in God’s Word we know that this earthquake is not the result of a crash 25 million years ago and slow and gradual processes ever since. Instead, when we start with the history recorded in God’s Word, we know that this earthquake is one of the tragic consequences of the Fall and the global Flood of Noah’s day… Please be in prayer for Nepal and especially for our brothers and sisters in that country who are reaching out to victims with the love of Christ. Also, as they watch the news, many people will be asking how God could allow such a tragedy. I encourage you to equip yourself with the biblical answer to why there is death and suffering—because of Adam and Eve’s rebellion—so that you can answer their questions and point them toward the hope that we can have even in the midst of tragedy because of the sacrifice of Jesus and the salvation that He offers. It’s important to know that such tragedy is not God’s fault—it’s our fault because of our sin in Adam. God stepped into history in the person of His Son to rescue us from the problem we caused and the resulting separation from our God.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"Nepal Suffering After Major Earthquake" https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2015/04/30/nepal-suffering-after-major-earthquake/, Around the World with Ken Ham (April 30, 2015)
Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

Charles Darwin photo
John Piper photo
Torquato Tasso photo

“Like as the wind, stopped by some wood or hill,
Grows strong and fierce, tears boughs and trees in twain,
But with mild blasts, more temperate, gentle, still,
Blows through the ample field or spacious plain;
Against the rocks as sea-waves murmur shrill,
But silent pass amid the open main:
Rinaldo so, when none his force withstood,
Assuaged his fury, calmed his angry mood.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Qual vento a cui s'oppone o selva o colle,
Doppia nella contesa i soffj e l'ira;
Ma con fiato più placido e più molle
Per le campagne libere poi spira.
Come fra scoglj il mar spuma e ribolle:
E nell'aperto onde più chete aggira.
Così quanto contrasto avea men saldo,
Tanto scemava il suo furor Rinaldo.
Canto XX, stanza 58 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Tina Fey photo

“…Jim ‘the Blue Panther’ Rock…”

Jimmy Magee (1935–2017) Gaelic games commentatot

Magee's mistaken description of Jim "The Pink Panther" Rock live on RTÉ's Pro Box Live in 2007.
Others

Warren Buffett photo
Marilyn Monroe photo
Tom Petty photo

“I'm gonna give her all my soul.
I'm gonna play her Rock 'N' Roll.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Jack
Lyrics, Highway Companion (2006)

Eldon Hoke photo
Brian Tyler photo
Hayley Jensen photo
Colum McCann photo
Ben Croshaw photo
Adrianne Wadewitz photo

“Ms. Wadewitz’s interest in rock climbing played out on Wikipedia. Her last editing was to improve an article about Steph Davis, a prominent female climber and wingsuit flier. In Ms. Wadewitz’s hands, the article became filled with personal details, spectacular photos, a highlighted quotation and 25 footnotes.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Cohen, Noam. (April 18, 2014). "Adrianne Wadewitz, 37, Wikipedia Editor, Dies After Rock Climbing Fall" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/business/media/adrianne-wadewitz-37-wikipedia-editor-dies-after-rock-climbing-fall.html. The New York Times.
About

Richard Holbrooke photo

“Shattuck and I were particularly concerned with the activities of Zeljko Raznatovic, popularly known as Arkan, one of the most notorious men in the Balkans. Even in former Yugoslavia, Arkan was something special, a freelance murderer who roamed across Bosnia and eastern Slavonia with his black-shirted men, terrorizing Muslims and Croats. To the rest of the world Arkan was a racist fanatic run amok, but many Serbs regarded him as a hero. His private army, the Tigers, had committed some of the war's worst atrocities, carrying out summary executions and virtually inventing ethnic cleansing in 1991-92. Western intelligence was convinced he worked, or had worked, for the Yugoslav secret police. (…) Althought the [Hague ICTY] Tribunal had handed down over fifty indictment by October 1995, these did not include Arkan. I pressed Goldstone [Richard Goldstone, ICTY president] on this matter several times, but because a strict wall separated the tribunal's internal deliberations from the American government, he wouold not tell us why Arkan had not been indicted. This was expecially puzzling given Goldstone's stature and his public criticisms of the international peacekeeping forces for not arresting any of the indicted war criminals. Whenever I mentioned Arkan's name to Milosevic, he seemed annoyed. He did not mind criticism of Karadzic or Mladic, but Arkan - who lived in Belgrade, ran a popular restaurant, and was married to a rock star - was a different matter. Milosevic dismissed Arkan as a "peanut issue", and claimed he had no influence over him. But Arkan's activities in western Bosnia decreased immediately after my complaints. This was hardly a victory, however, because Arkan at large remained a dangerous force and a powerful signal that one could still get away with murder - literally - in Bosnia.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), pp. 189-190

Allen C. Guelzo photo
Bono photo

“Rock n roll stops the traffic”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Message spray-painted onto the Vaillancourt fountain during a free concert in San Francisco (11 November 1987)

“Punk's an attitude. Punk's not three-chord rock. If you want to listen to three chord rock, there's southern rock.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-kyp0PQPZY
Interviews

Robinson Jeffers photo

“Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore-defeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

" To The Stone-Cutters http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/poetry/stone.html" in Tamar and Other Poems (1924)

St. Vincent (musician) photo
Denise Levertov photo

“In the forest
they too had heard,
and were pulling their roots in pain
out of a thousand years' layers of dead leaves,
rolling the rocks away,
breaking themselves
out of
their depths.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: And I
in terror
but not in doubt of
what I must do
in anguish, in haste,
wrenched from the earth root after root,
the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder —
and behind me the others: my brothers
forgotten since dawn. In the forest
they too had heard,
and were pulling their roots in pain
out of a thousand years' layers of dead leaves,
rolling the rocks away,
breaking themselves
out of
their depths.

“You gotta rock that rainbow while you still got your youth!
Oh! Ain't it the solid truth?”

Yip Harburg (1896–1981) American song lyricist

"Ain't It the Truth" originally written for Cabin in the Sky (1943), but pulled from the show, and later included in Jamaica (1957) - Lena Horne version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMSyXuvNpeM
Context: Life is short, short, brother!
Ain't it the truth?
And there is no other
Ain't it the truth?
You gotta rock that rainbow while you still got your youth!
Oh! Ain't it the solid truth?

Georg Cantor photo

“My theory stands as firm as a rock; every arrow directed against it will return quickly to its archer.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

As quoted in Journey Through Genius (1990) by William Dunham
Context: My theory stands as firm as a rock; every arrow directed against it will return quickly to its archer. How do I know this? Because I have studied it from all sides for many years; because I have examined all objections which have ever been made against the infinite numbers; and above all because I have followed its roots, so to speak, to the first infallible cause of all created things.

Juan Ramón Jimenéz photo

“He is as loving and tender as a child, but strong and sturdy as a rock.”

Source: ‪Platero and I‬ (1917), Ch. 1 : Platero, as translated by Eloïse Roach (1957).
Context: He is as loving and tender as a child, but strong and sturdy as a rock. When on Sundays I ride him through the lanes in the outskirts of the town, slow-moving countrymen, dressed in their Sunday clean, watch him a while, speculatively:
"He is like steel," they say.
Steel, yes. Steel and moon silver at the same time.

Thomas Merton photo

“All problems are resolved and everything is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya… everything is emptiness and everything is compassion.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (1975) Part One : Ceylon / November 29 - December 6.
Context: Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. … The thing about this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no "mystery."
All problems are resolved and everything is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya… everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don’t know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. Surely with Mahabalipuram and Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else remains but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise.
The whole thing is very much a Zen garden, a span of bareness and openness and evidence, and the great figures, motionless, yet with the lines in full movement, waves of vesture and bodily form, a beautiful and holy vision.

William Carlos Williams photo

“Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

"A Sort of a Song"
The Wedge (1944)
Context: Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
— through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

Max Tegmark photo

“Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks (explaining our penchant for baseball). A cavewoman thinking too hard about what matter is ultimately made of might fail to notice the tiger sneaking up behind and get cleaned right out of the gene pool. Darwin’s theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we use technology to glimpse reality beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down.”

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)
Context: Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks (explaining our penchant for baseball). A cavewoman thinking too hard about what matter is ultimately made of might fail to notice the tiger sneaking up behind and get cleaned right out of the gene pool. Darwin’s theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we use technology to glimpse reality beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down. We’ve repeatedly tested this prediction, and the results overwhelmingly support Darwin. At high speeds, Einstein realized that time slows down, and curmudgeons on the Swedish Nobel committee found this so weird that they refused to give him the Nobel Prize for his relativity theory. At low temperatures, liquid helium can flow upward. At high temperatures, colliding particles change identity; to me, an electron colliding with a positron and turning into a Z-boson feels about as intuitive as two colliding cars turning into a cruise ship. On microscopic scales, particles schizophrenically appear in two places at once, leading to the quantum conundrums mentioned above. On astronomically large scales… weirdness strikes again: if you intuitively understand all aspects of black holes [then you] should immediately put down this book and publish your findings before someone scoops you on the Nobel Prize for quantum gravity… [also, ] the leading theory for what happened [in the early universe] suggests that space isn’t merely really really big, but actually infinite, containing infinitely many exact copies of you, and even more near-copies living out every possible variant of your life in two different types of parallel universes.

Timothy Leary photo

“While sitting in my prison cell, I was astonished to hear the local rock station play a new song by the Beatles entitled "Come Together." Although the new version was certainly a musical and lyrical improvement on my campaign song, I was a bit miffed that Lennon had passed me over this way.”

Source: Flashbacks, An Autobiography (1983), p. 388
Context: While sitting in my prison cell, I was astonished to hear the local rock station play a new song by the Beatles entitled "Come Together." Although the new version was certainly a musical and lyrical improvement on my campaign song, I was a bit miffed that Lennon had passed me over this way. (I must explain that even the most good-natured persons tend to be a bit touchy about social neglect while in prison). When I sent a mild protest to John, he replied with typical Lennon charm and wit: that he was a tailor and I was a customer who had ordered a suit and never returned. So he sold it to someone else.

Frederick Douglass photo

“Instead of supplanting you at his altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect, let their bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while in the abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)
Context: Fellow citizens, in what we have said and done today, and in what we may say and do hereafter, we disclaim everything like arrogance and assumption. We claim for ourselves no superior devotion to the character, history, and memory of the illustrious name whose monument we have here dedicated today. We fully comprehend the relation of Abraham Lincoln both to ourselves and to the white people of the United States. Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places, and it is never more proper and beautiful in any case than when speaking of a great public man whose example is likely to be commended for honor and imitation long after his departure to the solemn shades, the silent continents of eternity. It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and main-spring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow-citizens, a pre-eminence in this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity. To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting you at his altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect, let their bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while in the abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.

Conrad Aiken photo

“Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)
Context: What did we build it for? Was it all a dream?...
Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam...
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.

Alan Watts photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful.
Upon that rock I stand.”

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

What Must We Do To Be Saved? (1880) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38801/38801-h/38801-h.htm Section XI, "What Do You Propose?"
Context: I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful.
Upon that rock I stand.
That he will not torture the forgiving.
Upon that rock I stand.
That every man should be true to himself, and that there is no world, no star, in which honesty is a crime.
Upon that rock I stand.
The honest man, the good woman, the happy child, have nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come.
Upon that rock I stand.

Swami Sivananda photo

“I consider that goodness of being and doing constitute the rock-bottom of one’s life.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

"What Life Has Taught Me"
Autobiography of Swami Sivananda
Context: I consider that goodness of being and doing constitute the rock-bottom of one’s life. By goodness I mean the capacity to feel with others and to live and feel as others do, and be in a position to act so that no one is hurt by the act. Goodness is the face of Godliness. I think that to be good in reality, in the innermost recesses of one’s heart, is not easy, though it may appear to be simple as a teaching. It is one of the hardest things on earth, if only one would be honest with oneself.
There is no physical world for me. What I see I see as the glorious manifestation of the Almighty.

Timothy Leary photo
Augustus Toplady photo

“Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.”

Augustus Toplady (1740–1778) British divine

The last lines of this stanza are often changed to "Be of sin the double cure, Save from wrath, and make me pure.".
Rock of Ages (1763)
Context: Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.
Let the Water and the Blood,
From thy riven Side which flow'd,
Be of Sin the double Cure,
Cleanse me from its Guilt and Pow'r.

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo

“When we hear of carbon beginning to appear in the ascending series of rocks, we are unavoidably led to consider it”

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 55
Context: When we hear of carbon beginning to appear in the ascending series of rocks, we are unavoidably led to consider it as marking a time of some importance in the earth's history, a new era of natural conditions, one in which organic life has probably played a part.

Brad Bird photo

“To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking, is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core.”

Brad Bird (1957) American director, screenwriter, animator, producer and occasional voice actor

"Anton Ego" in Ratatouille (2007)
Context: In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talents, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new; an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking, is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, "Anyone can cook". But I realize — only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.

Kim Stanley Robinson photo

“Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you're seeing justifies the conclusions you're making.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Interview http://www.locusmag.com/1997/Issues/09/KSRobinson.html in Locus, (September 1997)
Context: Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you're seeing justifies the conclusions you're making. The whole process of science is wildly under-represented in science fiction because it's not easy to write about. There are many facets of science that are almost exactly opposite of dramatic narrative. It's slow, tedious, inconclusive, it's hard to tell good guys from bad guys — it's everything that a normal hour of Star Trek is not.

Lucretius photo

“And yet it is hard to believe that anything
in nature could stand revealed as solid matter.
The lightning of heaven goes through the walls of houses,
like shouts and speech; iron glows white in fire;
red-hot rocks are shattered by savage steam;
hard gold is softened and melted down by heat;
chilly brass, defeated by heat, turns liquid;
heat seeps through silver, so does piercing cold;
by custom raising the cup, we feel them both
as water is poured in, drop by drop, above.”

Etsi difficiile esse videtur credere quicquam in rebus solido reperiri corpore posse. transit enim fulmen caeli per saepta domorum, clamor ut ad voces; flamen candescit in igni dissiliuntque ferre ferventi saxa vapore. tum labefactatus rigor auri solvitur aestu; tum glacies aeris flamma devicta liquescit; permanat calor argentum penetraleque frigus quando utrumque manu retinentes pocula rite sensimus infuso lympharum rore superne.

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book I, lines 487–496 (Frank O. Copley)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Virgil photo

“How fortunate, both at once!
If my songs have any power, the day will never dawn
that wipes you from the memory of the ages, not while
the house of Aeneas stands by the Capitol's rock unshaken,
not while the Roman Father rules the world.”

Fortunati ambo! si quid mea carmina possunt, Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo, Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum Accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.

Fortunati ambo! si quid mea carmina possunt,
Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo,
Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IX, Lines 446–449 (tr. Robert Fagles)

Hunter S. Thompson photo

“It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)
Context: We've come to a point where every four years this national fever rises up — this hunger for the Saviour, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback — and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon is now, that when you vote for President today you're talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England — or the Queen — and have the real business of the presidency conducted by... a City Manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who's directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years. The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.

P. J. O'Rourke photo
Edmund Hillary photo

“On my expedition there was no way that you would have left a man under a rock to die. It simply would not have happened.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

As quoted in The Tribune (India) (29 May 2006) http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060529/world.htm
Context: On my expedition there was no way that you would have left a man under a rock to die. It simply would not have happened. It would have been a disaster from our point of view. There have been a number of occasions when people have been neglected and left to die and I don’t regard this as a correct philosophy. I am absolutely certain that if any member of our expedition all those years ago had been in that situation we would have made every effort.

Alfred Noyes photo

“Enough of dreams! No longer mock
The burdened hearts of men!
Not on the cloud, but on the rock
Build thou thy faith again”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

"The Secret Inn : 'The Kingdom is Within You'" in Master Mind Magazine, Vol. VII, No. 3 (December 1914), p. 99
Context: p>Enough of dreams! No longer mock
The burdened hearts of men!
Not on the cloud, but on the rock
Build thou thy faith again;O range no more the realms of air,
Stoop to the glen-bound streams;
Thy hope was all too like despair:
Enough, enough of dreams.</p

Franklin Pierce photo

“The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution.”

Franklin Pierce (1804–1869) American politician, 14th President of the United States (in office from 1853 to 1857)

Third Annual Message (31 December 1855), as published in Official History of the United States by the Presidents (1900), Vol. 1, by the Fedral Book Concern, p. 362 http://books.google.com/books?id=iJRPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA362&dq=%22The+storm+of+frenzy+and+faction+must+inevitably+dash+itself+in+vain+against+the+unshaken+rock+of+the+Constitution%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=u-1wVOnYH9OIsQTX4YKQCw&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20storm%20of%20frenzy%20and%20faction%20must%20inevitably%20dash%20itself%20in%20vain%20against%20the%20unshaken%20rock%20of%20the%20Constitution%22&f=false.
Context: The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution. I shall never doubt it. I know that the Union is stronger a thousand times than all the wild and chimerical schemes of social change which are generated one after another in the unstable minds of visionary sophists and interested agitators. I rely confidently on the patriotism of the people, on the dignity and self-respect of the States, on the wisdom of Congress, and, above all, on the continued gracious favor of Almighty God to maintain against all enemies, whether at home or abroad, the sanctity of the Constitution and the integrity of the Union.

John Ruskin photo

“The living inhabitation of the world — the grazing and nesting in it, — the spiritual power of the air, the rocks, the waters, to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, — happier if it needed no help of mine, — this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Praeterita, volume I, chapter IX (1885-1889).
Context: My entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,— if I could have been invisible, all the better. I was absolutely interested in men and their ways, as I was interested in marmots and chamois, in tomtits and trout. If only they would stay still and let me look at them, and not get into their holes and up their heights! The living inhabitation of the world — the grazing and nesting in it, — the spiritual power of the air, the rocks, the waters, to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, — happier if it needed no help of mine, — this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.

“What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"I Think of Those Who Were Truly Great"
Poems (1933)
Context: What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
Nor its grave evening demand for love;
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

George Gordon Byron photo

“But nothing rests, save carcases and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.”

Act II, scene i.
Manfred (1817)
Context: Think'st thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine
Have made my days and nights imperishable
Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore
Innumerable atoms; and one desert
Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests, save carcases and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.

Wisława Szymborska photo

“Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"Our Ancestors' Short Lives"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Context: Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.
Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow.
One had to hurry, to get on with life
before the sun went down,
before the first snow.

Pearl S.  Buck photo

“The waters of the genius of story gushed out as they would, however the natural rocks allowed and the trees persuaded, and only common people came and drank and found rest and pleasure.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)
Context: I grew up believing that the novel has nothing to do with pure literature. So I was taught by scholars. The art of literature, so I was taught, is something devised by men of learning. Out of the brains of scholars came rules to control the rush of genius, that wild fountain which has its source in deepest life. Genius, great or less, is the spring, and art is the sculptured shape, classical or modern, into which the waters must be forced, if scholars and critics were to be served. But the people of China did not so serve. The waters of the genius of story gushed out as they would, however the natural rocks allowed and the trees persuaded, and only common people came and drank and found rest and pleasure. For the novel in China was the peculiar product of the common people. And it was solely their property.

Bernard Lown photo

“Throughout human history, when confronted with what was deemed a deadly enemy, the fixed human response has been to gather more rocks, muskets, cannons, and now nuclear bombs.”

Bernard Lown (1921–2021) American cardiologist developer of the DC defibrillator and the cardioverter, as well as a recipient of the…

A Prescription for Hope (1985)
Context: Throughout human history, when confronted with what was deemed a deadly enemy, the fixed human response has been to gather more rocks, muskets, cannons, and now nuclear bombs. While nuclear weapons have no military utility — indeed they are not weapons but instruments of genocide-this essential truth is obscured by the notion of an "evil enemy". The "myth of the other", the stereotyping and demonizing of human beings beyond recognition, is still pervasive and now exacts inordinate economic, psychologic, and moral costs. The British physicist P. M. S. Blackett anticipated this state of paranoia: "Once a nation bases its security on an absolute weapon, such as the atom bomb, it becomes psychologically necessary to believe in an absolute enemy". The imagined enemy is eventually banished from the human family and reduced to an inanimate object whose annihilation loses all moral dimension.

P. J. O'Rourke photo

“Personally, I believe a rocking hammock, a good cigar, and a tall gin-and-tonic is the way to save the planet.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

Amanda Palmer photo

“Rock needs theater, rock is theater. We just go through different eras of guilty admission about this.”

Amanda Palmer (1976) American punk-cabaret musician

As quoted in "Amanda Palmer Freaks Out With Evelyn Evelyn" by Scott Thill in WIRED (29 March 2010) http://www.wired.com/2010/03/amanda-palmer/
Context: Rock needs theater, rock is theater. We just go through different eras of guilty admission about this. Having risen with The Dresden Dolls in the heyday of The Strokes and The White Stripes, everyone was looking at us as completely misfit theater dorks. But it’s really encouraging to see a more theater-dork wave of bands like The Scissor Sisters, Antony & The Johnsons, CocoRosie, Patrick Wolf and even Arcade Fire and Decembrists becoming popular. The dress-up freaks are coming back, and it’s wonderful to watch.

“Lift the world up by your levity,
Rock, love, carry it away, turn it upside down.”

Sydney Carter (1915–2004) British musician and poet

"Come, Holy Harlequin" (1974)
Context: Teach the crippled how to leap,
Throw their crutches on a heap,
Rock, love, carry it away, turn it upside down.
Rock, love, carry it away,
Lift the world up by your levity,
Rock, love, carry it away, turn it upside down.

“On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one."”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. He would remember a verse from Pindar: "Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet."
Neb [No-one] (1985)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“They did not regard men as slaves to be ruled by torture, by lash and chain, nor as children to be cheated with illusions, rocked in the cradle of an idiot creed and soothed by a lullaby of lies.”

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

A Thanksgiving Sermon (1897)
Context: I thank the great scientists—those who have reached the foundation, the bed-rock—who have built upon facts—the great scientists, in whose presence theologians look silly and feel malicious. The scientists never persecuted, never imprisoned their fellow-men. They forged no chains, built no dungeons, erected no scaffolds—tore no flesh with red hot pincers—dislocated no joints on racks—crushed no bones in iron boots—extinguished no eyes—tore out no tongues and lighted no fagots. They did not pretend to be inspired—did not claim to be prophets or saints or to have been born again. They were only intelligent and honest men. They did not appeal to force or fear. They did not regard men as slaves to be ruled by torture, by lash and chain, nor as children to be cheated with illusions, rocked in the cradle of an idiot creed and soothed by a lullaby of lies. They did not wound—they healed. They did not kill—they lengthened life. They did not enslave—they broke the chains and made men free. They sowed the seeds of knowledge, and many millions have reaped, are reaping, and will reap the harvest of joy.

Holden Karnofsky photo

“But a mighty power and stronger,
Man from his throne hath hurled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.”

William Ross Wallace (1819–1881) American poet

What rules the World? (also known by The Hand That Rocks The Cradle Is The Hand That Rules The World) reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919).
Context: They say that man is mighty,
He governs land and sea;
He wields a mighty scepter
O'er lesser powers than he;
But a mighty power and stronger,
Man from his throne hath hurled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“Each thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth, with its heart of fire and crowns of snow; with its forests and plains, its rocks and seas; with its every wave and cloud; with its every leaf and bud and flower, confirms its every word, and the solemn stars, shining in the infinite abysses, are the eternal witnesses of its truth.”

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

Heretics and Heresies (1874)
Context: By this time the whole world should know that the real Bible has not yet been written, but is being written, and that it will never be finished until the race begins its downward march, or ceases to exist.
The real Bible is not the work of inspired men, nor prophets, nor apostles, nor evangelists, nor of Christs. Every man who finds a fact, adds, as it were, a word to this great book. It is not attested by prophecy, by miracles or signs. It makes no appeal to faith, to ignorance, to credulity or fear. It has no punishment for unbelief, and no reward for hypocrisy. It appeals to man in the name of demonstration. It has nothing to conceal. It has no fear of being read, of being contradicted, of being investigated and understood. It does not pretend to be holy, or sacred; it simply claims to be true. It challenges the scrutiny of all, and implores every reader to verify every line for himself. It is incapable of being blasphemed. This book appeals to all the surroundings of man. Each thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth, with its heart of fire and crowns of snow; with its forests and plains, its rocks and seas; with its every wave and cloud; with its every leaf and bud and flower, confirms its every word, and the solemn stars, shining in the infinite abysses, are the eternal witnesses of its truth.

P. J. O'Rourke photo

“Remember, your body needs 6 to 8 glasses of fluid daily. Straight up or on the rocks.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

The Bachelor Home Companion (1986)

Lucretius photo

“Custom renders love attractive; for that which is struck by oft-repeated blows however lightly, yet after long course of time is overpowered and gives way. See you not too that drops of water falling on rocks after long course of time scoop a hole through these rocks?”
Consuetudo concinnat amorem; nam leviter quamvis quod crebro tunditur ictu, vincitur in longo spatio tamen atque labascit. Nonne vides etiam guttas in saxa cadentis umoris longo in spatio pertundere saxa?

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book IV, lines 1283–1287 (tr. Munro)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Rick Wakeman photo
Rodney Dangerfield photo
Billie Joe Armstrong photo
John Ruskin photo
John Bowring photo
Ayub Bachchu photo