Quotes about slide (182 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises.
Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was,
I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat.
I was never convinced of what I believed in.
I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through.
Words were my only truth.
When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Truth , Unfaithfulness

“In between these four whitewashed walls, on this tiled floor, notice the broken corners, how some tiles have been worn smooth, how many feet have passed this way, and look how interesting this trail of ants is, travelling along the joins as if they were valleys, while up above, projected against the white sky of the ceiling and the sun of the lamp, tall towers are moving, they are men, as the ants well know, having, for generations, experienced the weight of their feet and the long, hot spout of water that falls from a kind of pendulous external intestine, ants all over the world have been drowned or crushed by these, but it seems they will escape this fate now, for the men are occupied with other things. […]
Let's take this ant, or, rather, let's not, because that would involve picking it up, let us merely consider it, because it is one of the larger ones and because it raises its head like a dog, it's walking along very close to the wall, together with its fellow ants it will have time to complete its long journey ten times over between the ants' nest and whatever it is that it finds so interesting, curious or perhaps merely nourishing in this secret room […]. One of the men has fallen to the ground, he's on the same level as the ants now, we don't know if he can see them, but they see him, and he will fall so often that, in the end, they will know by heart his face, the color of his hair and eyes, the shape of his ear, the dark arc of his eyebrow, the faint shadow at the corner of his mouth, and later, back in the ants' nest, they will weave long stories for the enlightenment of future generations, because it is useful for the young to know what happens out there in the world. The man fell and the others dragged him to his feet again, shouting at him, asking two different questions at the same time, how could he possibly answer them even if he wanted to, which is not the case, because the man who fell and was dragged to his feet will die without saying a word. Only moans will issue from his mouth, and in the silence of his soul only deep sighs, and even when his teeth are broken and he has to spit them out, which will prompt the other two men to hit him again for soiling state property, even then the sound will be of spitting and nothing more, that unconscious reflex of the lips, and then the dribble of saliva thickened with blood that falls to the floor, thus stimulating the taste buds of the ants, who telegraph from one to the other news of this singularly red manna fallen from such a white heaven.
The man fell again. It's the same one, said the ants, the same ear shape, the same arc of eyebrow, the same shadow at the corner of the mouth, there's no mistaking him, why is it that it is always the same man who falls, why doesn't he defend himself, fight back. […] The ants are surprised, but only fleetingly. After all, they have their own duties, their own timetables to keep, it is quite enough that they raise their heads like dogs and fix their feeble vision on the fallen man to check that he is the same one and not some new variant in the story. The larger ant walked along the remaining stretch of wall, slipped under the door, and some time will pass before it reappears to find everything changed, well, that's just a manner of speaking, there are still three men there, but the two who do not fall never stop moving, it must be some kind of game, there's no other explanation […]. [T]hey grab him by the shoulders and propel him willy-nilly in the direction of the wall, so that sometimes he hits his back, sometimes his head, or else his poor bruised face smashes into the whitewash and leaves on it a trace of blood, not a lot, just whatever spurts forth from his mouth and right eyebrow. And if they leave him there, he, not his blood, slides down the wall and he ends up kneeling on the ground, beside the little trail of ants, who are startled by the sudden fall from on high of that great mass, which doesn't, in the end, even graze them. And when he stays there for some time, one ant attaches itself to his clothing, wanting to take a closer look, the fool, it will be the first ant to die, because the next blow falls on precisely that spot, the ant doesn't feel the second blow, but the man does.”

José Saramago book Raised from the Ground

Source: Raised from the Ground (1980), pp. 172–174

Men , Fate , Secret , World

“From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing;

But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Hiawatha's Photographing st. 1 & 2
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

Books

“The man changed position, turned his back on the wardrobe blocking the door and let his right arm slide down toward the side on which the dog is lying. A minute later, he was awake. He was thirsty. He turned on his bedside light, got up, shuffled his feet into the slippers which were, as always, providing a pillow for the dog's head, and went into the kitchen. Death followed him. The man filled a glass with water and drank it. At this point, the dog appeared, slaked his thirst in the water-dish next to the back door and then looked up at his master. I suppose you want to go out, said the cellist. He opened the door and waited until the animal came back. A little water remained in his glass. Death looked at it and made an effort to imagine what it must be like to feel thirsty, but failed. She would have been equally incapable of imagining it when she'd had to make people die of thirst in the desert, but at the time she hadn't even tried. The dog returned, wagging his tail. Let's go back to sleep, said the man. They went into the bedroom again, the dog turned around twice, then curled up into a ball. The man drew the sheet up to his neck, coughed twice and soon afterward was asleep again. Sitting in her corner, death was watching. Much later, the dog got up from the carpet and jumped onto the sofa. For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt like to have a dog on her lap.”

José Saramago book Death with Interruptions

Source: Death with Interruptions (2005), p. 172

Life , Death , People , Dogs

“I used to look at homeless peopleand try to imagine what they had once looked like. It's not easy. Beneath the grime and degradation is a face once adored by someone. It's a truth that tricks the eye; our glances slide away. But something happened to ruin that life, to strip it bare; and it was something small, something that but for the grace of God could take us, too.”

John Hart (1965) American author with multiple books and awards

Source: The King of Lies (2006), Ch. 2.

Life , God , Truth , Imagination

“There are a few of us who could scarcely do more than we are doing of our own regular order of work, but there may yet be spare moments for little extra efforts of another sort which in the aggregate, in the run of a year, might produce a great total of real practical result. We must, like goldsmiths, carefully sweep our shops, and gather up the filings of the gold which God has given us in the shape of time. Select a large box and place in it as many cannon-balls as it will hold, it is after a fashion full, but it will hold more if smaller matters be found. Bring a quantity of marbles, very many of these may be packed in the spaces between the larger globes; the box is full now, but only full in a sense, it will contain more yet. There are interstices in abundance into which you may shake a considerable quantity of small shot, and now the chest is filled beyond all question, but yet there is room. You cannot put in another shot or marble, much less another cannon-ball, but you will find that several pounds of sand will slide down between the larger materials, and even then between the granules of sand, if you empty pondering there will be space for all the water, and for the same quantity several times repeated. When there is no space for the great there may be room for the little; where the little cannot enter the less can make its way; and where the less is shut out, the least of all may find ample room and verge enough.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

"A Spur for a Free Horse" in The Sword and the Trowel (February, 1866) http://www.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/spur.htm

God , Way , Fashion , Question

“Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood?--
O that none ever loved but you and I!”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Ragged Wood http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1673/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Context: p>O hurry where by water among the trees
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have but looked upon their images--
Would none had ever loved but you and I!Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood?--
O that none ever loved but you and I!O hurry to the ragged wood, for there
I will drive all those lovers out and cry—
O my share of the world, O yellow hair!
No one has ever loved but you and I.</p

Love , Sun

“The thing that will strike you in just about a week is that there are a whole lot of able people sliding around this planet. The fact that the individual opposed to you does not wear a cravat, and does wear a saw-edge collar, does not imply that you are going to carry the convention against him!”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)
Context: Now, there are in our civic and social life very much worse creatures than snobs, but none more contemptible. [... ] If you have any stuff in you at all, and try to amount to anything in after life, you will not remain snobs even if you start as such. It will be taken out of you very soon and very roughly if you go into any real work. Go into politics, go to your district convention, and try to carry it on the snob basis and see how far you will get. The thing that will strike you in just about a week is that there are a whole lot of able people sliding around this planet. The fact that the individual opposed to you does not wear a cravat, and does wear a saw-edge collar, does not imply that you are going to carry the convention against him!

People

“But there's a juicy artery in your groin," he said after a pause to regroup, his voice as slithery as a snake on a slide.
"Don't you talk dirty," I told him. "I won't listen to that.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead Until Dark

Source: Dead Until Dark

“How seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of our fate slides home.”

Thomas Harris (1940) American author and screenwriter

Fate , Home

“I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Time

“Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

“I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.”

Gillian Flynn book Dark Places

Source: Dark Places

“For one thing, she pronounced flowers 'flars' and I couldn't let it slide.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Flowers

“Why do you think there's only a single stairway to heaven, but an entire highway to hell? Because it's a lot easier to slide down then climb up, and it takes a whole lot less energy to boot.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Inferno

Hell , Thinking

“She was too tired to feel anything more, she wanted a book to do to her what books did: take away the world, slide it aside for a little bit, and let her please, please just be somewhere and somebody else”

Lev Grossman book The Magician's Land

Source: The Magician's Land

Books , World , Feeling

“No, see the slide’s too high. He could fall and get a concussion. (Wulf)
Forget that. He could rack himself on the teeter-totter. (Chris)
Teeter-totter nothing. The swings are a choking hazard. Whose idea was it for him to have this? (Urian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Idea , Forgetting

“There you go… let it all slide out. Unhappiness can't stick in a person's soul when it's slick with tears.”

Shannon Hale Princess Academy

Source: Princess Academy

Soul , Tear , Personality

“Her fluency was marvelous. She would say things at random, intricate, flamelike, or slide off into a parenthetical limbo peppered with fireworks-- admirable linguistic feats which a practiced writer might struggle for hours to achieve.”

Henry Miller book Sexus

Source: Sexus

“Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions.”

Cory Doctorow Eastern Standard Tribe

Source: Eastern Standard Tribe

Past

“But I let it slide, because, hello, hot guy.”

Meg Cabot book Pants on Fire

Source: Pants on Fire

Guy

“There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.”

Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) Polish scientist and philosopher

Life , Way , Thinking

“The car suddenly veered off the road and we came to a sliding halt in the gravel. I was hurled against the dashboard. My attorney was slumped over the wheel. “What’s wrong?” I yelled. “We can’t stop here. This is bat country!”

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

Cars , Country

“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

People , Idea , Heart

“Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Forgiveness , Forgetting

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Drink , Fish , Time

“As for this," Magnus said sliding the stele into Jace's jeans pocket, "keep it in your pants, Shadowhunter." - 219”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“There was no closing my eyes and sliding back into that blissful dream of normal. This was my normal now.”

Kelley Armstrong The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Dreams

“I do not laugh; I do not cry;
I'm sweating out the will to die.

My past is sliding down the drain;
I soon will be myself again.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

Past , Cry

“Sometimes I think that if it were possible to tell a story often enough to make the hurt ease up, to make the words slide down my arms and away from me like water, I would tell that story a thousand times.”

Anita Shreve book The Weight of Water

Source: The Weight of Water

Thinking , Water , Time , Hurt

“A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.”

George Eliot book Silas Marner

Source: Silas Marner

Water

“I'm unclear on the definition of person the courts have been using. Something that sieves out dolphins but lets corporations slide on through.”

Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Personality

“No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Fear

“Witihin seconds the headhunter had lost control of his car and it squealed, sliding sideways right into several other cars.
Cool!' said the Gasman.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Cars

“How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it.”

Margaret Atwood book The Year of the Flood

Source: The Year of the Flood

“Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Failure , Hell

“His fingers never ceased to amaze me. They could break a man's neck, bandage a wound, and slide sensually across bare skin.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“Some days simply lay on you like stones. Some were fickle as cats, sliding away when you needed comfort, then coming back later when you didn’t want them, jostling at you, stealing your breath.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Cats

“Each child’s story is worthy of telling. There shouldn’t be a sliding scale of death. The weight of it is crushing.”

Anderson Cooper (1967) journalist and author

Source: Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

Death

“There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring. The great moment was one day when I was stitching up a cow's teats--they often get cut, you know--and my glasses were sliding down my nose. Suddenly I thought, Wight, you're too old for this. But it was a gradual transition. I just did less and less. It must be terrible to have a job you very much love chopped off.”

James Herriot (1916–1995) veterinary surgeon and writer

Love , Help , Animals

“Dutifully I thumbed the rides, hopped the B & Os and the Great Northerns, balled the lithe small-town girls in the band shells of their hometown parks, held the job as field hand and day laborer and soda jerk, saw the crude spectacles of American landscape slide past me as I lay in an open boxcar and drank cheap red wine; and if I didn't, I might as well have.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Jerk , Girl , Wine , Past

“Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world
But those who slide along the grassy sod,
And sting the luckless foot that presses them?
There are who in the path of social life
Do bask their spotted skins in Fortune's sun,
And sting the soul.”

Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) Scottish poet and dramatist

De Montfort (1798), Act I, scene 2; in A Series of Plays.

Life , World , Soul , Sun

“Happily for the country, happily for you and for me, the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved that at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. Timid men said before Mister Lincoln’s inauguration, that we have seen the last president of the United States. A voice in influential quarters said, 'Let the Union slide'. Some said that a Union maintained by the sword was worthless. Others said a rebellion of eight million cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of all this tumult and timidity, and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was clear in his duty, and had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth. He had not been taught that treason and perjury were the proof of honor and honesty. His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded.”

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

He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Love , Life , Men , People

“Baseball players have to go in front of a grand jury and say, "Yeah, I did cocaine. Can you blame me? It's a slow goddamn game! Come on Jack! Standing out in left field for seven innings, and there's a long white line going down to home plate! I see the guy putting it out going "Heh heh heh heh!!!!" And that damn organ music too, the whole [does intro to "Charge!"]! Third base coach is always doing this…[wiping nose, fidgeting around]. When he's doing that, I don't know whether to slide or do a line! People sliding into home plate head first, umpire goes, "You're out!"”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

"No, baby, I'm up now! Ha ha ha!"
A Night at the Met (1986)

People , Music , Guy , Home

“His wastefulness showed most of all in the architectural projects. He built a palace, stretching from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which he called…"The Golden House". The following details will give some notion of its size and magnificence. The entrance-hall was large enough to contain a huge statue of himself, 120 feet high…Parts of the house were overlaid with gold and studded with precious stones and mother-of pearl. All the dining-rooms had ceilings of fretted ivory, the panels of which could slide back and let a rain of flowers, or of perfume from hidden sprinklers, shower upon his guests. The main dining-room was circular, and its roof revolved, day and night, in time with the sky. Sea water, or sulphur water, was always on tap in the baths. When the palace had been decorated throughout in this lavish style, Nero dedicated it, and condescended to remark: "Good, now I can at last begin to live like a human being!"”
Non in alia re tamen damnosior quam in aedificando domum a Palatio Esquilias usque fecit, quam…Auream nominavit. De cuius spatio atque cultu suffecerit haec rettulisse. Vestibulum eius fuit, in quo colossus CXX pedum staret ipsius effigie…In ceteris partibus cuncta auro lita, distincta gemmis unionumque conchis erant; cenationes laqueatae tabulis eburneis versatilibus, ut flores, fistulatis, ut unguenta desuper spargerentur; praecipua cenationum rotunda, quae perpetuo diebus ac noctibus vice mundi circumageretur; balineae marinis et albulis fluentes aquis. Eius modi domum cum absolutam dedicaret, hactenus comprobavit, ut se diceret quasi hominem tandem habitare coepisse.

Sueton book The Twelve Caesars

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Nero, Ch. 31

Flowers , Water , Time , Parting

“Ah! what is human life?
How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade,
Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd!
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth;
Too subtle is the movement to be seen;
Yet soon the hour is up—and we are gone.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

Busiris (1719), Act V, sc. i.

Life

“This extremist ideology is not true Islam. I have said it myself many, many times, and it’s absolutely right to do so. And I’ll say it again today. But simply denying any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists doesn’t work, because these extremists are self-identifying as Muslims. … It is an exercise in futility to deny that. And more than that, it can be dangerous. To deny it has anything to do with Islam means you disempower the critical reforming voices; the voices that are challenging the fusing of religion and politics; the voices that want to challenge the scriptural basis which extremists claim to be acting on; the voices that are crucial in providing an alternative worldview that could stop a teenager’s slide along the spectrum of extremism.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on extremism (20 July 2015)

Religion , Exercises , Time

“What's my line?
I'm happy cleaning windows
Take my time
I'll see you when my love grows
Baby don't let it slide
I'm a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows…”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Cleaning Windows
Song lyrics, Beautiful Vision (1982)

Love , Time , Baby , Happiness

“Thrown into a dungeon,
Bread and water was my portion,
Faith - my only weapon,
To rest the devil's legion.
The speak-hole would slide open,
A viper's voice would pleade,
A voice think with innuendo,
Syphillis and greed.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), Mercy

Faith , Thinking , Water

“Sisters, do you know how it is? On one hand,
the bawling baby; on the other, your husband
sliding onto your stomach,
his little son still howling at your side.
Yet, everything must be put in order,
Rushing around all helter-skelter.
Husband and child, what obligations!
Sisters, do you know how it is?”

Hồ Xuân Hương (1772–1822) Vietnamese poet

"The Condition of Women"
Spring Essence (2000)

Sister , Baby

“Are we going to make a supreme additional effort to remain a great Power, or are we going to slide away into what seem to be easier, softer, less strenuous, less harassing courses, with all the tremendous renunciations which that decision implies? Is not this the moment when all should hear the deep, repeated strokes of the alarm bell, and when all should resolve that it shall be a call to action, and not the knell of our race and fame?”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/nov/17/debate-on-the-address#S5CV0341P0_19381117_HOC_347 in the House of Commons (17 November 1938)
The 1930s

Decision , Effort

“Our research has shown that your body often has a remarkable capacity to begin healing itself—and much more quickly than people once realized—when we address the underlying causes of illness. For many people, the choices we make each day in what we eat and in how we live are among the most important underlying causes. When most people are prescribed medications to lower their blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar, they are usually told, “You will have to take this for the rest of your life," often in ever-increasing dosages. Why? Because the underlying causes are not being addressed. When I lecture, I often show a slide of doctors busily mopping up the floor around an overflowing sink without also turning off the faucet.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

The Spectrum (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), p. 16 https://books.google.it/books?id=YgooDmnD6l0C&pg=PA16.

Life , People

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 2 : Science and Hope, p. 25

Children , People , Feeling , Question

“The people are being kept in line at the moment, because there are still lots of shiny new things for them to buy. But more and more Americans are beginning to look beyond their immediate material comfort and to worry about the long-term moral slide of their country. If the economy slips badly, there will be hell to pay. More and more people will listen to the dissidents. A big problem for the Jews is how to silence the dissidents now, how to stifle the people who are asking inconvenient questions and thinking dangerous thoughts, before these thoughts spread to other people. They've tried to do it with legislation, but the country isn't yet in a mood to be told what it can think. What the Jews need is a nice, big war. Then they can crack down on the dissidents. Then they can call us "subversives." Then they can call us "unpatriotic," because we will be against their war… That's why I am convinced that there will be a strong effort to involve America in another major war during the next four years. This effort will be disguised, of course. It will be cloaked in deceit, as such efforts always are. While the warmongers are scheming for war, they will tell us how much they want peace. They're good at that sort of thing. They've had a lot of practice. But they will be scheming for war, believe me, no matter what they say. And when that war comes, remember what you have read today.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Get Set for War, 1997.
1990s, 1990

War , People , Peace , Mood

“If I thought about it, I never would have done it, I guess I would have let it slide.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Biograph (1985), Up to Me (recorded 1974)

“I DON’T KNOW IF YOU HAVE EVER LUNCHED WITH A VEGETARIAN. Probably you have. If you live in San Francisco you have. Then you’ve seen Dominic, his hand raised, fingers slightly crook’d to summon a waitress: Ma’am? (Pointing to the menu.) Is this dish made with meat stock? The waitress (a Chinese restaurant) takes a moment to divine the desired answer. No. (When in doubt.) So imperial, so sliding scale, so uncomprehending is her no, so wise is her no, finally, so Greek, so Arab, so Catholic, so Brown is her no, Dominic cannot be reassured. Dominic’s vegetarianism has to do with upholding the sacredness of life. He needs a puritan answer. Whereas Peter. Peter is the son of my friend Franz. Peter is as easy in the brown world of maybe as he is in his own white skin. He is wandering through India as I write this. Peter is handsome, gentle, Hindu-intoxicated, slightly blue; his skin is slightly blue. Peter’s veganism has to do with the sacredness of his own body; with the purity of his lungs and his bowels and his liver and his breath. Peter’s vigilance is maniacal: Do you place meat and vegetables on the same grill?”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Life , World

“I've experienced all kinds of discrimination," Oshima says. "Only people who've been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to. Like that lovely pair we just met." He sighs and twirls the long slender pencil in his hand. "Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas-none of them bother me. I don't care what banner they raise. But what I can't stand are hollow people. When I'm with them I just can't bear it, and wind up saying things I shouldn't. With those women I should've just let it slide, or else called Miss Saeki and let her handle it. She would have given them a smile and smoothed things over. But I just can't do that. I say things I shouldn't, do things I shouldn't do. I can't control myself. That's one of my weak points.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 19, Oshima

Love , Women , Men , Pain

“I have often thought, with reference to the late War…that it has shown the whole world how thin is the crust of civilisation on which this generation is walking. The realisation of that must have come with an appalling shock to most of us here. But more than that. There is not a man in this House who does not remember the first air raids and the first use of poisoned gas, and the cry that went up from this country. We know how, before the War ended, we were all using both those means of imposing our will upon our enemy. We realise that when men have their backs to the wall they will adopt any means for self-preservation. But there was left behind an uncomfortable feeling in the hearts of millions of men throughout Europe that, whatever had been the result of the War, we had all of us slipped down in our views of what constituted civilisation. We could not help feeling that future wars might provide, with further discoveries in science, a more rapid descent for the human race. There came a feeling, which I know is felt in all quarters of this House, that if our civilisation is to be saved, even at its present level, it behoves all people in all nations to do what they can by joining hands to save what we have, that we may use it as the vantage ground for further progress, rather than run the risk of all of us sliding in the abyss together.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1923/jul/23/military-expenditure-and-disarmament in the House of Commons (23 July 1923).
1923

Men , War , People , World

“Shove-groat, named also Slyp-groat, and Slide-thrift, are sports occasionally mentioned by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and probably were analogous to the modern pastime called Justice Jervis, or Jarvis, which is confined to common pot-houses, and only practiced by such as frequent the tap-rooms.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 302
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Obscure games

Justice , Sport , Housing

“On the phone with his wife when the plane he was on stopped after hitting a deer.
Engvall: When we landed on the runway, we hit a deer with our airplane. You can't make this up. And it killed the deer, it wrecked the engine. We had to evacuate the plane. But the plane was so small it didn't have slides. The flight attendant said "Just step out." So they put us in a van and they're busing us back to the terminal and I'm laughing at this point because this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. And I got back to the terminal, I called my wife. I said "Baby, you're not gonna believe this. We just hit a deer with our airplane". There was a pause on the other end of the line, followed by…
Gail: Oh my God! Were you on the ground?

Engvall: Nope, Santa was making one last run! Here's your sign.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Here's Your Sign: Live! (2004)
Here's Your Sign

Life , God , Baby

“For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature. While the President’s plan envisages humans traveling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future, the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years.
Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity. America must decide if it wishes to remain a leader in space. If it does, we should institute a program which will give us the very best chance of achieving that goal.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

Open letter on NASA cuts (2010)

Travel , Chance , Time , Future

“The stars are silent.
Voyager among dark harbors, I listen, but the midnight wind carries only the sound of trees and water lapping against the gunwale and the solitary cry of the night swallow.
There is no dawn. No searing sun rises in east or west. The rocks over Calumal do not silver, and the great round world slides through the void.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 10 Monitor (p. 162)

World , Star , Tree , Water

“Tell mankind Jehovah reigns;
He shall bind the world in chains,
So as it shall never slide,
And with sacred justice guide.
Let the smiling heavens rejoice,
Joyful earth exalt her voice;
Let the dancing billows roar,
Echoes answer from the shore,
Fields their flowery mantles shake;
All shall in their joy partake;
While the wood-musicians sing
To the ever-youthful spring.
Fill His courts with sacred mirth;
Lo! He comes to judge the earth:
Justly He the world shall sway,
And His truth to men display.”

Henry More (1614–1687) British philosopher

"A Hymn of Praise" (1668)

Men , Truth , Youth , World

“To amuse is not to teach. The object of teaching is to erect a framework of knowledge in a child's mind and gradually to bring the child as near as may be to the average level of intelligence. Later in life the facts taught by experience and new discoveries will add themselves to this framework. It is wrong to attempt to upset this natural order and to appeal to a child's mind by diverting it with the spectacle of modern life. Teaching by means of pictures, radio, and the cinema is in itself ineffective; these methods must not be used unless they involve (and this is possible) some effort or special enthusiasm. That which is learned without difficulty is soon forgotten, and for the same reason, oral instruction which does not require the pupil's personal participation is almost always rather useless. Eloquence slides in and out of young minds. To listen is not to work.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Naturally this does not apply to the teaching of modern languages.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Life , Intelligence , Nature , Knowledge

“Any community's arm of force — military, police, security — needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)

People , Communication , Question , Evil

“For the majority, I take it, who live all their lives with such obtuse faculties of thinking, it is a difficult thing to perform this feat of mental analysis and of discriminating the material vehicle from the immanent beauty, … Owing to this men give up all search after the true Beauty. Some slide into mere sensuality. Others incline in their desires to dead metallic coin. Others limit their imagination of the beautiful to worldly honours, fame, and power. There is another class which is enthusiastic about art and science. The most debased make their gluttony the test of what is good. But he who turns from all grosser thoughts and all passionate longings after what is seeming, and explores the nature of the beauty which is simple, immaterial, formless, would never make a mistake like that when he has to choose between all the objects of desire; he would never be so misled by these attractions as not to see the transient character of their pleasures and not to win his way to an utter contempt for every one of them. This, then, is the path to lead us to the discovery of the Beautiful. All other objects that attract men's love, be they never so fashionable, be they prized never so much and embraced never so eagerly, must be left below us, as too low, too fleeting, to employ the powers of loving which we possess; not indeed that those powers are to be locked up within us unused and motionless; but only that they must first be cleansed from all lower longings; then we must lift them to that height to which sense can never reach.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 11

Love , Men , Pleasure , Beauty

“…A government as large as the modern megastate cannot conceivably be controlled by a well-informed public, since it is literally impossible to be knowledgeable about even a fraction of the many complex matters modern governments are called upon to govern. … The attraction of free markets … is that they have self-correcting features that place far smaller demands on anyone’s knowledge than democracy does. Each person concerns herself with her own life and the system, supposedly, runs itself. Interpreted in this way, the literature on public ignorance could form the basis of the consequentialist argument the postwar free-market economists sought, but never found … against all government economic intervention: for even if it cannot be shown, on economic grounds, that every intervention hurts more than it helps, it might be shown, on political grounds, that by opening the door to helpful interventions, we begin sliding toward the unhelpful ones on a slope slippery with public ignorance.”

Jeffrey Friedman (political scientist) (1959) American political scientist

Source: “What’s wrong with Libertarianism”, p. 455

Life , Way , Democracy , Literature

“Well, is he [bin Laden] the enemy? Next slide. Or is this man [Saddam] the enemy? The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.”

William G. Boykin (1948) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Speech at a First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Florida General who voiced his faith cleared on major accusations http://www.bpnews.net/18948, June 2003.

People , Guy

“His bow to me must have been calculated on a slide rule; it suggested that I was about to be Supreme Minister but was not quite there yet, that I was his senior but nevertheless a civilian — then subtract five degrees for the fact that he wore the Emperor’s aiguillette on his right shoulder.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Double Star

Double Star (1956)

“Over the years, it has slowly dawned on me that the people who cause my painful experiences are ignorant and crude. They are the critics who have not read enough and the clients who do not know why they have come to us. I have been helped to realise this by noticing that the scholars whose work we most respect, the clients whose projects intrigue us, and the patrons whose friendship inspires us, have no problem understanding my role. They are the sophisticates. Partly through them I gain heart and realise that, over the last twenty years, I have managed to do my work and, despite some sliding, to achieve my own self-respect.”

Denise Scott Brown (1931) American architect

"Sexism and the star system in architecture"

Pain , Friendship , People , Understanding

“Nor was my attendance at the Polo Grounds limited to baseball games. I sat in the lower left field stands to watch the championship professional football game between the undefeated Chicago Bears led by Bronc Nagurski and the New York Giants. Because the field was so icy slick—the temperature dipped to four degrees above zero that Sunday afternoon—the Giants' owner Wellington Mara had a minion at halftime break into Manhattan College's gymnasium and steal the school's basketball sneakers. Clad in sneakers and suddenly able to keep from sliding all over the joint, the Giants turned a 13-3 deficit into a 30-13 victory. All this despite an advisory to his teammates from a former Chicago linebacker named George Halas, "Step on their toes! Step on their toes!"”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From his Foreword https://books.google.com/books?id=jF7v30gqs_0C&pg=PA8&dq=%22Nor+was+my+attendance%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMIr7rJg_3UxwIVRDc-Ch0APQ6M#v=onepage&q=%22Nor%20was%20my%20attendance%22&f=false to The Early Polo Grounds
Sports-related

School , Game , Victory , Football

“Eloquence consists of persuading people of things they desperately want to believe. Demagoguery, I suppose, is eloquence sliding to some least moral energy level.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Komarr (1998)

People

“How long, How long?
Will I slide?
Separate my side?
I don't believe it's bad
Slit my throat it's all I ever had”

Anthony Kiedis (1962) American singer

Otherside.
Lyrics

“You can say with safety that nowadays women have finally acknowledged their position of not liking men. We could say now that women don't like men. They can acknowledge that they prefer the company of their own kind. I think we can also say generally that most men do not like other men. Most men prefer to like women. So women are the most liked by the most people. Men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters. A one-way slide. There is little going back the other way. Can hamsters love children? I leave you to deduce the rest.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Palmira
8 1/2 Women

Love , Women , Men , Children

“Lower forms merge into higher forms, one species with another, the vegetable into the animal kingdom; in human history one epoch slides into another…Socialism, the stage which follows Liberalism, retains everything of value in Liberalism by virtue of its being the hereditary heir of Liberalism.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Socialism and Society (1905), pp. 164-165
1900s

History , Animals

“Of course people who don't believe in masturbation are all for circumcision, because it's very difficult to masturbate if you're circumcised. Whereas if you're uncircumcised you can slide that skin up & down the penis & it makes it feel almost like it's inside of a woman in your fist!”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

Uncircumcision! To be, or not to be?

People , Feeling

“I'm running for president because I think that, with a lot of help, I can stem the tide of this slide and restore America’s leadership in the world and change our priorities. I will argue that my experience and my track record — both on the foreign and domestic side — put me in a position to be able to do that.
I would respectfully suggest to you that the Democrats out there understand I am the only person with a plan that can get out of Iraq without our interests in the region not falling apart.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Conference call https://www.nytimes.com/cq/2007/01/31/cq_2212.html?pagewanted=all with reporters after announcing candidacy for the 2008 Democratic president nomination (January 30, 2007)
2000s

World , Thinking , Change , Help

“Miriamele was dismayed by her own willful ignorance. How could she, with all her native good fortune, be so consumed with the few inconveniences that God or fate had put in her way? It was shameful.
She tried to tell Duke Isgrimnur something of her thoughts, but he would not let her slide too far into self-loathing.
“Each one of us has our own sorrows, Princess,” he said. “It’s no shame to take them to heart. The only sin is to forget that other folk have theirs, too—or to let pity for yourself slow your hand when someone needs help.””

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 21, “Answered Prayers” (p. 649).

God , Fate , Way , Help

“If, for example, a conspiratorially minded elite is so powerful, has at its fingertips such multiple and delicate instruments with which to fine-tune accumulation, then how can the periodic headlong slides into crisis be explained?”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 10, Finance Capital And Its Contradictions, p. 316

“Let the world slide, let the world go;
A fig for care, and a fig for woe!
If I can't pay, why I can owe,
And death makes equal the high and low.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Be Merry Friends; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Death , World

“The lack of freedom suffered by those who advise the powerful may of course be due to coercion or force. But the slavish behavior typical of such counselors may equally well be due to their basic condition of dependence and their understanding of what their clientage demands of them. As soon as they begin to ‘slide into a blind dependence upon one who has wealth and power’, they begin to desire ‘only to know his will’, and eventually ‘care not what injustice they do, if they may be rewarded’.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

(describing the view of Algernon Sidney) p. 93
Liberty Before Liberalism (1998)

Behavior , Understanding , Freedom , Suffering

“Depression is seductive: it offends and teases, frightens you and draws you in, tempting you with its promise of sweet oblivion, then overwhelming you with a nearly sexual power, squirming past your defenses, dissolving your will, invading the tired spirit so utterly that it becomes difficult to recall that you ever lived without it… or to imagine that you might live that way again. With all the guile of Satan himself, depression persuades you that its invasion was all your own idea, that you wanted it all along. It fogs the part of the brain that reasons, that knows right and wrong. It captures you with its warm, guilty, hateful pleasures, and, worst of all, it becomes familiar. All at once, you find yourself in thrall to the very thing that most terrifies you. Your work slides, your friendships slide, your marriage slides, but you scarcely notice: to be depressed is to be half in love with disaster.”

Stephen L. Carter book The Emperor of Ocean Park

Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 12, A Special Delivery, II

Love , Hate , Friendship , Marriage

“She slides in and you rode down Main Street, you turn right when that red light turns green.
Sun sets now, you're half way to heaven.
She picks a song, you turn it up to 11, you say "Do you wanna?" and she says "Hell yeah." So you hit the party, all your buddies are jealous.
Someday, you'll be looking back on your life at the memories, this is gonna be one of those nights.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

One of Those Nights
Song lyrics, Two Lanes of Freedom (2013)

Life , Way , Hell , Light

““You know the answers, but just between ourselves, that sketch smells a bit. It’s sloppy.”
“I never did have any artistic talent,” Art said defensively. “I’d rather take a photograph any day.”
“You’ve taken too many photographs, maybe. As for artistic talent, I haven’t any either, but I learned to sketch. Look, Art—the rest of you guys get this, too—if you can’t sketch, you can’t see. If you really see what you’re looking at, you can put it down on paper, accurately. If you really remember what you have looked at, you can sketch it accurately from memory.”
“But the lines don’t go where I intend them to.”
“A pencil will go where you push it. It hasn’t any life of its own. The answer is practice and more practice and thinking about what you are looking at. All of you lugs want to be scientists. Well, the ability to sketch accurately is as necessary to a scientist as his slipstick. More necessary, you can get along without a slide rule.””

Robert A. Heinlein book Rocket Ship Galileo

Source: Rocket Ship Galileo (1947), Chapter 10, “The Method of Science”, p. 108

Life , Art , Guy , Thinking

“One obvious way to specify what it is that is “due” to someone is to appeal to existing legal codes, but what they will prescribe will vary enormously from one time and place to another. A second account of justice might appeal to some notion of merit or desert. The third approach is Aristotle’s “general” conception, which simply identified “justice” with the sum of all the virtues and excellences. A fourth conception of justice is the idea that justice is in some way to be connected to equality of shares, resources, or outcomes. Finally there is the idea of fairness or impartiality of procedure. One might think that Rawls’s view derives some of its apparent plausibility because of a gradual slide between the various senses of “justice.” People start from a vague intuition that justice as a “general” concept (in the third sense above) is extremely important for the proper functioning of a society; they then find it easy to shift from this to a particular conception that connects “justice” with fairness of procedure and (a certain kind of limited) equality.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), pp. 81-82.

People , Justice , Way , Idea

“They oughtta give me the Wurlitzer Prize
For all the silver I let slide down the slot.
Playin' those songs sung blue
That help me remember you.
I don't wanna get over you.”

Waylon Jennings (1937–2002) American country music singer, songwriter, and musician

The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don't Want to Get Over You) (1977).
Song lyrics

Help

“Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines, st. 1 (1934), st. 3

Smile , Tear , Sea

“There was a time not too long ago in this country that we used to walk through walls of fire to make sure we weren't funding Hamas or Hezbollah. I have news for ya: there are a lot of universities that are just as dangerous with indoctrination of our children as these terror groups are in Iran or North Korea. With the poll numbers continuing to slide for the new health care bill, our Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just said, and I quote, "We need a [video: RE-EDUCATION in fullscreen boldface] re-education process [video of Beck resumes] on healthcare." Oh. Well, how very Kim Jong-Il of you. Or dare I say it? Mao is the "in" one now, isn't he? Re-education. — America, while you have been working hard, while you have been busting your butt, while you have thought we all generally agree on things, we have been setting up re-education camps. We call them 'universities'.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2010s, 2010

Children , Health , Education , Quotes

“Scholars, journalists, activists, and others have an almost knee-jerk tendency to praise Bangladesh's beginnings as a secular nation and trace its slide into Islamist domination from the 1975 assassination of its founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. That praise is warranted - but only to a limited extent, for secularism and any semblance of democratic ideals were in their death throes long before Sheikh Mujib was.”

Richard Benkin American journalist

Benkin, Richard L. (2012). A quiet case of ethnic cleansing: The murder of Bangladesh's Hindus. New Delhi: Akshaya Prakashan. p.167

Jerk , Death

“The main problem with many nonscientific world models is the vigor with which they insist upon their rightness. Once a world model claims to be completely right, it is no longer open to any changes. …Closed systems can be comforting, but they are limited. …It's not the best we can do. Neither is extreme "open-mindednesss" that slides into "empty headedness"—the ideal that we can never really know anything.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

World , Problem , Change

“A teacher?”
“Yes. He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That what we are determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which here is no escape simply by being ourselves and interacting with other selves.”
“Interesting.”
“Well. Yes. There is god of sorts, Croaker. Do you know? Not a mover and shaker, though. Simply a negator. An ender of tales. He has a hunger that cannot be sated. The universe itself will slide down his maw.”
“Death?”
“I do not want to die, Croaker. All that I am shrieks against the unrighteousness of death. All that I am, was, and probably will be, is shaped by my passion to evade the end of me.” She laughed quietly, but there was a thread of hysteria there. She gestured, indicating the shadowed killing ground below. “I would have built a world in which I was safe. And the cornerstone of my citadel would have been death.”
The end of the dream was drawing close. I could not imagine a world without me in it, either. And the inner me was outraged. Is outraged. I have no trouble imagining someone becoming obsessed with escaping death.
“I understand.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

“Maybe. We’re all equals at the dark gate, no? The sands run for us all. Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!”
Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 39, “A Guest at Charm” (p. 625)

Life , Death , Hunger , God

“—On the dedication page of the rebellion, we see the words “To Clementine”. A fine sentiment, miscellaneous organ music next, and, turning several pages, massed orange flags at the head of the column. This will not be easy, but neither will it be hard. Good will is everywhere, and the lighthearted song of the gondoliers is heard in the distance.
—Yes, success is everything. Morally important as well as useful in a practical way.
—What have the rebels captured thus far? One zoo, not our best zoo, and a cemetery. The rebels have entered the cages of the tamer animals and are playing with them, gently.
—Things can get better, and in my opinion will.
—Their Graves Registration procedures are scrupulous—accurate and fair.
—There’s more to it than playing guitars and clapping along. Although that frequently gets people in the mood.
—Their methods are direct, not subtle. Dissolution, leaching, sandblasting, cracking and melting of fireproof doors, condemnation, water damage, slide presentations, clamps and buckles.
—And skepticism, although absolutely necessary, leads to not very much.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The Crisis”, opening
Great Days (1979)

People , Music , Way , Mood

“I missed my slipstick. Dad says that anyone who can't use a slide rule is a cultural illiterate and should not be allowed to vote. Mine is a beauty — a K&E 20-inch Log-log Duplex Decitrig. Dad surprised me with it after I mastered a ten-inch polyphase. We ate potato soup that week — but Dad says you should always budget luxuries first. I knew where it was. Home on my desk.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 7

Beauty , Home

“We have also sound houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise divers trembling and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear to do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as if it were tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in tubes and pipes, in strange lines and distances…”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

New Atlantis http://www.constitution.org/bacon/new_atlantis.htm (1627)

Music , Bird , Time , Help

“My dad wrote a song about the people in the slides. I started playing harmonica. I was only six.”

Rachel Trachtenburg (1993) American musician

Rachel on the song Mountain Trip To Japan, 1959 and how she ended up in the band.
Off & On Broadway documentary (2006)

People

“Before it was over, I had built a mission in Chilibre, a small village with black Jamaicans and brown Panamanians, and one at the Palo Seco Leper Colony. They had been waiting for someone like me all their life. We built a church out of palm trees and mango leaves. We sang in Spanish and in English and occasionally I played my clarinet for them and warned them against civilization. I told them to stay out of Panama City, to lay off their home brew made from masticated corn and to quit smoking coco leaves. In return, I no longer went to movies, quit playing jazz and didn’t touch my penis except to piss for two whole years. They elected me to the Board of Deacons at the First Baptist Church in Balboa after I became so successful in the jungle. They even sent some of my color slides to the churches back home and told them that a “Mexican Billy Graham” was converting natives right and left. In exchange the Southern Baptists sent Pastor Beebee more money to make new additions to the church. It already looked like an old mansion on a southern plantation.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 133.

Life , Money , Color , Home

“The image of the lighted ship sliding under the waves, while the band carried on regardless, captured the public’s imagination.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 7

Imagination , Light

“Everything's sliding apart.
Yet, "Long live everything!"
For the art of creation
Is older than the art of killing.”

Andrey Voznesensky (1933–2010) Soviet poet

"Lines to Robert Lowell"; translation by Louis Simpson and Vera Dunham, from Vera Dunham and Max Hayward (eds.) Nostalgia for the Present (New York: Doubleday, 1978) p. 111.

Art

“In Hollywood, women hate each other. Everyone is so bitchy and they don't want younger actresses coming in and taking their roles. You only have to look at what it's done to Kate Beckinsale. She used be cool. Now I've heard she's got a clause in her contract saying that she can't be filmed bending over at more than a 45-degree angle because her boob implants slide up onto her collar bone.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

Sienna talks about Kate Beckinsale Article http://www.yee.ch/movies/K/KA/Kate_Beckinsale/Kate_Beckinsale.htm. yee.ch. 2004

Women , Hate

“Cthelll is the terrestrial inner nightmare, nocturnal ocean, Xanadu: the anorganic metal-body trauma-howl of the earth (…) [P]lutonic science slides continuously into schizophrenic delirium. Fast forward seismology and you hear the earth scream.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Barker Speaks: The CCRU Interview with Professor D.C. Barker" (1999), in Fanged Noumena, pp. 498–9

Science