Quotes about tip
page 2

“Where does the hand become the wrist?
where does the neck become the shoulder? The watershed
and then the weight, whatever turns up and tips us over that
razor's edge
between something and nothing, between
one and the other.”

Simon Armitage (1963) Poet, playwright, novelist

'Gooseberry Season', from Kid.

“My grandpa sells condoms to sailors, He punctures the tips with a pin, My grandma does back-street abortions, My god how the money rolls in.”

Neil Gaiman book Fragile Things

From the Monarch in the Glenn
Fragile Things (2006)

Money, God, Grandma

“When serious scientists with huge beards aren't looking, I jocularly refer to these fossils as my alien goldfish. Picture the scene: the giant spaceship is parked on a wide beach, and kicking pebbles Commodore Grafnik is in a filthy mood. Yet another planet with hundreds of millions of years to go before intelligence evolves, not even at the zorkquaan stage, for Threga's sake! And as for his pet vlantans!! Purchased at huge expense, all they do is feed voraciously and then fall asleep. Still fuming, Grafnik carries the bowl down to the lagoon edge and (contrary to every regulation in the AIPC [Access to Inhabited Planets Code]) tips the vlantans out. They dart away and several months later enter the fossil record of a planet where they have no right to be.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

Astronomy and Geophysics: Vol. 46, No. 4: "Aliens like us?"
Miscellaneous

Intelligence, Mood

““We believe that when this secret is finally unlocked, every member of the Unbroken Spine who ever lived… will live again.”
A Messiah, a first disciple, and a rapture. Check, check, and double-check. Penumbra is, right now, teetering right on the boundary between charmingly weird old guy and disturbingly weird old guy. Two things tip the scales toward charm: First, his wry smile, which is not the smile of the disturbed, and micromuscles don’t lie. Second, the look in Kat’s eyes. She’s enthralled. I guess people believe weirder things than this, right? Presidents and popes believe weirder things than this.”

Robin Sloan (1979) American writer

Source: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012), Chapter 15 “The Strangest Clerk in Five Hundred Years” (p. 136)

People, Lie, Secret, Smile

“I bet a guy at a bar 50 bucks that I was more dysfunctional than he was. He raped me. So I tipped him. I'm very competitive.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Norman Rockwell is Bleeding (2004)

Guy

“Since anonymous sources are being taken seriously, please allow me to share some tips I've received and keep the tipsters' identities anonymous. We've been warned by multiple high-ranking Democrat insiders that the Delaware Democrat and Republican political establishment is jointly planning to pull out all the stops to ensure I would never again upset the apple cart. Specifically they told me the plan was to crush me with investigations, lawsuits and false accusations so that my political reputation would become so toxic no one would ever get behind me. I was warned by numerous sources that the DE political establishment is going to use every resource available to them. So given that the king of the Delaware political establishment just so happens to be the vice president of the most liberal presidential administration in U. S. history, it is no surprise that misuse and abuse of the FBI would not be off the table. And further connecting the dots, do you think it is just a coincidence that Melanie Sloan was a senior Biden staffer just before she joined CREW and filed her complaint against me?!”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

Press statement, 2010-12-29, quoted in * Is There a Case Against Christine O'Donnell?
Slate
2010-12-29
http://www.slate.com/BLOGS/blogs/weigel/archive/2010/12/29/is-there-a-case-against-christine-o-donnell.aspx
2011-06-07
regarding an FBI criminal investigation into allegations she misused campaign funds for personal expenses

History, Thinking, Falseness

“What was uncovered at Sidhpur only to be covered up again was verily the tip of an iceberg which remains submerged in hundreds of histories written by Muslim historians, in Hindu literary sources which are slowly coming to light, in the accounts of foreign travellers who visited India and the neighbouring lands during medieval and modern times, and above all in the reports of the archaeological surveys carried out in all those countries which had been for long the cradles of Hindu culture. No systematic effort has yet been made by scholars to see the iceberg emerge from the dark depths and tell its own story in a simple and straight-forward manner. Rare is the historian or archaeologist who had related this vandalism to the theology of Islam based on the Qur’ãn and the Sunnah of the Prophet. On the contrary, the subject has been politicised by the votaries of Secularism who become hysterical by the very mention of the untold story. Politicians in power have made and are making frantic efforts to suppress every tip of the iceberg which chances to surface in spite, of the conspiracy to keep it out of sight. Some of these politicians are masquerading as academicians and selling far-fetched and fantastic apologies for the havoc caused by Islamic iconoclasm.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Travel, History, Effort, Light

“I don't like sewing machines. I don't understand how a needle with a thread going through the tip of it can interlock the thread by jamming itself into a little goddamn spool. It's contrary to nature and it irritates me.”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

Source: Zodiac (1988), Chapter 9

Understanding, Nature

“Put down your hollow tips,
And kiss your lover's lips,
And know that fate is what we make of it.”

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

Lyrics, A Crow Left of the Murder... (2004)

Fate, Lovers, Kiss

“TIPS! How people want tips! They crave not only to get them but to give them.”

Edwin Lefèvre book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Source: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923), Chapter XVI, p. 188

People

“"What is Bazarov?" Arkady smiled. "Would you like me to tell you, uncle, what he really is?""Please do, nephew.""He is a nihilist!""What?" asked Nikolai Petrovich, while Pavel Petrovich lifted his knife in the air with a small piece of butter on the tip and remained motionless."He is a nihilist," repeated Arkady."A nihilist," said Nikolai Petrovich. "That comes from the Latin nihil, nothing, as far as I can judge; the word must mean a man who… who recognizes nothing?""Say — who respects nothing," interposed Pavel Petrovich and lowered his knife with the butter on it."Who regards everything from the critical point of view," said Arkady."Isn't that exactly the same thing?" asked Pavel Petrovich."No, it's not the same thing. A nihilist is a person who does not bow down to any authority, who does not accept any principle on faith, however much that principle may be revered.""Well, and is that good?" asked Pavel Petrovich. "That depends, uncle dear. For some it is good, for others very bad.""Indeed. Well, I see that's not in our line. We old-fashioned people think that without principles, taken as you say on faith, one can't take a step or even breathe. Vous avez changé tout cela; may God grant you health and a general's rank, and we shall be content to look on and admire your… what was the name?""Nihilists," said Arkady, pronouncing very distinctly."Yes, there used to be Hegelists and now there are nihilists. We shall see how you will manage to exist in the empty airless void; and now ring, please, brother Nikolai, it's time for me to drink my cocoa."”

Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883) Russian writer

Source: Father and Sons (1862), Ch. 5.

God, People, Health, Faith

“The mention made by Maulana Abdul Hai (Indian Express, February 5) of Hindu temples turned into mosques, is only the tip of an iceberg, The iceberg itself lies submerged in the writings of medieval Muslim historians, accounts of foreign travellers and the reports of the Archaeological Survey of India. A hue and cry has been raised in the name of secularism and national integration whenever the iceberg has chanced to surface, inspite of hectic efforts to keep it suppressed. Marxist politicians masquerading as historians have been the major contributors to this conspiracy of silence….. The vast cradle of Hindu culture is literally littered with ruins of temples and monasteries belonging to all sects of Sanatana Dharma - Buddhist, Jain, Saiva, Shakta, Vaishnava and the rest…. The story of how Islamic invaders sought to destroy the very foundations of Hindu society and culture is long and extremely painful. It would certainly be better for everybody to forget the past, but for the prescriptions of Islamic theology which remain intact and make it obligatory for believers to destroy idols and idol temples.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Pain, Travel, Effort, Silence

“Duckbills were supposedly croc-style swimmers, moving by strong, easy, side-to-side flexures of their tail. Therefore, the optimal design would feature vertical tail spines. But duckbill spines all slanted strongly backward, exactly as in land-living lizards, not in swimmers.
Another problem in the duckbill's swimming equipment lies in the profile of the tail. The deepest part of the croc's tail is close to the end, because the end swings through a wider arc than does the base in moving side to side. Thus the tail is deepest where it can do the most good in pushing against the water. All powerful tail-scullers have such deep tail ends. But duckbill tails were deepest at the hips and become progressively narrower from top-to-bottom toward the tip - another caudal feature nearly totally maladapted for its primary function.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 153
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Optimism, Problem, Strong, Water

“You see, she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly.
She took off to find the footlights,
And I took off for the sky.
And here, she's acting happy,
Inside her handsome home.
And me, I'm flying in my taxi,
Taking tips, and getting stoned,
I go flying so high, when I'm stoned.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Taxi
Song lyrics, Heads & Tales (1972)

Happiness, Home, Learning, Flying

“Tips on surviving the regime: Respect yourself and speak for others. Do one small thing every day to prove the existence of justice.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Ai Weiwei Twitter feed: @AiWW (12:39 p.m. August 6, 2009)
2000-09, Twitter feeds, 2009

Justice

“Her robe is a cloud, her face a flower;
Her balcony, glimmering with the bright spring dew,
Is either the tip of earth's Jade Mountain,
Or a moon-edged roof of paradise.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"A Song Of Pure Happiness I" (清平调之一)

Mountain, Spring, Flowers

“Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature)… said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched… said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U. S. S. R… professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you"… used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars… used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war… allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling.".. sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck… then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too… then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.) One could go on… This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2004

Death, War, People, World

“Oh I'm just a man, that's the way I was made.
I'm not too good at sayin' what you need me to say.
It's always right there on the tip of my tongue.
It might go unsaid but it won't go undone.
So when those three little words come so easy to you,
I hope you know what I mean when I say, me too.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Me Too, written with Chuck Cannon
Song lyrics, Blue Moon (1996)

Hope, Way

“Have you never seen human beings acting in a mob-frenzy? Have you never seen a religious rite that tipped people over the edge? Did you not see footage of the rock-and-roll music concerts they have in America?”

Adam Roberts book Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

Source: Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (2014), Chapter 14, “Confinement” (p. 131)

People, Music

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch.7

Life, Happiness, Children, Home

“We are in an emergency situation in the Anthropocene epoch in which the disruption of the Earth system, particularly the climate, is threatening the planet as a place of human habitation. However, our political-economic system, capitalism, is geared primarily to the accumulation of capital, which prevents us from addressing this enormous challenge and accelerates the destruction. answer to the dire ecological problems we face, because when looking at the human effect on the planet there is nothing gradual about it; it is a Great Acceleration and a rift in the Earth system. The problem is rising exponentially, while worsening even faster than that would suggest, because we are in the process of crossing all sorts critical thresholds and facing a bewildering number of tipping points.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

Problem

“We resolved to end our poison-enquiries by tasting the venomous liquor. According, having diluted a quantity of it, with a very little warm water, several of us ventured to put some of it upon the tip of our tongues. We all agreed, that it tasted very sharp and fiery, as if the tongue had been struck through with something scalding or burning. This sensation went off in two or three hours: and one gentleman, who would not be satisfied without trying a large drop undiluted, found his tongue swelled with a little inflammation and the soreness lasted two days. But neither his nor our boldness was attended with any ill consequence.”

Richard Mead (1673–1754) British physician

Source: A Mechanical Account of Poisons (1702), p. 22

Water

“I want to try to live my own values as consciously and purposefully as I can. Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don’t align with my values. … As soon as I said publicly that I was trying this experiment, so many vegans out there, hundreds and hundreds of people, have been reaching out to me with incredible support and encouragement as well as practical tips of how to do this without having to sacrifice that much in terms of the food and what I like. I've discovered some really delicious things—recipes, stores, and restaurants—that have made this transition far easier. … There's too much judgment out there. Really what we need to be doing is just all of us finding our own paths towards living the best lives we can live as clearly and boldly in accordance with our own personal values.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

" Talking Tofurky With Newly Vegan Cory Booker http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/26/talking-tofurky-with-newly-vegan-cory-booker.html", interview with Vlad Chituc, in The Daily Beast (26 November 2014) 2014

People, Food, Way, Support

“I woke up from a nap the other night. Everyone is cranky when they wake up. I thought to myself: 'I have no right to be cranky. I'm so lucky.' On my way to go to a restaurant, I get out of the car and I see this person on crutches. His sign says that he has AIDS and that his immune system is low. You know, he's broke, and his family won't talk to him because they can't eat because of the hospital bills. He didn't do this. The system did it - so that when someone has a chronic disease, it sucks him dry. He could have been in that same restaurant two years ago, eating and tipping big. I felt blessed that I could drop a fifty on him.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Detour, (1993)

Disease, Family, Cars, Way

“Many grand notions and titles have over time attached themselves to this place: a paradise at the southern tip of Africa, the world’s richest floral kingdom, a maritime fulcrum between West and East, a European outpost at the foot of the continent, the Tavern of the Seas. But the two names that are the most potent are also two of the earliest: the contradictory claims of this being both a Cape of Storms and a Cape of Good Hope. The tension between these ideas encapsulates many of the tensions of this city.
Legend has it that the first Portuguese navigator to round the southern tip of Africa, Bartolomeu Dias, named this stormy peninsula Cabo das Tormentas. However, King João II rejected Dias’s name in favour of one that would be more inspirational for the Portuguese people: Cabo da Boa Esperança. The turning point for the Lusitanian caravels would spell untold riches in the East. But the dialectic between the two contending titles is as virile today in a city whose promise is limitless and whose socio-political storms act as a sea anchor.”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

Cape Town Calling (2007)

People, World, Hope, Idea

“A myth has it that in the Texas League some years back, Billy Williams hit a line drive so hard it broke the leg of a rival first baseman. The myth is total nonsense. Williams actually hit a one-bounce ground shot that broke the leg of a rival second baseman. When Billy Williams sets the record straight, he laughs, and tiny white lights glitter in his black eyes, like the tips of icepicks. You know," he says, "nobody likes to hurt anybody. But you have to think I hit that ball pretty good." This is the Billy Williams laugh. It is not a friendly laugh. It is the laugh of an arrogant hitter. Stan Musial used to giggle that way, and no one would confuse it with a girlish giggle. Ted Williams used to grin that way when he talked about hitting. Not a friendly grin; a wicked grin. That is Billy Williams' laugh. It is probably the way the legendary Billy the Kid laughed before he killed a man. Cold as the tip of an icepick. Not that Billy Williams is not a friendly man. He is. Very. He is one of the nicest guys in baseball. But he knows how to separate the two—nice guy, big league hitter.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Billy Williams: Invisible Iron Man," in Baseball Stars of 1971 (March 1971), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 106
Sports-related

Way, Guy, Thinking, Light

“Edward raises the pointer and places its tip against Alec’s forehead. “What’s the use of having a library in there if you won’t open the books, boy? What’s the good of augmented intelligence if you won’t use it?””

Kage Baker book The Sons of Heaven

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 26, Section 1 “Child Care in the Cyborg Family, Volume Fifteen: Adolescent Rebellion” (p. 307)

Books, Intelligence, Boy

“I think the reason why we're so disconnected and depressing is that…we don't talk to God anymore - or rather, he doesn't talk to us. Remember back in the day? He used to just come out of nowhere. 'Abraham?! Guess who?!…that's right, it's God, you're a genius…' He would then tell them to do something and then BAM! it would get done. Who's he talking to now?!…I don't know! I think he's talking to those homeless guys that talk to themselves. You know, the ones that walk down the street arguing with themselves going 'I can't!…I can't!!!!!' …what if at the other end of that conversation was 'You're the new leader!' 'I can't!…I can't!!!!!' They're not crazy homeless people…they're reluctant prophets!…better tip them an extra buck the next time you see 'em.”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/a313mc/shorties-watchin--shorties-talking-to-god
Miscellaneous

God, People, Guy, Thinking

“I call it simply the Book, with no qualifications or epithets, and in this abstinence and restraint there is a helpless sigh, silent capitulation to the immeasurableness of the transcendent; for no word, no allusion, could glisten, scent the air, or drift with such a shudder of terror, with any inkling of that unnameable thing, the very first taste of which, on the tip of the tongue, surpasses the capacity of our rapture.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“The Book” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/book1.htm His father, Books

Books

“But the indication of the strength of our system was moral as well as physical. 'You cannot stand the strain of a civil war and of party spirit combined', said the skeptics. 'You will end in anarchy at the election'. I knew those who apprehended revolution and provisional governments as November approached. In hushed expectation election day dawned. You remember the old story of an agreement of everybody in the world to shout all together at the same moment upon a certain day, and make a noise that would be heard to the stars. The hour came; and it was the most silent moment ever known. The sole sound was the thin, weak cry of one deaf old woman. Everybody else in the world was listening for the prodigious noise. So the Great Election passed in perfect peace. The sun of the ninth of November rose, not upon a convulsed nation tumbling into anarchy, but standing calm, strong, and erect upon its two feet of Union and Liberty, and somewhere upon the ground the tip-end of the tail of a copperhead snake sneaking into his hole.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

War, World, Peace, Star

“Leadership tip: Sound confident even when you have no idea. Just do not make a habit of it. They will find you out.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 87 (p. 313)

Confidence, Idea

“If you wear black, then kindly, irritating strangers will touch your arm consolingly and inform you that the world keeps on turning.
They're right. It does.
However much you beg it to stop.
It turns and lets grenadine spill over the horizon, sends hard bars of gold through my window and I wake up and feel happy for three seconds and then I remember.
It turns and tips people out of their beds and into their cars, their offices, an avalanche of tiny men and women tumbling through life…
All trying not to think about what's waiting at the bottom.
Sometimes it turns and sends us reeling into each other's arms. We cling tight, excited and laughing, strangers thrown together on a moving funhouse floor.
Intoxicated by the motion we forget all the risks.
And then the world turns…
And somebody falls off…
And oh God it's such a long way down.
Numb with shock, we can only stand and watch as they fall away from us, gradually getting smaller…
Receding in our memories until they're no longer visible.
We gather in cemeteries, tense and silent as if for listening for the impact; the splash of a pebble dropped into a dark well, trying to measure its depth.
Trying to measure how far we have to fall.
No impact comes; no splash. The moment passes. The world turns and we turn away, getting on with our lives…
Wrapping ourselves in comforting banalities to keep us warm against the cold.
"Time's a great healer."
"At least it was quick.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

"The world keeps turning.
Oh Alec—
Alec's dead."
Swamp Thing (1983–1987)

Life, Women, Men, God

“… my mother will settle on the rug and unclip the bellows, pulling and pushing them with a mild aquatic motion with her left hand, the fingers of the right hand flowering upon the keys, the wedding-bangle suspended around her wrist. Each time the bellows are pushed, the round holes on the back open and close like eyes. Without the body music is not possible; it provides the hollow space for resonance as does the curved wooden box of the violin or the round urn of the sitar. At the moment of singing, breath tips in the swelling diaphragm as water does in a pitcher. The voice-box itself is a microscopic harp, its cords tautening and relaxing with each inflection.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Afternoon Raag (1993)

Music, Flowers, Wedding, Water

“Here's a tip I've never used: I understand you can learn a great deal of girldom by reading Pride and Prejudice, and I own a copy, but I have never read it. I tried. It was given to me by a girl with a little not inside that read: What is in this book is the heart of a woman. I am sure the heart of a woman is pure and lovely, but the first chapter of said heart is hopelessly boring.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Love, Books, Girl, Understanding

“Pick your myth - we're either Pandora or Prometheus or, frankly, maybe Icarus. We are in a tipping-point era, and we have to either catch up to our abilities, culturally, or some massive global catastrophe will befall us. The planet will live on, but we're going to make it more difficult for us to survive.”

Joshua Jackson (1978) Canadian actor

As quoted in the article 'Free spirit' in NUVO magazine (2010)

“He is a theater animal who is ignited by his synergy with an audience. Audiences are only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg of what Nathan can do.”

Nathan Lane (1956) American actor

Lynne Meadow — reported in Michael Sommers (May 26, 1996) "Nathan In The Fast Lane, From Broadway to `Birdcage' to hosting - the Tonys, 'Forum' star rules", The Star-Ledger, p. 12.
About

Animals

“What I have discovered in 20 years of studying the universe, from here to there to everywhere, is that the universe is complicated, and when things happen, it is almost never like ‘A happened and therefore B’. No, A happened and therefore B, C, D and E, but then there is this thing F, and that had a 10% effect, and that prompted G to go back and tip over A, and it is always like this – everything is interconnected. And so a lot of these far-right fundamentalist religion people, and a lot of these people who are anti-global warming, anti-evolution, anti-science, what they do is they take advantage of the fact that things are complicated, and their lives are based on things being simple – if we do this, then this will happen – if we invade Iraq, we will be treated as liberators, if we pray, then good things will happen, and this stuff is wrong. But we have a culture where people are brought up to believe in simplicity, and if A then B. And so when you point out that scientists say the earth is warming, but we had a really devastating winter this year, then these people will say “oh, obviously global warming is wrong.””

Philip Plait (1964) astronomer, skeptic

No, global warming can cause worse winters locally. It’s complicated. But people don’t want to hear “it’s complicated”, and boy, the conspiracy theorists and anti-scientists take full advantage of that. Skepticality http://www.skepticality.com/index.php ep. 52 http://www.skepticality.com/notes/sn_Ep52.php (15 May 2007) 23:11 - 24:46 Interviews

People, Religion, Boy, Study

“time in an allegory of itself imparts to us lessons of wisdom which the moment they are formulated are immediately destroyed by the merest flickers of light or shadow which are nothing more than time in its incarnations and disincarnations which are the phrases that I am writing on this paper and that disappears as I read them:
they are not the sensations, the perceptions, the mental images, and the thoughts which flare up and die away here, now, as I write or as I read what I write: they are not what I see or what I have seen, they are the reverse of what is seen and of the power of sight—but they are not the invisible: they are the unsaid residuum;
they are not the other side of reality but, rather, the other side of language, what we have on the tip of our tongue that vanishes before it is said, the other side that cannot be named because it is the opposite of a name:
what is not said is not this or that which we leave unsaid, nor is it neither-this-nor-that: it is not the tree that I say I see but the sensation that I feel on sensing that I see it at the moment when I am just about to say that I see it, an insubstantial but real conjunction of vibrations and sounds and meanings that on being combined suggest the configuration of a green-bronze-black-woody-leafy-sonorous-silent presence;
no, it is not that either, if it is not a name it surely cannot be the description of a name or the description of the sensation of the name or the name of the sensation:
a tree is not the name tree, nor is it the sensation of tree: it is the sensation of a perception of tree that dies away at the very moment of the perception of the sensation of tree;
names, as we already know, are empty, but what we did not know, or if we did know, had forgotten, is that sensations are perceptions of sensations that die away, sensations that vanish on becoming perceptions, since if they were not perceptions, how would we know that they are sensations?;
sensations that are not perceptions are not sensations, perceptions that are not names—what are they?
if you didn’t know it before, you know now: everything is empty;
and the moment I say everything-is-empty, I am aware that I am falling into a trap: if everything is empty, this everything-is-empty is empty too;
no, it is full, full to overflowing, everything-is-empty is replete with itself, what we touch and see and taste and smell and think, the realities that we invent and the realities that touch us, look at us, hear us, and invent us, everything that we weave and unweave and everything that weaves and unweaves us, momentary appearances and disappearances, each one different and unique, is always the same full reality, always the same fabric that is woven as it is unwoven: even total emptiness and utter privation are plenitude (perhaps they are the apogee, the acme, the consummation and the calm of plenitude), everything is full to the brim, everything is real, all these invented realities and all these very real inventions are full of themselves, each and every one of them, replete with their own reality;
and the moment I say this, they empty themselves: things empty themselves and names fill themselves, they are no longer empty, names are plethoras, they are donors, they are full to bursting with blood, milk, semen, sap, they are swollen with minutes, hours, centuries, pregnant with meanings and significations and signals, they are the secret signs that time makes to itself, names suck the marrow from things, things die on this page but names increase and multiply, things die in order that names may live:”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

Wisdom, Secret, Feeling, Thinking

“Sculpture should walk on the tips of its toes, unostentatious, unpretentious, and light as the spoor of an animal in snow. Art should melt into and even merge with nature itself. This is obviously contrary to painting and sculpture based on nature. By so doing, art will rid itself more and more of self-centredness, virtuosity and absurdity.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories. p. 327 (1958)
1950s

Art, Nature, Light, Animals

“General Kaika: Was it black men who filled the Mediterranean with poison? No, it was destroyed by the filthy wastes from European factories!
Reporter: Well, the Aswan dam--
General Kaika: Yes, yes, the Aswan dam may have tipped the balance finally, but before that the sea was dying. Because so many had to starve on the African coast there began this war. That is why I say the white countries are responsible. It is the typical white habit to ruin what you have and then go to steal from other people.
Reporter: Oh, General, you’re stretching the facts a bit!
General Kaika: Is the fact that it is dangerous to swim in the Mediterranean? Is the fact that the fish have died?
Reporter: Well, yes, but--
General Kaika: I have no more to say.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

January “CHARGE ACCOUNT”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Men, War, People, Fish

“I departed from parental paths significantly and abruptly one Sunday morning when, sitting in the family pew of the Hyde Park United Church and idly twisting a loose button on the cushion beside me, I said to myself, "I do not believe in God." Some months previously… when our minister fell back on St. Anselm's ontological argument to prove the existence of God, he entirely failed to convince me. Quite the contrary, the argument struck me as an abuse of language. Though I duly submitted to the ritual of confirmation… Horton's unconvincing argument had sown doubt in my mind; and for that reason I can assign, on that morning, listening to his more emotional, hortatory rhetoric… the balance tipped, committing me to a secret, personal rejection of the Christian piety my parents held dear.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian's Memoir (2005)

God, Secret, Family, Parent

“And then we come to the physics engine. Oh, the physics engine, for which so much praise has been sung. What they say is all true. It is fantastic the way you can pick up boxes, the way they fall, the way they tip over, the way they smash into bits when you hit them.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

On Half-Life 2, 26 November 2004
Fully Ramblomatic

Life, Way, Box

“Whenever I go anywhere I find persons in humble situations who smile at me and wish me well. I smile back and wish them well. It is because at some time or other I have tipped them. To me the system has never been an annoyance but a delightful opportunity for the exercise of tact and judgment.”

Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) American politician

Bohemian San Francisco, Its Restaurants and Their Most Famous Recipes—The Elegant Art of Dining http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9464/pg9464.html, 1914, by Clarence E. Edwords 1810s

Smile, Exercises, Time, Personality

“Okay, here's a tip: if you're doing something creepy like molesting children, you don't need to take topless photos of yourself to seal the deal. We know, the pedosmile is enough.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

The Best Page in the Universe

Children, Photo

“Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection, we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

On the fates of past societies facing problems of sustainability, page 522
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005)

Failure, Success

“You are the elayaraja (crown prince) of Travancore?' She then recollected our first meeting years back in England. I was amazed when she asked if Travancore was in the southern tip of India?”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

After exchanging pleasantries with the Queen, quoted in "When 'Maharaja of Travancore' met Queen Elizabeth II (8 July 2012)".

“Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks,
And he has chambers in King's Bench walks.”

Colley Cibber (1671–1757) British poet laureate

A parody on Pope's lines: "Graced as thou art with all the power of words, / So known, so honoured at the House of Lords"; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

““Look at me closely, amigo,” said my dad. “Here is a hundred-dollar bill just to start with. Thirty dollars of this is for you to put in your own pocket right now. Capiche?” The bartender’s whole attitude changed. Suddenly he wasn’t tired anymore. “Yes, mi general, entiendo!” he said. “Good, and give another twenty to the chef in back and ten to the dishwasher. That leaves forty for my son and me to drink and eat a little something.” “But of course!” said the barkeeper. “The whole place is open for you! Which tequila would you like?” he added anxiously. “Herradura, and a couple of Modelo cervezas.” “I like Dos Equis,” I said. “The dark one.” “Okay,” said my dad, “one Modelo and one dark Dos Equis.” The bartender was flying, moving, truly enjoying the whole show. My dad winked at me. “Like I always say, to tip after the meal is stupid. Tip first and big, and the whole world changes.””

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Stupidity, World, Drink, Change

“What between tipping the man who had brought us home, and paying for the broken sculls, and for having been out four hours and a half, it cost us a pretty considerable number of weeks’ pocket-money, that sail. But we learned experience, and they say that is always cheap at any price.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Three Men in a Boat

Source: Three Men in a Boat (1889), Ch. 15.

Money, Home, Learning

“I want to thank the White House Historical Association and all of the people that work so hard with Melania, with everybody, to keep this incredible house or building, or whatever you want to call it — because there really is no name for it; it is special — and we keep it in tip-top shape. We call it sometimes tippy-top shape. And it's a great, great place.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Referring to the White House, during a speech given for Easter (April 2, 2018)
2010s, 2018, April

People, Housing

“Caprice
You held a wild flower in your finger -tips,
Idly you pressed it to indifferent lips,
Idly you tore its crimson leaves apart…
Alas! It was my heart You held wine-cup in your finger-tips,
Lightly you raised it to indifferent lips,
Lightly you drank and flung away the bowl…,
Alas! It was my soul. Page 153”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

Her poem in [Gokak, Vinayak Krishna, The Golden Treasury of Indo-Anglian Poetry, 1828-1965, http://books.google.com/books?id=WLE8GVsAfEMC, 1970, Sahitya Akademi, 978-81-260-1196-4, 153]
Poetry

Soul, Flowers, Wine, Heart

“It has been observed that the height of a man from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot is equal to the distance between the tips of the middle fingers of the two hands when extended in a straight line.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book VII, sec. 77.
Naturalis Historia

“Chaos was a far subtler force than most people realised. It would be so easy to sense if it threw off thunderbolts or sent barely sensed thrummings through the fabric of reality, but it was nothing more than the possible made probable. It did not break or bend any laws of nature or tip the balance of the universe.”

Karen Lord (1968) Barbadian novelist and sociologist of religion

Source: Redemption in Indigo (2010), Chapter 8 “The Indigo Lord Spies on the Citizens of Makendha” (p. 64)

People, Law, Nature, Reality

“Love is all there is, it makes the world go 'round
Love and only love, it can’t be denied
No matter what you think about it
You just won’t be able to do without it
Take a tip from one who's tried”

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

Song lyrics, Nashville Skyline (1969), I Threw It All Away

Love, World, Thinking

“Swedish politicians are not right about much, but you get the impression they think they're setting the example to the rest of us. And they are right about that. Their recent bizarre decision to recognize 'Palestine' – a country that doesn't exist – is somewhat poignant: as the way things are going Sweden itself won't exist much longer. Seems like every piece of news that comes out of that country is more disturbing than the last. But, then, they have been committing cultural suicide so enthusiastically for so long there is now almost a sense that a tipping point is being reached and that, for the rest of us, it's really just a matter of watching the grim process unfold as we thank our lucky stars we don't live there… In Sweden today, democracy is a threat that must be neutralised, just as free speech is a threat that must be criminalised. Like the old Soviet Union, they can't afford to allow either because they're attempting to create an artificial society from a blueprint that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And they've given it an almost theological significance so that a dogma has been established, and this has led, inevitably, to heresy becoming a problem. So now anyone in Sweden who expresses the wrong opinion about Muslim immigration is liable to be arrested, that's if the police are not too busy running away from violent Muslims.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sweden — Ship of fools" (13 October 2014) https://youtube.com/watch/?v=RZsvdg1dkJ4 2014

Way, Democracy, Star, Business

“I think [one eco tip is] just giving a little present to someone who might be a little close-minded or stubborn about being green. Last year in all of my gifts I gave an environmentally-friendly light bulb. I thought that was such a great little gift to ease certain people into it. You know there are certain people, maybe family members, who are a little old fashion, or certain people that you work with that don’t really think about things like that. So you have to put it in front of them. And everyone needs a light bulb eventually. So the next time their light bulb goes out they’re gonna reach for it and they’ll see how great it is.”

Alison Becker (1977) American actress and comedian

" Farm Sanctuary Exclusive: Alison Becker Heads To LA With Dreams Of Electric Cars http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/12/10/farm-sanctuary-exclusive-alison-becker-heads-to-la-with-dreams-of-electric-cars/", interview with Ecorazzi (10 December 2008).

People, Family, Fashion, Thinking

“The expected effects of a sea-level rise typify the many consequences of a global warming. On the one hand, they are so big we literally can't understand them. If there is a significant polar melting, the Earth's center of gravity will shift, tipping the globe in such a way that the sea level might actually drop at Cape Horn and along the coast of Iceland—I read this in a recent EPA report and found that I didn't really understand what it meant to tip the Earth, through I was awed by the idea. On the other hand, the changes ultimately acquire a quite personal dimension: Should I put in a wall in front of my house? Does this taste salty to you? And, most telling of all, the human response to the problems, the utterly natural human attempt to preserve the old natural way of life in this postnatural world, creates entirely new consequences. The ocean rises; I build a wall; the marsh dies, and, with it, the fish.”

Bill McKibben book The End of Nature

Source: The End of Nature (1989), p. 117-118

Life, World, Way, Idea

“My own room is next the bath room said Bernard it is decerated dark red as I have somber tastes. The bath room has got a tip up bason and a hose thing for washing your head.”

Daisy Ashford book The Young Visiters

Source: The Young Visiters (1919), Chapter 2

“The Rhine, with two long branches, stretches out and loses itself among inlets and hills, the boats of tourists and of industry smoke, white, black, and gray, and small, small, seem almost not to move; the silver clear, transparent water, calm and ordered, contrasts with all the rest.... the water gurgles, the sides of the boat are covered in spray, many people greet each other, white handkerchiefs are waved from on high, the hotels, the flags, the inscriptions, the hills and the pointed tips of the bell towers, everything seems unreal, untouchable.”

Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) Italian artist

quote from a letter to Balla's family, 18 November 1912; as quoted in Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, by Christine Poggi, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 307, note 36

People, Water

“I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,
The air was cooling, and so very still,
That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,
Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems,
Had not yet lost those starry diadems
Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

" I Stood Tiptoe http://www.bartleby.com/126/2.html", l. 1 Poems (1817)

“But if we hide ourselves away, afraid to grow and learn, we might wake up in the flames of the ignorance that burns and we’ll never be much more than only casualties of war in a struggle we can’t win if we have no faith to begin. We’ve got to tip the lid and let some sunlight in.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"The People of The Boxes"
The Prophet's Hands (2003)

War, Faith, Learning

“I love you more than bears love honey,
I love you more than Jews love money,
I love you more than Asians are good at math.
I love you even if it's not hip,
I love you more than black guys don't tip,
I love you like Puerto Ricans need baths.”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

Satirical song
Jesus Is Magic (2005)

Love, Money, Guy

“The story of the tragic decline of an Indian family whose members suffer the terrible consequences of forbidden love, The God of Small Things is set in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things (1997)

Love, God, Family, Suffering

“Woman, a thing changeable in nature,
more than whistles in the wind and more than the tip
of a supple stalk of wheat.”

Torquato Tasso Aminta

Femina, cosa mobil per natura,
Più che fraschetta al vento, e più che cima
Di pieghevole spica.
Act I, scene ii. Compare: "Varium et mutabile semper femina", Virgil, Aeneid, 4.569.
Aminta (1573)

Nature

“It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world. The rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneak in every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men with enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick.
Two drunks with a nickel between them were arguing over what to play on the juke box until a tomato in a dress that was too tight a year ago pushed the key that started off something noisy and hot. One of the drunks wanted to dance and she gave him a shove. So he danced with the other drunk.
She saw me sitting there with my stool tipped back against the cigarette machine and change of a fin on the bar, decided I could afford a wet evening for two and walked over with her hips waving hello.”

Mickey Spillane book The Big Kill

The Big Kill (1951)

Men, World, Cats, Beer

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

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

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

Happiness, Books, World, School

“A business tip, you never know who's having "pillow talk" with one another. Watch what u say, who u say it to, & WHO u talk about.”

Keshia Chante (1988) Canadian actor and musician

Official Website (2009)

Business

“That should be your determination. As a man, in your right front pants pocket is a small inside watch pocket. Keep pliers there, and when you go to the bathroom, once a day, pinch your love organ. Cut the skin a little bit as a warning. If your love organ does not listen to your conscience, then you should cut off the tip. Even if it takes that extreme measure, we have to make sure our mind and body become one.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Purity, Lineage and the Love Organ (of Life) http://www.unification.net/news/news20010218_2.html (2001-02-18)

Love

“[To read a novel or see a play was to drink life through a straw — to smoke it through a filter-tip. If we were not afraid of blackening our teeth or riddling our lungs with cancer — if we were a dauntless race of men with strong digestions — we would be able to devour life without the aid of these over-civilized devices.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 27

Life, Men, Drink, Strong

“Perhaps he will not return.
But what we have lived
comes back to us.
We see more.
We feel, as our rings increase,
something that lifts our branches, that stretches our furthest
leaf-tips
further.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)

Feeling

“What are the choices that we must make if we are now to succeed, and not to fail? […] Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial to tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection, we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives. One of those choices has depended on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they have reached crisis proportions. […] The other crucial choice illuminated by the past involves the courage to make painful decisions about values. Which of the values that formerly served a society well can continue to be maintained under new changed circumstances? Which of these treasured values must instead be jettisoned and replaced with different approaches?”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Chapter "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?", section "Reasons for hope" (Penguin Books, 2011, pages 522-523, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.

Pain, Failure, Courage, Problem

“Tea! Thou soft, thou sober, sage, and venerable liquid, thou innocent pretence for bringing the wicked of both sexes together in a morning; thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart- opening, wink-tipping cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moment of my life, let me fall prostrate thus, and … adore thee.”

Colley Cibber (1671–1757) British poet laureate

The Lady's Last Stake (1707), Act I, sc. i.

Life, Smile, Sex, Heart

“We like to picture to ourselves the field of law as accurately mapped and plotted. We draw our little lines, and they are hardly down before we blur them. As in time and space, so here. Divisions are working hypotheses, adopted for convenience. … So also the duty of a judge becomes itself a question of degree, and he is a useful judge or a poor one as he estimates the measure accurately or loosely. He must balance all his ingredients, his philosophy, his logic, his analogies, his history, his customs, his sense of right, and all the rest, and adding a little here and taking out a little there, must determine, as wisely as he can, which weight shall tip the scales.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Page 161
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Law, History, Question, Sense

“Once after a dinner party, Gregory Peck and I drove Fred Astaire home. Fred lived in a colonial house that had a long porch with many pillars. When we dropped him off, he danced along the whole front porch, then opened the door, tipped his hat to us, and disappeared. Wow! Greg and I couldn't speak for a few minutes. It was a beautiful way to say thank you.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Kirk Douglas in Douglas, Kirk. Let's Face It. Wiley, 2007. ISBN 9780470084694, p. 26.

Beauty, Way, Home, Dance

“Perched on the southern tip of Africa, far from the centre of anything, many writers have lamented the cultural backwardness, the oppression of living in a divided city. Even as Cape Town evolves, grows more cosmopolitan, holds its first Picasso exhibition, becomes an international convention hub, acquires its very own fashion week … I still can’t help feeling the old unease. Is it the parochialism and cliquishness that outsiders comment on, joking that only third-generation Capetonians are really accepted? Is it the self-satisfied airheads basking at Camps Bay cafés, flicking golden curls and agonising over which cocktail to order? Is it the smug self-sufficiency that comes with having so much beauty on your doorstep that you don’t need to connect with your neighbour? Is it something to do with the schizophrenia of the city not being quite African, of holding onto Europe’s apron strings, of not knowing who or what it really is? Or is it the crime, that ubiquitous topic of so much conversation and so little action, which makes this one of the most violent cities on earth?”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

Cape Town Calling (2007)

Beauty, Feeling, Fashion, Help

“A note to our enemies. You think you know America, but you only see the tiny, inept, incompetent, cowering political tip of a very big, very capable iceberg. You don't know the Heartland where the people are fiercely independent and willing to defend this nation with their bare hands if that's what it takes. You don't know the steel workers in Pittsburgh with muscles that could break a man's neck like a twig. You don't know the swamp folks in Cajun country that can wrestle a full-grown alligator out of the water. You don't know the mountain folks in Appalachia who can knock a squirrel's eye out from a hundred yards away with a small caliber rifle. You don't know the farmers, the cowboys, the loggers and the seagoing folks. You don't know the truck drivers, the carpenters, the mountain men who live off the land, the hard rock miners or the small town cops who keep the peace in the rowdy border towns. No, you don't know America.”

Charlie Daniels (1936) American singer and musician

2010s, 2016, Letter to America's Enemies (2016)

Men, People, Peace, Mountain

“I used to paint some things a few times, but I stopped, because I didn't get an answer. If the work has nothing to say to somebody else, I quit. I am not an idiot who is talking to himself and gazing at the tip of his brush. Painting you do together.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Voorheen heb ik ook wel eens wat geschilderd, maar omdat ik toen geen antwoord kreeg, ben ik ermee gestopt. Als het een ander niets te zeggen heeft, stop ik ermee. Ik ben geen idioot die in zichzelf zit te praten en naar de punt van het penseel zit te staren. Schilderen doe je met elkaar.
Source: Jopie Huisman', 1981, p. 57

Time, Painting

“One can read too much into one’s own circumstances. I am reminded of one race who set themselves against us—oh, long ago now, before I was even thought of. Their conceit was that the galaxy belonged to them, and they justified this heresy by a blasphemous belief concerning design. They were aquatic, their brain and major organs housed in a large central pod from which several large arms or tentacles protruded. These tentacles were thick at the body, thin at the tips and lined with suckers. Their water god was supposed to have made the galaxy in their image.
“You see? They thought that because they bore a rough physical resemblance to the great lens that is the home of all of us—even taking the analogy as far as comparing their tentacle suckers to globular clusters—it therefore belonged to them. For all the idiocy of this heathen belief, they had prospered and were powerful: quite respectable adversaries, in fact.”
“Hmm,” Aviger said. Without looking up, he asked, “What were they called?”
“Hmm,” Xoxarle rumbled. “Their name…” The Idiran pondered. “…I believe they were called the…the Fanch.”

Iain Banks Culture series

“Never heard of them,” Aviger said.
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Xoxarle purred. “We annihilated them.”
Source: Culture series, Consider Phlebas (1987), Chapter 13 “The Command System: Terminus” (pp. 445-446).

God, Home, Water, Reading

“Like a good and happy man increasing his virtue, he kissed her. She did not move away from him. She remained in the embrace of his right arm, her face nuzzling his shoulder, her eyes closed. He tipped her chin to look and measure opportunity. She could not open her eyes. Honorably he searched, but on her face he met no quarrel.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"The Pale Pink Roast" (1959)

Happiness, Search, Kiss

“The express pulled into the Stazione Termini in Rome five minutes ahead of schedule with a feminine shriek. Ruiz found a porter with no difficulty, tipped him the standard 100 lire for his two pieces of luggage, and gave directions. The priest’s Italian was adequate, but hardly standard; it made the facchino grin with delight every time Ruiz opened his mouth. He had learned it by reading, partly in Dante, mostly in opera libretti, and consequently what he lacked in accent he made up for in flowery phrases; he was unable to ask the way to the nearest fruit stall without sounding as though he would throw himself into the Tiber unless he got an answer.”

James Blish book A Case of Conscience

Source: A Case of Conscience (1958), Chapter 14 (p. 171)

Way, Learning, Time, Reading

“Changi was set like a pearl on the eastern tip of Singapore Island, iridescent under the bowl of tropical skies.”

James Clavell book King Rat

Prologue
King Rat (1962)
Context: Changi was set like a pearl on the eastern tip of Singapore Island, iridescent under the bowl of tropical skies. It stood on a slight rise and around it was a belt of green, and farther off the green gave way to the blue-green seas and the seas to infinity of horizon.
Closer, Changi lost its beauty and became what it was — an obscene forbidding prison. Cellblocks surrounded by sun-baked courtyards surrounded by towering walls.
Inside the walls, inside the cellblocks, story on story, were cells for two thousand prisoners at capacity. Now, in the cells and in the passageways and in every nook and cranny lived some eight thousand men....
These men too were criminals. Their crime was vast. They had lost a war. And they had lived.

“Anyone who has got any pleasure at all from living should try to put something back. Life is like a superlative meal and the world is the maître d'hôtel. What I am doing is the equivalent of leaving a reasonable tip.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

As quoted in Durrell: The Authorised Biography (1999) http://books.google.com/books?id=iyRFAAAAYAAJ&q=&quot;Look+at+it+this+way+Anyone+who+has+got+any+pleasure+at+all+from+living+should+try+to+put+something+back+life+is+like+a+superlative+meal+and+the+world+is+the+maitre+d'hotel+What+I+am+doing+is+the+equivalent+of+leaving+a+reasonable+tip&quot;Gerald by Douglas Botting Context: A sparrow can be as interesting as a bird of paradise, the behaviour of a mouse as interesting as that of a tiger. Our planet is beautifully intricate, brimming over with enigmas to be solved and riddles to be unravelled.   Many people think that conservation is just about saving fluffy animals – what they don’t realise is that we’re trying to prevent the human race from committing suicide … We have declared war on the biological world, the world that supports us … At the moment the human race is in the position of a man sawing off the tree branch he is sitting on. Look at it this way. Anyone who has got any pleasure at all from living should try to put something back. Life is like a superlative meal and the world is the maître d'hôtel. What I am doing is the equivalent of leaving a reasonable tip. … I'm glad to be giving something back because I've been so extraordinarily lucky and had such great pleasure from it.

Life, Pleasure, World

“Small wonder that centuries afterwards the Greeks and Romans came here and gawked like peasants at a civilisation that made their efforts look like well-dressed mud huts. It still has that effect today. You come here from the great modern cities, full of the immense power of modern technology at your finger tips, press a button, turn a switch. And this place… stops you dead.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 1 - The Trigger Effect
Context: These are the great ancient temples of Karnak, on the edge of the Nile about 450 miles south of Cairo. They were the center of Egyptian religion, built in the imperial city of Thebes, when the Egyptian empire was at its height, the greatest power in the world. This was the New York of its time. The temples were built over a period of 2,000 years, each pharaoh adding his bit, leaving his name in stone, to last forever. Inside the temple domain, there were 65 towns, 433 gardens & orchards, 400,000 animals, and it took 80,000 people just to run the place. Small wonder that centuries afterwards the Greeks and Romans came here and gawked like peasants at a civilisation that made their efforts look like well-dressed mud huts. It still has that effect today. You come here from the great modern cities, full of the immense power of modern technology at your finger tips, press a button, turn a switch. And this place... stops you dead.

Effort, Dead

“Historically, Marxism was born with the ambition of explaining everything in the world scientifically. It is known, that Marx even dealt with mathematics. Although he could not solve problems which are nowadays clear for even asinine pupils, Marx left behind for the future generations his smart tips.”

Aleksandr Zinovyev (1922–2006) Russian writer

On the Social State of Marxism (1978)

World, Mathematics, Problem, Future

“And now, my gallant lads — I don't know when or how —
that worm's god-slaying sword has fallen into my hands;
I swear that from its topmost iron tip the blood still drips!”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Odysseus' song, Book III, line 424
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)
Context: The worm stood straight on God's blood-splattered threshold then
and beat his drum, beat it again, and raised his throat:
'You've matched all well on earth, wine, women, bread, and song,
but why, you Murderer, must you slay our children? Why?'
God foamed with rage and raised his sword to pierce that throat,
but his old copper sword, my lads, stuck at the bone.
Then from his belt the worm drew his black-hilted sword,
rushed up and slew that old decrepit god in heaven!
And now, my gallant lads — I don't know when or how —
that worm's god-slaying sword has fallen into my hands;
I swear that from its topmost iron tip the blood still drips!

God

“All tip and no iceberg.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Referring to Treasurer Peter Costello, ABC Radio interview, March 5, 2007.

“President Bush has uranium-tipped bunker busters and I have puns. I think he'll be OK.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Rolling Stone interview http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/jon_stewart_stephen_colbert_americas_anchors, October 31, 2006 Context: Here's the way I look at it. President Bush has uranium-tipped bunker busters and I have puns. I think he'll be OK.

Thinking

“Many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several "tipping points" that could — within as little as 10 years — make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet's habitability for human civilization.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Law School speech (2006)
Context: Many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several "tipping points" that could — within as little as 10 years — make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet's habitability for human civilization. In this regard, just a few weeks ago, another group of scientists reported on the unexpectedly rapid increases in the release of carbon and methane emissions from frozen tundra in Siberia, now beginning to thaw because of human caused increases in global temperature. The scientists tell us that the tundra in danger of thawing contains an amount of additional global warming pollution that is equal to the total amount that is already in the earth's atmosphere.

“Here is my speech from the Brilliant Minds conference in Stockholm. Since I don't have the video yet, I'm sharing it like this. Around the year 2030, we will be in a position where we probably set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it. That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of industrialized society have taken place. Including a reduction of our CO2 emissions by at least 50%. And please note that these calculations are depending on inventions that have not yet been invented at scale. Furthermore these scientific calculations do not include most unforeseen tipping points and feed back loops. Nor do these calculations include already locked in warming hidden by toxic air pollution. Nor the aspect of equity, which is absolutely necessary to make the Paris Agreement work on a global scale. And these calculations are not opinions or wild guesses.”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

Greta Thunberg's FB page https://www.facebook.com/732846497083173/posts/853561781678310?s=723487177&sfns=mo, (15 June 2019) 2019

Making love, Change, Time, Dependency

“I want to be able to show up and raise the hell at the precise right moment that might tip the scales in a way that will make something a little more clear, or a little bit more just, for people I care about…”

Tressie McMillan Cottom American writer, sociologist, and professor

On what her writing goals are in “Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom: Raising Really Good Hell for People Who Cannot” https://www.guernicamag.com/dr-tressie-mcmillan-cottom-raising-really-good-hell-for-people-who-cannot/ in Guernica Magazine (2019 Mar 20)

People, Making love, Way, Hell

“Sophistication, that modern kind of sophistication that begs to differ, to be paradoxical, to invert, is not a possible attitude in Venice. In time, this becomes the beauty of the place. One gives up the struggle and submits to a classic experience. One accepts the fact that what one is about to feel or say has not only been said before by Goethe or Musset but is on the tip of the tongue of the tourist from Iowa who is alighting in the Piazzetta with his wife in her furpiece and jeweled pin. Those Others, the existential enemy, are here identical with oneself.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

Source: Venice Observed (1956), Ch. 1

Beauty, Feeling, Time

“It is about as profound to suppose that the earth and its contents, and the suns, stars, and systems of space, were all made for a single species inhabitating an obscure ball located in a remote quarter of the universe as it is to suppose that the gigantic body of the elephant was made for the wisp of hair on the tip of its tail. Man is not the end, he is but an incident, of the infinite elaborations of Time and Space.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Anthropocentric Ethics", p. 319
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Ethical Kinship

Star, Universe, Time, Sun

“The thing that people don’t understand about restaurants is that they’re one of the most political environments. You’re shoulder-to-shoulder with immigrants. You’re at one of the nexuses of income inequality. Your hourly wage is even less than the minimum wage. You’re working for tips. You’re getting sexually harassed.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-congress-interview-797214/ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Wants the Country to Think Big, Rolling Stone

People, Understanding

“He was such a genius that he could very quickly solve any problem. He ws in the habit of giving new tips to young engineers. To keeo normal even in adverse situations was his natural features.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

About, Pride Of The Nation: Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Nature, Problem

“The mention made by Maulana Abdul Hai of Hindu temples turned into mosques, is only the tip of an iceberg, The iceberg itself lies submerged in the writings of medieval Muslim historians, accounts of foreign travellers and the reports of the Archaeological Survey of India. A hue and cry has been raised in the name of secularism and national integration whenever the iceberg has chanced to surface, inspite of hectic efforts to keep it suppressed. Marxist politicians masquerading as historians have been the major contributors to this conspiracy of silence.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

.... The vast cradle of Hindu culture is literally littered with ruins of temples and monasteries belonging to all sects of Sanatana Dharma - Buddhist, Jain, Saiva, Shakta, Vaishnava and the rest. ... The story of how Islamic invaders sought to destroy the very foundations of Hindu society and culture is long and extremely painful. It would certainly be better for everybody to forget the past, but for the prescriptions of Islamic theology which remain intact and make it obligatory for believers to destroy idols and idol temples.
Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Travel, Effort, Silence, Chance

“There is, of course, a tipping point. There have been times when I realized that someone can’t be helped, because they continue doing the wrong things. Typically, the only time I cut someone off is when they’re in jail, because I can’t help them there.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Stardom Doesn’t Change Where You’re From (April 02, 2014)

Time, Help

“We see evidence that lakes and forests and wetlands can have different equilibria — so you have a savanna system that may be stable and thriving, but it can also tip over and become an arid steppe if pushed too far by warming, land degradation and biodiversity loss. A clear-water lake can become a murky, biodiversity-low anoxic lake. Unfortunately, the science is increasingly showing that even large systems can tip.”

Johan Rockström (1965) Swedish hydrologist

Interview http://ensia.com/interviews/johan-rockstrom-protecting-the-earths-systems-from-catastrophic-failure/ by Mary Hoff in Momentum magazine (Winter 2012).

Water, Science, Loss

“Every election we know features some illegality and irregularity, and of course that’s unacceptable. I support strong state-led voting reforms. Last year’s bizarre pandemic procedures must not become the new norm, but my colleagues, nothing before us proves illegality anywhere near the massive scale, the massive scale that would have tipped the entire election, nor can public doubt alone justify a radical break when the doubt itself was incited without any evidence.”

Mitch McConnell (1942) US Senator from Kentucky, Senate Majority Leader

2021, Remarks on Electoral College votes (2021)

Support, Strong

“It was the tip of the iceberg…There’s some unseen wall of faceless men that I have to climb over…as if on a mission.”

Kim Gordon (1953) American musician, bassist of Sonic Youth

On how her experiences with sexual harassment influenced the song “Hungry Baby” on her solo album No Home Record in “Kim Gordon: 'There's a wall of faceless men I have to climb over'” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/oct/04/kim-gordon-theres-a-wall-of-faceless-men-i-have-to-climb-over in The Guardian (4 Oct 2019)

Men

“It was only with the rise of capitalism over the past few hundred years, and the breathtaking acceleration of industrialization from the 1950s, that on a planetary scale things began to tip out of balance.”

Jason Hickel (1982) author

Capitalism: A Creation Story, p. 39
Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (2021)

Past

Quotes about tip page 2

Quotes about tip
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