Quotes about toy
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“Mohammed’s Prophecy became a toy in the hands of the sultans, and people forgot that he was the sultans’ fiercest enemy”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

People

“Among other things he found a sharp hunting knife, on the keen blade of which he immediately proceeded to cut his finger. Undaunted he continued his experiments, finding that he could hack and hew splinters of wood from the table and chairs with this new toy.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 6 : Jungle Battles

“He’s vain. His vanity’s hurt by the world’s refusal to accept his remedies and become immediately Enlightened. And what does a vain man do when insulted, Sir?”…“He lashes out, Sir,” says I. “He seeks to portion blame. He fumes, Sir. He attacks. In the case before us, such is his despotic power, he kills. He kills, Sir. He wars on other nations. Mary’s blood, Sir, but this poor sphere of ours suffers more from the single, frustrated egoist than from any natural—or supernatural—misery. Your own Church’s history, Sir, illustrates my point well enough, eh? We are too frequently in the power of mad children, who rage and stamp and break Kingdoms as they break toys. They order thousands of deaths a day as if they were spoiled brats kicking at their dolls!”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: The von Bek family, The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 2 (pp. 197-198; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

Death, War, Children, World

“The bottom line is that people don't have the right to manipulate or to breed dogs and cats… If people want toys, they should buy inanimate objects. If they want companionship, they should seek it with their own kind.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Animals, 1993 May 1.
1990s

People, Dogs, Cats

“Thus did the Holy Harlots unhinge the brains of man,
and when they met and clashed with the pure Mountain Maidens,
they raised their white arms high, their armpits smelled of musk,
and, as the rites decreed, both fought their verbal war:
"God swoops from mountain peeks to eat and play on earth;
we are his food and drink and even his sacred toys —
and learn, O sterile maids, we are his soft, sweet mates.
Let her now leave who fears to merge with her dread God!"
The scornful savage mouth of Krino flashed reply:
"We will not leave! We guard the innocent soul of man!
God is a spirit with pure white wings, a soul that sails,
light, disembodied, deep in our thoughts, without embrace.
It's we who keep the world in bloom with virgin souls!"”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

From the Bull Ritual, Book VI, line 197
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

God, War, World, Fear

“Regarding the doll in the Purge, since it's one of my favorite moments in the series: The Custodians are the physical embodiment of a very vaporous notion -- human conscience. Does conscience really exist, or is it just a way of convincing ourselves that a center for moral judgment resides within us, thus lending our judgments a natural authority? As always, Trevor prefers to provide a tangible solution. He can't tolerate uncertainty. Whether it is real or not, Trevor understands the usefulness of the belief in conscience as a tool for practical ends, the improvement of society. In the end, the doll which emerges from the Custodian reveals to us that Trevor's artificial conscience, like the classical notion, is no more than a flimsy gimmick, a parlor trick, a plaything of the mind powered by a circular process. (Advocating the existence of conscience usually involves an appeal to our conscience). Notice that Trevor himself winds up the toy while in the train earlier in the episode.”

Peter Chung (1961) Korean-American animator

Response on LUSENET http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003FAq

Way, Understanding, Nature, Training

“If you would have some idea of what the probable universe is like, then examine your own dreams, looking for those events which do not have any strong resemblances to the physical events of waking existence. Look for dream individuals with whom you are not acquainted in normally conscious life. Look for landscapes that appear bizarre or alien, for all of these exist somewhere. You have perceived them. They do not exist in the space you know but neither are they non-existant (sic), mere imaginative toys of the dreaming mind, without substance.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 305-306, quoting from Session 235

Life, Dreams, Imagination, Idea

“Fashionable women regard themselves, and are regarded by men, as pretty toys or as mere instruments of pleasure; and the vacuity of mind, the heartlessness, the frivolity which is the necessary result of this false and debasing estimate of women, can only be fully understood by those who have mingled in the folly and wickedness of fashionable life.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Letter 8 (1837).
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837)

Life, Women, Men, Pleasure

“The growing drama has outgrown such toys
Of simulated stature, face, and speech:
It also peradventure may outgrow
The simulation of the painted scene,
Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume,
And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,
Its shifting fancies and celestial lights,
With all its grand orchestral silences
To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Book V. Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

Soul, Light, Silence, Painting

“We all love toys. I'm toy oriented. I write about toys. I've got a lot of toys. Hundreds of things. But computers are toys, and men like to mess around with smart dumb things. They feel creative. … People are talking about the Internet as a creative tool for writers. I say, "B. S. Stay away from that. Stop talking to people around the world and get your work done."”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Playboy interview (1996)

Love, Men, People, World

“M. Révérony said immediately: "Most Holy Father, this is a child who wants to enter Carmel at fifteen, but the superiors are considering the matter at this moment." (The good pope is so old that one would say he is dead; I would never have pictured him like this.) The Holy Father said simply:"If God wills it, you will enter." [-]I was crying a lot when writing this letter; my heart is heavy. However, God cannot give me trials that are above my strength. He has given me the courage to bear this trial. I am the Child Jesus' little ball; if He wishes to break His toy, He is free. Yes, I will all that He wills.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

Thérèse's account of the papal audience, November 20,1887
General Correspondence

God, Courage, Heart, Cry

“In retrospect these years form not only the least agreeable, but the only barren and unhappy period of my life. I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I have been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a sombre grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was an unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony. This train of thought must not lead me to exaggerate the character of my school days … Harrow was a very good school … Most of the boys were very happy … I can only record the fact that, no doubt through my own shortcomings, I was an exception. … I was on the whole considerably discouraged … All my contemporaries and even younger boys seemed in every way better adapted to the conditions of our little world. They were far better both at the games and at the lessons. It is not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the very beginning of the race.”

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

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 3 (Examinations).

Life, World, School, Way

“We are indeed living at the end of the Golden Age of Mankind, or at least the end of this particular human civilization. That almost everything we take for granted today may, only a couple of decades farther along, seem entirely remarkable, that our most mundane artefacts and toys will stand as incredible examples of luxury and excess. That all of this will pass away, and the "simplest" bits of our day-to-day lives will become miracles of a half-remembered past. A past which will be responsible for that future-present misery. It is difficult to force myself through the trivial routine of my days when these thoughts are front and center. It is difficult to see beyond the veil they draw up about me and difficult to push it all aside long enough to write my silly little stories.”

Caitlín R. Kiernan (1964) writer

29 March 2007
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2007

Age, Past, Future, Drawing

“As a toy fruit or a toy elephant reminds one of the real fruit and the living animal, so do the images that are worshipped remind one of the God who is formless and eternal.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 325

God, Animals

“What is success? It is a toy balloon among children armed with pins.”

Gene Fowler (1890–1960) American journalist

Skyline: A Reporter's Reminiscence of the 1920s (1961); as cited by Jonathon Green (1988) Says who?: a guide to the quotations of the century. p. 308

Children, Success

“There stole into my mind Coleridge's poignant lines:
Ah God! It is fell Christmas-tide
So to the shops I hie;
And my shopping-list, like the Albatross,
About my neck doth lie.
This was to be included in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" but was dropped to please Wordsworth, who secretly held shares in a large toy-shop and was afraid it might hurt business.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

God, Lie, Business, Christmas

“Can you weep for Him with intense longing of heart? Men shed a jugful of tears for the sake of their children, for their wives, or for money. But who weeps for God? So long as the child remains engrossed with its toys, the mother looks after her cooking and other household duties. But when the child no longer relishes the toys, it throws them aside and yells for its mother. Then the mother takes the rice-pot down from the hearth, runs in haste, and takes the child in her arms.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 149

Men, Money, God, Children

“Toys are not a need people typically think of, but they've got all these kids who have absolutely nothing to do.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comment to USA Today newspaper (September 15, 2005) explaining why she, Emilio and other prominent Hispanic entertainers personally delivered a planeload of toys and other aid to three shelters with Hurricane Katrina victims
2007, 2008

People, Thinking

“…he said if enough people—a stadium full, maybe—were to concentrate on one thing, such as setting a tree afire in the woods, that the tree would ignite of its own accord. I toyed with the idea of asking everyone below to concentrate on setting Tom Robinson free, but”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

People, Idea, Tree

“For approximately 500 years [science's] argument for its pre-eminence was that it could create beautiful toys: aircraft, railroads, global economies, television, spacecraft. But that is a fool’s argument for truth! I mean, that’s after all how a medicine show operates, you know: the juggler is so good, the medicine must be even better! This is not an entirely rational way to proceed.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

The World and Its Double

Truth, Beauty, Fools, Way

“[Youth] is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

Youth, Way, Spring, Help

“The weaving of mankind into one community does not imply the creation of a homogeneous community, but rather the reverse; the welcome and adequate utilization of distinctive quality in an atmosphere of understanding… Communities all to one pattern, like boxes of toy soldiers, are things of the past, rather than of the future.”

H. G. Wells book The Outline of History

The Outline of History (1920)

Communication, Understanding, Past, Future

“Mindplayers didn't really address a lot about the criminal element of this particular world. Everybody in the Mindplayers world couldn't possibly live like the few people that you saw. A lot of times, a culture almost seems to float on top of its own black market, and things from that filter up through the culture. I get the feeling that this law-abiding peaceful thing that I live in now is almost never-never land - to a certain extent it's not even really real. I spent a decade working for Hallmark cards, which is supposed to epitomise sweetness and light and good living and ethics and morals. But Hallmark, like many American manufacturers, has a lot of things like toys and ornaments manufactured in the Far East, by people in sweat-shops. These are children, old people, poor people, people who don't have enough to eat; we get these things so cheaply because we simply use these people and throw them away. This is what I mean about our culture, our never-never land, floating on top of our underworld.”

Pat Cadigan (1953) science fiction author

Cadigan (1993) in: " Interview with Pat Cadigan, May 1993 http://tamaranth.blogspot.nl/1993/05/interview-pat-cadigan-may-1993.html" in The Hardcore, 1993

Children, People, World, Peace

“You are my pride and joy
And I just love you, little darlin'
Like a baby boy loves his toy
You've got kisses sweeter than honey
And I work every day to give you all I know
And that's why you're my pride and joy.”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

Pride and Joy, co-written with William "Mickey" Stevenson and Norman Whitfield.
Song lyrics, That Stubborn Kinda Fellow (1962)

Love, Boy, Kiss, Joy

“What is more obscene: the idea that one can apologize for the hubris and deceit that is Obama and his health care, or the actual need some have for an apology from an entity so evil that he would toy with the lives of millions as though they were insects and he God? This is hard to tell.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Obama: Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry" http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/obama-love-means-never-having-to-say-youre-sorry, WorldNetDaily.com, November 15, 2013. 2010s, 2013

God, Health, Idea, Evil

“From the dawn of the day to the dusk he toiled,
Shaping fanciful playthings, with tireless hands, —
Useless trumpery toys; and, with vaulting heart,
Gave them unto all peoples, who mocked at him,
Trampled on them, and soiled them, and went their way.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

People, Way, Heart

““It’s not right. A human being is a human being. A human being is not a toy.”
“We cannot help but use the people below us as a resource, my love,” said her two MOHmies, as one. “That is what it means to be in power. Your choice is to relinquish power forever, or to accept that and use people for good.”…
“If we are powerful,” sang her MOHmies, “we can make things better, but we are made unclean by the fact that we have power. If we are powerless we remain clean, but we cannot make things better.””

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Part 2, Chapter 13, “Of Multitudes” (p. 240).
Jack Glass (2012)

Love, People, Help

“Childish raptures! said Lucifer, with scorn, his eyes flashing like lightning. "Are we indeed whimpering and craven children, or slaves? Can we be content with toys and little deliciousnesses? Are we not mind, as well as emotion? And is not the mind, of both angel and man, the noblest of possessions, and worth exercising. It is in our minds that we approach the closest of Him, Who is all Mind. Mind is the creator of all philosophy, all order, all beauty, all satisfaction, but emotion is the lowliest of the virtues, if it is a virtue at all. Mind has in it the capacity to know all things, or, at least, the minds of angels.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

Dialouges with the Devil (1967)
1960s

Children, Beauty, Angels, Exercises

“I am a very bottom-up thinker. If you give me the right kind of Tinker Toys, I can imagine the building. I can sit there and see primitives and recognize their power to build structures a half mile high, if only I had just one more to make it functionally complete. I can see those kinds of things.”

Ken Thompson (1943) American computer scientist, creator of the Unix operating system

"Unix and Beyond: An Interview with Ken Thompson," 1999

Imagination

“When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Aladdin, st. 1 (1868)

Boy

“One day she was playing on the swing when her father passed and called to her, "Come and give me a kiss, my little queen." Dérange-toi, Papa! Thérèse replied pertly — an untranslatable compound of "Come for it yourself" and "If you want it, you'll have to go the trouble of getting it", with perhaps even, "Don't be so lazy." Her father went by with a grave expression, but without a word, while Marie said: "You naughty little thing, how can you be so rude to your father?" I got off the swing at once; I had really learned my lesson, and the whole house echoed with my cries of contrition.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

Quoted in The Hidden Face, by Ida Gorres, p. 52

Kiss, Learning, Housing

“Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger…”

Gordon R. Dickson book Tactics of Mistake

Epigram (p. 153)
Tactics of Mistake (1971)

Books

“Yet the ultimate problem is more fundamental. I have long believed that the death penalty is in all circumstances a barbaric and inhuman punishment that violates our Constitution. Even the most vile murderer does not release the state from its constitutional obligation to respect human dignity, for the state does not honor the victim by emulating the murderer who took his life. The fatal infirmity of capital punishment is that it treats members of the human race as non-humans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded.”

William J. Brennan (1906–1997) American judge

Writing in Reason and Passion: Justice Brennan's Enduring Influence (1997).

Life, Death, Penalty, Problem

“A child shows his toy, a man hides his.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

El niño muestra su juguete, el hombre lo esconde.
Voces (1943)

“You don't need to turn the light switch on and off, again! You have absolutely NAILED DOWN the principle finding of that experiment; when you turn the lights off, daddy can't see ANYTHING. He steps on your toys trying to find you and kill you… And breaks his foot!”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Monster (2004)

Light

“Boobs are the center of power. Boobs can make a 6-month old baby and a 65 year old man both act the same way. And I'm a big fan. Oh, man, I love 'em! And I ain't picky neither. I hate when I hear guys go "I don't like little boobs." I don't care! Big boobs, little boobs, saggy boobs, perky boobs. You could have boobs that look like nanners, I don't give a damn! They're the perfect toy! You squish them, mush them, POOF! They come right back out! You can't even break 'em! Oh, they're amazing. Boobs can make a long trip seem short, make a bad day seem great. [Points to member of the audience] Bud, let's say you had a bad day at work. Boss been chewing you out all day long. Little girl sitting next to you shows you her boobs, you're like, "This day was GREAT!"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

15° Off Cool (2007)

Love, Hate, Way, Guy

“Agesilaus was very fond of his children; and it is reported that once toying with them he got astride upon a reed as upon a horse, and rode about the room; and being seen by one of his friends, he desired him not to speak of it till he had children of his own.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Agesilaus the Great
Laconic Apophthegms

Children, Horse

“…analogies […] are figures intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent toys if they fail.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

“The Second Amendment was meant to give citizens the right to bear arms against the government, back when Uncle Sam's toys were as lame as yours… Handguns are sheer lunacy”

Rachel Marsden (1974) journalist

On gun control in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings Blasting the myths http://www.rachelmarsden.com/columns/vtech.htm By Rachel Marsden. Published Toronto Sun, April 23, 2007

“I drove to a hospital for Afghan civilians with a group of nurses – we brought presents for the children. Toys, candy, cookies. I had about five teddy bears. We arrived at the hospital, a long barracks. No one has more than a blanket for bedding. A young Afghan woman approached me, holding a child in her arms. She wanted to say something – over the last ten years almost everyone here has learned to speak a little Russian – and I handed the child a toy, which he took with his teeth. "Why his teeth?" I asked in surprise. She pulled the blanket off his tiny body – the little boy was missing both arms. "It was when your Russians bombed."”

Svetlana Alexievich (1948) Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose writer

Someone held me up as I began to fall.
Nobel Lecture (2015)

Children, Boy, Learning

“Old friends become bitter enemies on a sudden for toys and small offenses.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus Junior to the Reader

“The Jewish problem is no utopia, but a grave life and death problem for the Romanian nation, the country's leaders grouped by political parties becoming more and more like toys in the hands of the Judaic manipulators.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Jewish Problem

Life, Death, Problem, Country

“My mind is ever toying with economic ideas and relationships. Great novelists and poets have reported occasional abandonment by their muse. The well runs dry, permanently or on occasion. Mine has been a better luck. As I have written elsewhere, there is a vast inventory of topics and problems floating in the back of my mind. More perhaps than I shall ever have occasion to write up for publication. A result that I notice in statistical mechanics may someday help resolve a problem in finance.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

February 1985, in William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (ed.) Lives of the laureates
1980s–1990s

Idea, Problem, Help

“It's difficult. [My female protagonists] immediately become the subjects of rorikon gokko (play toy for Lolita Complex males). In a sense, if we want to depict someone who is affirmative to us, we have no choice but to make them as lovely as possible. But now, there are too many people who shamelessly depict [such protagonists] as if they just want [such girls] as pets, and things are escalating more and more.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

1988 interview with Animage, Animage, vol. 125, November 1988. Retrieved June 8, 2007.

Love, People, Girl, Sense

“I like writing. It's the most fun I've ever had at anything. You can build your own little world and — like a kid with his toy trains, — except instead of trains I have tanks and ships and airplanes and things… I get to make them do all the things I want them to do, and if I don't like the way things work out, I start again.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

Interview with Don Swaim (1986)
1980s

World, Way, Training

“I numbered years of pain and distress,
And but fourteen days of happiness.
Mortal, nor pleasure, nor wealth, nor power,
Are more than the toys of a passing hour;”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Eastern King
The Golden Violet (1827)

Pain, Pleasure, Wealth, Happiness

“The great world to which I am native has long ago outgrown the myths, the toys, the bogies of your infant world. There, one lives without the fear of death and pain, though there one dies and suffers. There, one knows no lust to triumph over other men, no fear of being enslaved. There one loves without craving to possess, worships without thought of salvation, contemplates without pride of spirit. There one is free as none in your world is free, yet obedient as none of you is obedient.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last Men in London

Source: Last Men in London (1932), Chapter IX: On Earth and On Neptune.

Love, Death, Men, Pain

“As a kid growing up in the 1950s I became acutely aware of the changes taking place in American culture and I must say I didn't much like it. I witnessed the debasement of architecture, and I could see a decline in the quality of things like comic books and toys, things made for kids. Old things seemed to have more life, more substance, more humanity in them.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 23

Life, Books, Change

“If most of us were wind up-toys, could we trust the few of us that weren't to wind us up when necessary? I think not. We would be a separate oppressed minority. Even if we were in the majority, it would still be that way. The ones that weren't wind-up toys would have the upper hand, and we would have to look out for each other, because they wouldn't.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

"Wind-Up Toys"
Lyrics, Real Men (1991)

Way, Thinking

“You have power, rank, command, influence; we have wealth, the source both of our strength and weakness; the value of these toys, ten times multiplied, would not influence half so much as your slightest wish.”

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Source: Ivanhoe (1819), Ch. 44, Rebecca speaking to Rowena.

Time, Wealth

“If humankind were to follow my advice and if it were in my power, I wouldn't allow the word 'war' to be uttered in any language, I would ban all weapons, even in the form of toys.”

Ratko Mladić (1943) Commander of the Bosnian Serb military

From interview with Robert Block, 1995
Interviews (1993 – 1995)

War

“I have now learnt to despise you," he said. "You refused an honest prince; you did not appreciate the rose and the nightingale; but you did not mind kissing a swineherd for his toys; you have no one but yourself to blame!”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Swineherd

The Swineherd
Fairy Tales (1835)

Kiss

“Besides, what difference did if make if there had been two genuine coincidences? The universe was full of them. Every molecular collision was a coincidence. You could pile a thousand coincidences on top of another, he averred, and not get Tom Digby one step nearer to believing in the supernatural. Oh, he knew intelligent people enough, all right, who coddled such beliefs. Some of his best friends liked to relate “yarns” and toy with eerie possibilities for the sake of a thrill. But the only emotion Tom ever got out of such stuff was a nauseating disgust. It cut too deep for joking. It was a reversion to that primitive, fear-bound ignorance from which science had slowly lifted man, inch by inch, against the most bitter opposition.”

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction

“The Hill and the Hole” (p. 165); originally published in Unknown Worlds, August 1942
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

People, Fear, Intelligence, Universe

“Every picture shop is filled with pictures of the Emperor; every photographer's with photos--all sizes and in all kinds of positions, in and out of uniform, in different uniforms, looking condescending, looking dignified, on horseback in uniform, on horseback in plain clothes, on donkeyback, head and shoulders without legs, legs without head and shoulders, helmet in hand, helmet on head, helmet on tail, flying in mid air etc. etc. All the statuary too turns on the Emperor. There are busts chiselled in all sizes and the number of different varieties to be seen in halls, houses, shop windows etc. is something quite unbearable. The toy shops are filled with toy Emperors; when he was young the boy Emperor; then the man Emperor; in fact Berlin is saturated with the blessed Emperor as man, woman, boy, girl, soldier, tinker, tailor. The end of it all will be that the people will go stark staring mad and the Emperor himself will go off with a bang the verdict being: "Death from explosion owing to his receiving more hero-worship than the human frame can bear!"”

Edward German (1862–1936) English musician and composer

In a letter to his sister, describing his observations from a trip to Germany of the cult-like status given the Kaiser.

Death, People, Photo, Girl

“It's interesting for me to bring up a girl. You go to the toy store and the female characters there — Cinderella, the lady in Beauty and the Beast — their major task is to find Prince Charming. And I'm like, wait a minute — it's 2005! We've fought so hard to have a say, and not just live through our partners, and yet you're still seeing two-year-old girls with this message pushed at them that the only important thing is to find this amazing dress so that the guy will want you. It's something my mum pointed out to me when I was little — so much that I almost threw up — but she's right.”

Björk (1965) Icelandic singer-songwriter

From The Observer, March 13 2005 issue, asserting for the first time the appeal to her of feminist ideology
Other quotes

Beauty, Guy, Girl, Waiting

“So far as supply and demand are concerned, books in general and works of fiction in particular are commodities and subject to the same laws, statutory and traditional, as other articles of manufacture. A toy-dealer would not venture to sell real pistols to little boys as pop-guns, and a gun-maker who should try to sell the latter for army revolvers would get into trouble, even though he were able to prove that the toy was as expensive to manufacture as the real article, or more so, silver-mounted, chiselled, and lying in a Russia-leather case. I am not sure that the law might not support the purchaser in an action for damages if he discovered at a critical moment that his revolver was a plaything. It seems to me that there is a similar case in the matter of novels. A man buys what purports to be a work of fiction, a romance, a novel, a story of adventure, pays his money, takes his book home, prepares to enjoy it at his ease, and discovers that he has paid a dollar for somebody’s views on socialism, religion, or the divorce laws.”

Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Novelist, short story writer, essayist (1854-1909)

The Novel: What It Is (1893)

Money, Books, Religion, Law

“Ō xein', angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti tē(i)de
keimetha tois keinōn rhēmasi peithomenoi.”

Simonides of Ceos (-556–-468 BC) Ancient Greek musician and poet

“I call to mind a winter landscape in Amsterdam — a flat foreground of waste land, with here and there stacks of timber, like the huts of a camp of some very miserable tribe; the long stretch of the Handelskade; cold, stone-faced quays, with the snow-sprinkled ground and the hard, frozen water of the canal, in which were set ships one behind another with their frosty mooring-ropes hanging slack and their decks idle and deserted, because… their cargoes were frozen-in up-country on barges and schuyts. In the distance, beyond the waste ground, and running parallel with the line of ships, a line of brown, warm-toned houses seemed bowed under snow-laden roofs. From afar at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the frosty air the tinkle of bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and disappearing in the opening between the buildings, like little toy carriages harnessed with toy horses and played with by people that appeared no bigger than children.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

On Amsterdam, Ch. 14
The Mirror of the Sea (1906)

Children, People, Water, Appearance

“Teachers and pop icons, empty drums beat loudest noise. We swap their quotes and CDs like children trading toys. Follow along, bite the barbed hook deep in our jaw…”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"The War/La Ilaha Il Allah"
Out Seeing The Fields (2007)

Children, Quotes, Teachers

“Grotesque sentiments such as the lust of business success or economic power of any kind, and indeed every purely self-regarding passion, from that of the social climber to that of the salvation-seeking ascetic, are experienced by the explorer with something of that shame which the child, emerging into adolescence, may feel toward the still-clinging fascination of his outgrown toys, or with such disgust as the youth may feel when he wakes from some unworthy sexual infatuation”

Olaf Stapledon book Last Men in London

Source: Last Men in London (1932), Chapter II: Exploring the Past.

Youth, Feeling, Business, Passion

“I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind — my wayward heart creates its own misery — Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child — long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.”

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) British writer and philosopher

Undated letter to Joseph Johnson (October? 1792), published in The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (2004), edited by Janet Todd, p. 206.

Idea, Silence, Suffering, Heart

“We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine,
But search of deep philosophy,
Wit, eloquence, and poetry;
Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thine.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

On the Death of Mr. William Harvey; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Art, Search, Wine

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

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

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

Life, Women, Men, Children

“I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.”

Christopher Marlowe The Jew of Malta

Machiavel, Prologue
The Jew of Malta (c. 1589)

Religion

“As he silently approached the last float, a latticework ball of reeds, he offered an unspoken prayer to He Who Always Steps on Sand that even now the little bottom-walkers were pushing and shoving their way into the cage below. Because of his unusual education, which included a year living on Perdruin—unheard of for a Wrannaman—Tiamak did not really believe in He Who Always Steps on Sand anymore, but he still held a fondness for him, such as might be felt for a senile grandfather who often tumbled down from the house, but once brought nuts and carved toys. Besides, it never hurt to pray, even if one did not believe in the object of prayer. It helped to compose the mind, and, at the very least, it impressed others.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 28, “Drums of Ice” (p. 447).

Education, Way, Help, Hurt

“Women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours-ambition is the serious business of life.”

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Source: Ivanhoe (1819), Ch. 36, Malvoisin speaking to De Bois-Guilbert.

Life, Women, Business

“The great question for our time is, how to make sure that the continuing scientific revolution brings benefits to everybody rather than widening the gap between rich and poor. To lift up poor countries, and poor people in rich countries, from poverty, to give them a chance of a decent life, technology is not enough. Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)

Life, People, Question, Chance

“[Downs Syndrome Winnie the Pooh] The minute I saw this in a catalogue I just fell about. It's so brave of Disney to introduce stuffed toys that represent serious illnesses in order to educate the little kiddies. Me, I just want this so I can make my very own 'Victorian Sanitarium' playset. Downs Syndrome Pooh will be kept perpetually in a bleak little cardboard cell, bullied by Doctor Action Man and Nurse Princess Leia, occasionally brought out to be brutally hosed down with cold water every week. I'm thinking of sending it to Hasbro.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Yahtzee's Christmas Wishlist http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/essays/wishlist.htm Fully Ramblomatic, Essays

Education, Thinking, Water, Princess

“In the Spring of 1926 I made some toy animals of curtain rods, broom handles, etc., and wire. Later, a few dolls, which I animated…. in the winter of 1927–1928 I made some more toys for a friend to take home as gifts, and having shown them to De Creeft a Spanish sculptor with a very acute sense of humor, I was urged by him to make some more toys and to expose them at the ] of which animation is one of the chief characteristics.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1920s, Statement on Wire Sculpture' (1929)

Home, Spring, Sense, Winter

“Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Speech at the University of Kansas at Lawrence http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Remarks-of-Robert-F-Kennedy-at-the-University-of-Kansas-March-18-1968.aspx (18 March 1968)

Life, Wisdom, Marriage, Children

“Most societies are ruled by mediocre people that have no vision and no imagination. Most rulers are scared of creation and creative people. Artists are funny people. All they want is to touch and move, challenge and surprise others. But dictators hate surprises more than anything else. All they want is to turn their territory into a neat little toy prison camp and play with their little toy people. Push them around, rip a leg or a head off now and then or throw them into the garbage when they are tired of their stupid, little doll faces.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Interview by Michal Szyksznian http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interviews.com/interviews/celebritarian.html, celebritarian.pl, 2009

Hate, People, Stupidity, Imagination

“I started [in Paris, 1920's, making toys] right away, using wire as my main material as well as working with others like string, leather, fabric and wood. Wood combined with wire (with which I could make the heads, tails and feet of animals as well as articulating parts) was almost always my medium of choice. One friend of mine suggested that I should make bodies entirely of wire, and that is how I started to make what I called 'Wire Sculpture.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

In Montparnasse, I became known as the 'King of Wire'. Quote of Alexander Calder (1952), looking back, from Permanence Du Cirque, in 'Revue Neuf', Calder Foundation, 1952; as quoted in Calder and Mondrian: An Unlikely Kinship, senior-thesis by Eva Yonas http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.517.581&rep=rep1&type=pdf, Ohio State University August 2006, Department of Art History, p.19 – note 26 Calder first began using wire extensively in 1926, creating mechanical toys that would be the precursors to the Paris' 'Cirque Calder' 1950s - 1960s

Animals, Parting

“Deceiving world, that with alluring toys
Hast made my life the subject of thy scorn,
And scornest now to lend thy fading joys,
T'outlength my life, whom friends have left forlorn;
How well are they that die ere they be born,
And never see thy sleights, which few men shun
Till unawares they helpless are undone!”

Robert Greene (dramatist) (1558–1592) English author

"Verses", line 1, from Groatsworth of Wit (1592); Dyce p. 310.
Groatsworth of Wit was published posthumously under Greene's name, but it was heavily revised by Henry Chettle, and may have been partially or even totally written by him.

Life, Men, World, Joy

“If it's some style, especially some shrink-wrapped thing hanging on a wall at Toys 'R' Us, then it won't live, it won't be dynamic … It becomes exactly what the marketing people want — a genre, something to make their job easier. But if it's something like, "Everybody's telling me the wall's over there, but I'm going to push against it and see if it's really there"”

Mike Watt (1957) musician, songwriter

to me, that's what punk is. An idealistic attitude.
watt bio (2005)

People

“Saw also a toy train big enough to pull children and a few adults. Would fain have had a ride on it, but I had no child with me, and feared that I might excite remark and even rebuke if I tried to pass myself off as a nursery-school type. The train had an excellent whistle which sent me, just as Sinatra sends the bobby-sockers. Whoo! it went, mellowly and invitingly: Whoo! Whoo!”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

Children, Fear, School, Training

“It was so much fun the other day. Dad took out all of our old toys that he found in the old barn. Now Estelle is playing with the old stuff and she loves it.”

Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland (1982) Swedish princess

royalcorrespondent.com interview http://royalcorrespondent.com/2013/07/15/we-really-are-a-team-says-princess-madeleine-in-a-new-interview/

Love

“Now you listen to me, you little party-favor, I'm sick of your rotten little attitude! I let YOU beat me up and call me names because I consider you a friend, but I'm sure that if I wanted to, I could throw you around like a chew toy!”

Darby Conley (1970) American cartoonist

Bucky Katt, Satchel Pooch

“Love, Fear and Hate and Childish Toys
Are here discreetly blent”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Country Sentiment (1920)
Context: Love, Fear and Hate and Childish Toys
Are here discreetly blent;
Admire, you ladies, read, you boys,
My Country Sentiment.

"A First Review".

Love, Hate, Fear

“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Disturbing the Universe (1979)
Context: If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives. <!-- Pt. 1, Ch. 1

Way

“Each day saw the birth
Of various forms, which, flung upon the earth,
Seemed harmless toys to cheat the exacting hour,
But were as seeds instinct with hidden power.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

On the work of the metal-smith Tubal-Cain
The Legend of Jubal (1869)
Context: Each day he wrought and better than he planned,
Shape breeding shape beneath his restless hand.
(The soul without still helps the soul within,
And its deft magic ends what we begin.)
Nay, in his dreams his hammer he would wield
And seem to see a myriad types revealed,
Then spring with wondering triumphant cry,
And, lest the inspiring vision should go by,
Would rush to labor with that plastic zeal
Which all the passion of our life can steal
For force to work with. Each day saw the birth
Of various forms, which, flung upon the earth,
Seemed harmless toys to cheat the exacting hour,
But were as seeds instinct with hidden power.

Birth, Cheating

“Why should we defer our joys?
Fame and rumour are but toys.”

Ben Jonson To Celia

Song, To Celia, lines 1-10.
Compare Catullus, Carmina V
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), The Forest
Context: Come my Celia, let us prove,
While we can, the sports of love;
Time will not be ours forever,
He at length our good will sever.
Spend not then his gifts in vain;
Suns that set may rise again,
But if once we lose this light,
'Tis with us perpetual night.
Why should we defer our joys?
Fame and rumour are but toys.

Joy

“It is apparent that nations cannot exist for us. They are the playthings of children, such toys as children break from boredom and weariness.”

Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) writer

A New Testament (1927)
Context: We have not approached the time when we may speak to each other, but in the mornings sometimes I have heard, echoing far off, the sound of a trumpet. It is apparent that nations cannot exist for us. They are the playthings of children, such toys as children break from boredom and weariness. The branch of a tree is my country. My freedom sleeps in a mulberry bush. My country is in the shivering legs of a little lost dog.

Children

“Be you not toys any longer! Stir up the wild business in you. You have to be real animals before you can be men.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 6
Context: The witch has been playing a semantic trick on us. We were already pretty salty animals when we came here! It is toy animals she has turned us into. We have been working against ourselves, trying to be men again, but to be her idea of men, since we live in her context. But she does not know real animals, or men. … Be you not toys any longer! Stir up the wild business in you. You have to be real animals before you can be men.

Men, Business, Animals

“But most men must first be persuaded that the task lies ahead and not behind — that we are infants still, with loaded guns for toys.”

Philip Wylie (1902–1971) American writer

Source: Generation of Vipers (1942), p. 20
Context: The blame for Armageddon lies on man. And the millennium will come only when the average man exhibits a scientific integrity about all he is and does — instead of half of it. Many a psychological Archimedes has put signposts on the hard road man must follow if he is to avoid self-destruction and come into his own. A few very great modern scientists have added to the lore. Indications of what man may expect of himself are everywhere at hand. But most men must first be persuaded that the task lies ahead and not behind — that we are infants still, with loaded guns for toys.

Men

“I think the reason children get tired of their toys so soon is just that it is against human nature to be really interested in what is of no use.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

The History of Gutta Percha Willie, the Working Genius (1873)
Context: !-- After a few days, Willie got tired of [the water-wheel] — and no blame to him, for it was no earthly use beyond amusement, and that which can only amuse can never amuse long. --> I think the reason children get tired of their toys so soon is just that it is against human nature to be really interested in what is of no use. If you say that a beautiful thing is always interesting, I answer, that a beautiful thing is of the highest use. Is not the diamond that flashes all its colours into the heart of a poet as useful as the diamond with which the glazier divides the sheets of glass into panes for our windows?

Children, Nature, Thinking

“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Walden (1854), p. 60-61

“You, poor child, without toys or playmates, you played murder, because it is a game that one can play alone.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Jupiter to Electra, Act 3
The Flies (1943)
Context: You are a tiny little girl, Electra. Other little girls dreamed of being the richest or the most beautiful women of all. And you, fascinated by the horrid destiny of your people, you wished to become the most pained and the most criminal … At your age, children still play with dolls and they play hopscotch. You, poor child, without toys or playmates, you played murder, because it is a game that one can play alone.

Game

“If it is a plan or a design, the planner must be either very capricious - really toying with his creation; and/or very clumsy, very tinkering and fantastically wasteful - throw away 99.9% of what you've made; or very cruel and very callous; or just perhaps very indifferent”

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

"Does Religion Poison Everything?", Festival of Dangerous Ideas, October 2009. 2000s, 2009 Context: If this was the plan - was it made by someone who likes us? And if so, why have 99.9% of all the other species that have ever been created already died out? And part of what plan was that?; If it is a plan or a design, the planner must be either very capricious - really toying with his creation; and/or very clumsy, very tinkering and fantastically wasteful - throw away 99.9% of what you've made; or very cruel and very callous; or just perhaps very indifferent; or some combination of all the above. And so it's no good saying that He moves in mysterious ways, or that He has purposes that are opaque to us, because even that kind of evasion has to make itself predicate on the assumption that the person saying this knows more than I do about the supernatural, and I haven't yet met anyone who does have a private line to the creator, of the sort that would be required even to speculate about it. In other words, I haven't met anyone, in holy orders or out of it, who isn't also a primate. And neither have you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVvJf9wTQXo

Indifference

“A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original”

David Brin Brightness Reef

Source: Brightness Reef (1995), Ch. 25
Context: It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

“Some old man memory jumps to a child
— Spark from the days of energy.
And the child hoards it like a bitter toy.”

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

"Fall of a City"
Selected Poems (1941)
Context: All the lessons learned, unlearned;
The young, who learned to read, now blind
Their eyes with an archaic film;
The peasant relapses to a stumbling tune
Following the donkey`s bray;
These only remember to forget. But somewhere some word presses
On the high door of a skull and in some corner
Of an irrefrangible eye
Some old man memory jumps to a child
— Spark from the days of energy.
And the child hoards it like a bitter toy.

Memory

“Technology has not advanced because people are starved for instruments to make a better civilization, but because they are starved for entertainment – technology is still mostly a toy factory for grown-ups.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

People

“I'm English, and as such I crave disappointment. That's why I buy Kinder Surprise. Horrible chocolate; nasty little toy: a double-whammy of disillusionment! Sometimes I eat the toy out of sheer despair. I call them the Eggs Of Numbing Inevitability. And when I buy them, I always ask for them in the third person: "Bill Bailey would like the Eggs Of Numbing Inevitability." I did that the other day and it answered me back, and he said to me: "No, I am Bill Bailey. You are not Bill Bailey, you are just a mere doppelgänger. I am the true Bill Bailey, in another dimension." And I went, "Oh, I hadn't planned on that." Then I thought the only way to solve this, I have to run at my doppelgänger, then we will be fused forever. So I ran full-tilt at it, and just before I got there I realised it was the highly polished side of the cheese counter.
Ch. 12, 21:57”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)

Disappointment, Way, Personality, Despair

“I sense that many readers want nothing more complex or challenging than wind-up toys. It's dispiriting.”

Caitlín R. Kiernan (1964) writer

(3 January 2005)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2005
Context: I want to build vast machines of light and darkness, intricate mechanisms within mechanisms, a progression of gears and cogs and pistons each working to its own end as well as that of the Greater Device. That's what I see in my head. But, too often, I sense that many readers want nothing more complex or challenging than wind-up toys. It's dispiriting.

Sense

“In our days, when we are spoilt with exceedingly complex toys, such as nuclear reactors or synchrotron sources, I particularly like to describe experiments of this Franklin style to my students.”

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1932–2007) French Physicist

"Soft Matter" Nobel lecture (9 December 1991) - full text in PDF format http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1991/gennes-lecture.html Context: Benjamin Franklin performed a beautiful experiment using surfactants; on a pond at Clapham Common, he poured a small amount of oleic acid, a natural surfactant which tends to form a dense film at the water-air interface. He measured the volume required to cover all the pond. Knowing the area, he then knew the height of the film, something like three nanometers in our current units. This was to my knowledge the first measurement of the size of molecules. In our days, when we are spoilt with exceedingly complex toys, such as nuclear reactors or synchrotron sources, I particularly like to describe experiments of this Franklin style to my students. Surfactants allow us to protect a water surface, and to generate these beautiful soap bubbles, which are the delight of our children.

“He did not feel that he was stealing, for the cleaver, the radio, the money, and the typewriter were all on the same level of value, all meant the same thing to him. They were the serious toys of the men who lived in the dead world of sunshine and rain he had left, the world that had condemned him, branded him guilty.”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

Eight Men (1961)

Men, Money, World, Feeling

“We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The She-Ancient, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Context: Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls.

Life, Sense