Quotes about twins
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“Recall the word you gave:
to count your way across the depths of this arid world,
where you would yoke the waves,
and lay a bed of shining pearls!
I dream it every night:
the ringing of the pail,
the motes of sand dislodged,
the shucking, quick and bright;
the twinned and cast-off shells reveal a single heart of white.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)

World, Dreams, Way, Heart

“Starting with the Minnesota twin study thirty-five years ago, and now with a mountain of data from twin, sibling, and adoption studies, we know that pretty much anything you can quantify about human personality, behavior, and intelligence is to some degree heritable, average-average at around the fifty percent level but sometimes much higher. We now in fact have a busy and exciting field of study called “behavioral genetics.” Given that all these traits are heritable, it follows from the ordinary laws of biology that different races will exhibit different statistical profiles on them. That’s not astonishing, mysterious, or horrible: It’s just first-floor-level science.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

John Derbyshire On Why Race Realism Makes More Sense Than “Magic Dirt” Theory http://www.vdare.com/articles/john-derbyshire-on-why-race-realism-makes-more-sense-than-magic-dirt-theory, VDARE, November 1, 2015.

Law, Behavior, Mountain, Intelligence

“Though Truth and Falsehood be
Near twins, yet Truth a little elder is.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Satyre III (c. 1598)

Truth

“Our votes must go together with our guns. After all, any vote we shall have, shall have been the product of the gun. The gun which produces the vote should remain its security officer – its guarantor. The people's votes and the people's guns are always inseparable twins.”

Robert Mugabe (1924–2019) former President of Zimbabwe

Martin Meredith, "Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe".
Said in 1976 while a leading commander of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army
1970s

People

“We define a fruitful partnership between our twin professions of librarian and information systems scientist in support of this adventure in creativity, and the pursuit of wisdom? If it is the nature of the creative mind that it sets out to grapple with the tensions and contradictions in the "paradigm", as Kuhn calls it, it follows that first of all one must know what the paradigm is.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Librarians and Information Systems (1995)

Wisdom, Support, Nature, Partnership

“I call my balls the bush twins.”

Zach Galifianakis (1969) American actor and comedian

Live at the Purple Onion (2007)

“They say baseball is popular because everyone thinks they can play it. Similar reasoning may explain the popularity of the Olsen twins: Teenage girls love them because they believe they could be them. What, after all, do Mary-Kate and Ashley do in New York Minute that could not be done by any reasonably presentable female adolescent? Their careers are founded not on what they do, but on the vicarious identification of their fans, who enjoy seeing two girls making millions for doing what just about anybody could do.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/new-york-minute-2004 of New York Minute (7 May 2004) <br class="br">Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Love, Girl, Thinking

“When one is short, one should stand on a box to get a better view. The Twin Towers is [sic] to our ego what the box is to the shorties.”

Mahathir bin Mohamad (1925) Prime Minister of Malaysia

Clearly Islam the religion is not the cause of terrorism. Islam, as I said, is a religion of peace. However through the centuries, deviations from the true teachings of Islam take place. And so [people who call themselves] "Muslims" kill despite the injunction of their religion against killing especially of innocent people.

Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things [Vol I]

Box

“On identical twins - You always get a little snidey one.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 2 Episode 1
On Biology

“Higgins: Is [assassination] only justified if the target is a reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-human rights obscurantist like bin Laden?
Enda Kenny: I know you are a good Christian man who has your job to do in here from a political point of view. Many of his victims in the twin towers in New York were of Irish descent or directly Irish.”

Joe Higgins (1949) Irish socialist politician

Enda Kenny apologising to Higgins after slandering him. Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ok-you-are-not-a-bin-laden-fan-taoiseach-tells-joe-higgins-2637835.html

“If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, stanza 7

Soul

“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq. [The events] swung American public opinion in our favor.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

"Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel" (16 April 2008) http://www.haaretz.com/news/report-netanyahu-says-9-11-terror-attacks-good-for-israel-1.244044 <br class="br">2000s, 2008

“Although the great revolution of 1793 changed the whole face of France both politically and socially, it failed to emancipate the twin arts of painting and literature. In each case one tradition was succeeded by another, and nearly forty years elapsed before the new spirit completely broke through the barriers set up by a past generation.”

Wynford Dewhurst (1864–1941) British artist

Source: Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development. (1904), p. 1: Ch. 1. The evolution of the impressionistic idea.

Art, Literature, Change, Past

“I'm going to be real surprised if we go two more years. We are so close [to the New World Order]. All we need is one good disaster - which will be manufactured - they create their own disasters. Like the Twin Towers - they blew it up themselves - and they do that so they can bring in their solution. And what they want - if you look at what they want - they want a one world government - a New World Order - with Satan in charge. Period. That's the goal.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

1 May 2006
Truth Radio

World

“She wanted to tell me. Maybe she even tried. But she couldn't. It wasn't because I was only twelve. It was because I was her child, created by her and Father because they wanted to be in bed together and nothing else would do, nobody else would do. You see? … Because to the child, he was not created by his mother's and his father's passion or capacity for it. He couldn't have been because he was there first, he came first, before the passion; he created the passion, not only it but the man and the woman who served it; his father is not his father but his son-in-law, his mother not his mother but his daughter-in-law if he is a girl. … and if a boy or a girl really is his father's and her mother's father-in-law or mother-in-law, which would make the girl her brother's mother no matter how much younger she was, then a girl with just one brother and him a twin at that, would maybe be his wife and mother too.”

William Faulkner book The Town

Charles Mallinson in Ch. 19; Charles Mallinson's mother, Maggie, and his uncle, Gavin Stevens, besides being their parents' only children, are twins.
The Town (1957)

Law, Girl, Boy, Passion

“I have twins. They are 4 years old. They know the word 'concert,' so they know father's job is 'concert,' and they prefer concert [over] father.”

Psy (1977) South Korean singer

On Air With Ryan Seacrest http://ryanseacrest.com/2012/09/10/psy-explains-gangnam-style-dance-craze-to-ryan-seacrest-video/, September 10, 2012.

“Until George W. Bush, no American president -- not even Franklin Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson -- actually risked his presidency on the premise that Jefferson might be right. But this gambler from Texas has bet his place in history on the proposition, as he stated in a speech in March, that decades of American presidents' excusing and accommodating tyranny, in the pursuit of stability in the Middle East inflamed the hatred of the fanatics who piloted the planes into the twin towers on Sept. 11. If democracy plants itself in Iraq and spreads throughout the Middle East, Bush will be remembered as a plain-speaking visionary.”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

"Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?", New York Times Magazine, June 26, 2005

Democracy, History

“Home is my sanctuary; once inside, anything that happened outside is already forgotten. To be able to play with my twins and read stories to them is always a pleasure, especially when they amaze me with their new found words or phrases. Kids are amazing spirit boosters!”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Pamsy Tioseco, "Fit and Fabulous", Woman Today 01 October 2010, p. 54.
2010

Pleasure, Home, Reading

“When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the ages.”

Joseph Lewis (1889–1968) American activist

Ingersoll the Magnificent (Memorial Dedication Address, August 11, 1954)

Age

“A friend bought two cakes for his wife's birthday, with a "3" on one and an "8" on the other.
Store clerk: Oh, do you have twins?
Bill's friend: Yup, my wife was in labor for five years.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

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

Birthday

“I agree that you might clone some people who would look amazingly like their parental cell donors, but the odds are that they’d be almost as different as you or me, and certainly more different than any of today’s identical twins.”

Lewis Thomas (1913–1993) American physician, poet and educator

"On Cloning a Human Being", p. 53
The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

People, Parent

“Madri thought of the twin Aswins, who coming unto her with speed begat upon her two sons that were twins named Nakula and Sahadeva, unrivalled on earth for personal beauty.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIV

Beauty, Personality, Speed

“I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I'd look like without plastic surgery.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

As quoted in On Being Blonde (2004), by P. Munier, p. 84

“Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"Accuracy is twin brother to honesty, and inaccuracy to dishonesty." — Charles Simmons, Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker, containing over a thousand subjects alphabetically and systematically arranged (1852), p. 20: "Accuracy"
Misattributed

“Being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"First Lady on Trial" The Sunday Times [London] (17 March 1996) (Online text in PDF format) http://www.martinamisweb.com/commentary_files/ma_takesavillage.pdf#search=%22%22now%20the%20twin%20addictions%20of%20the%20culture%22%22

“According to a recent study of the brains of identical and fraternal twins, differences in the amount of gray matter in the frontal lobes are not only genetically influenced but are significantly correlated with differences in intelligence.”

Steven Pinker book The Blank Slate

Source: The Blank Slate (2002), p. 44, emphasis added

Intelligence, Study

“I promise you this. You will always have five sons. Yudhishtira, I will not harm. Bhima will not die by my hand. The twins – Nakula and Sahadeva – will go untouched by me. But Arjuna – him I will make no promises about. I will kill him, or he will kill me. One of us will die.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Karna's promise to Kunti, in p. 233-34.
The God of Small Things

“When the Twin Towers collapsed do you know what was in the basement? […] Lots of gold. Do you know where it is? […] Nobody does. It disappeared. Did those buildings drop down to cover a great crime being committed? Somebody is taking all this gold out of the Twin Tower basement. Makes you wonder.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

3 April 2006
Truth Radio

“So here the twins were laid low at Aeneas' hands,
down they crashed like lofty pine trees axed.”

Homér Iliad

V. 559–560 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Tree

“But secession struck to an even deeper level, to the very roots of popular government. The seceding states made their bolt for the door not in response to invasion or military occupation or internal taxation, but because their favored candidates did not win a presidential election. The genius of popular government was wound around the twin propositions that majorities have the privilege of winning, and that minorities have the obligation to be cooperative losers. Secession was a declaration of non-cooperation with a national vote, and since the United States in 1860 was virtually the only large-scale example of a successful popular democracy, the threat that the American republic would fracture over a lost election seemed to call into question the entire workability of popular government.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2000s, States' Rights and Wrongs (2008)

Democracy, Question, Success

“When I was a boy, I laid in my twin-sized bed and wondered where my brother was.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Mitch All Together (2003)

Boy

“I like how if you criticize the war you don't support the troops. You're the ones sending them over to die, so how is it I don’t support them? If the army was made up of child molesters, then I'd support them. If we went to an all child molester army, I would be their biggest supporter. "Please don't bring the troops home. Stay the course. Keep them there a long time." But they're not child molesters. And they're not the Twins, that’s for sure. Where are the Twins? Send in the Twins. I'd like to hear that scene. "Jenna, Barbara… Daddy and I have talked it over and we want you to go fight in Iraq."”

Larry David (1947) American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer

…Ah, what's the use? <br class="br">June 28, 2005 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-david/the-roving-thoughts-of-a-_b_3287.html

War, Home, Support, Time

“There are twin Gates of Sleep.
One, they say, is called the Gate of Horn
and it offers easy passage to all true shades.
The other glistens with ivory, radiant, flawless,
but through it the dead send false dreams up toward the sky.”
Sunt geminae Somni portae, quarum altera fertur Cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris, Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto, Sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes.

Virgil book Aeneid

Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book VI, Lines 893–896 (tr. Fagles); the gates of horn and ivory.

Dreams, Sleep, Falseness, Dead

“And great is the man with a sword undrawn,
And good is the man who refrains from wine;
But the man who fails and yet still fights on,
Lo, he is the twin-born brother of mine.”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

"For Those Who Fail" in Memorie and Rime (1884), p. 237.
Context: p>Oh, great is the hero who wins a name,
But greater many and many a time
Some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame,
And lets God finish the thought sublime.And great is the man with a sword undrawn,
And good is the man who refrains from wine;
But the man who fails and yet still fights on,
Lo, he is the twin-born brother of mine.</p

Wine, Fight

“That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature, spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.”

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

1960s, Address to AFL–CIO (1961)
Context: Negroes are almost entirely a working people…. Our needs are identical with labor's needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature, spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.

“Let's give this entity which you call soul another name. Soul has too many incorrect meanings for humans, too many verbal reverberations, too many contrary definitions.
Speak the word soul, and unbelievers will automatically become deaf to what follows. Those who believe in souls will always hear you through the mental constructs that they formed on Earth. Let us call this nonmatter twin the… ah… ka.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

That is the old Egyptian word for one of the several souls in their religion. Except for the Egyptians this will have no special connotation. And they can adapt to it.
Source: The Riverworld series, The Magic Labyrinth (1980), Ch. 20

Soul