Quotes about wiring
A collection of quotes on the topic of wire, wiring, doing, likeness.
Quotes about wiring
“Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.”
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter
"Bird on the Wire"
Songs from a Room (1969)
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Earliest published version found on Google Books with this phrasing is in the 1993 book The Internet Companion: A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking by Tracy L. LaQuey and Jeanne C. Ryer, p. 25 http://books.google.com/books?id=sP5SAAAAMAAJ&q=meowing#search_anchor. However, the quote seems to have been circulating on the internet earlier than this, appearing for example in this post from 1987 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/msg/cc89abb5e065d23f?hl=en and this one from 1985 http://groups.google.com/group/net.sources.games/browse_thread/thread/846af15b5a38c35/3d6d5a639c24bba3. No reference has been found that cites a source in Einstein's original writings, and the quote appears to be a variation of an old joke that dates at least as far back as 1866, as discussed in this entry from the "Quote Investigator" blog http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/02/24/telegraph-cat/#more-3387. A variant was told by Thomas Edison, appearing in The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison (1948), p. 216 http://books.google.com/books?id=NXtEAAAAIAAJ&q=edinburgh#search_anchor: "When I was a little boy, persistently trying to find out how the telegraph worked and why, the best explanation I ever got was from an old Scotch line repairer who said that if you had a dog like a dachshund long enough to reach from Edinburgh to London, if you pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark in London. I could understand that. But it was hard to get at what it was that went through the dog or over the wire." A variant of Edison's comment can be found in the 1910 book Edison, His Life and Inventions, Volume 1 by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, p. 53 http://books.google.com/books?id=qN83AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q&f=false. <br class="br">The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat. <br class="br">Variant, earliest known published version is How to Think Like Einstein by Scott Thorpe (2000), p. 61 http://books.google.com/books?id=9yrYQxBgIYEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA61#v=onepage&q&f=false. Appeared on the internet before that, as in this archived page from 12 October 1999 http://web.archive.org/web/19991012152820/http://stripe.colorado.edu/%7Ejudy/einstein/advice.html <br class="br">Misattributed
Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer
My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence
Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter
Through the Wire
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)
Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) poet
"The Streets of Laredo", line 1, from Holes in the Sky (1948)
MacNeice’s poem, a grotesque vision of the London Blitz, is not to be confused with the cowboy ballad "The Streets of Laredo".
Marilyn Frye (1941) feminist philosopher and professor
"Oppression", in Politics Of Reality – Essays In Feminist Theory (1983)
Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor
On the Wardenclyffe Tower, in "The Future of the Wireless Art" in Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony (1908)
“Young And Wired, Set To explode in the heat.”
Jon Bon Jovi (1962) American singer and musician
Music, 7800° Fahrenheit (1985)
Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan
Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 12 “The Gentleman from Tralfamadore” (p. 290)
Otto Dix (1891–1969) German painter and printmaker
Quote from Dix' War Diary 1915–1916, Städtische Gallery, Albstadt, p. 25; as cited by Eva Karcher, Otto Dix, New York: Crown Publishers, 1987, p. 14
Otto Dix (1891–1969) German painter and printmaker
Quote in Dix' letter from Görden 1917, to his brother-in-law, Otto Schmalhausen; as cited in Expressionism, a German intuition, 1905-1920, Neugroschel, Joachim; Vogt, Paul; Keller, Horst; Urban, Martin; Dube, Wolf Dieter; (transl. Joachim Neugroschel); publisher: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1980, p. 248
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
As quoted in The Guardian [London] (14 June 1989)
Post-presidency (1989–2004)
Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) German physicist
"On the Propagation of Electric Waves by Means of Wires" (1889) Wiedemann's Annalen. 37 p. 395, & pp.160-161 of Electric Waves
Electric Waves: Being Researches on the Propagation of Electric Action with Finite Velocity Through Space (1893)
Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer
Source: Suicide Notes
“Yuki: "Is your brain directly wired to perversion?”
Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist
“You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”
Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor
“Susie: The way Calvin's brain is wired, you can almost hear the fuses blowing.
p64”
Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist
23 Apr 92
The Days Are Just Packed
Source: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
“But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.”
James Joyce book Dubliners
"Araby"
Dubliners (1914)
“The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.”
Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist
Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian
Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 80 http://books.google.com/books?id=3gtoAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA80&dq=%22come+across+men+of+letters+who+have+written+history+without+taking+part+in+public+affairs%22 <br class="br">1850s and later
Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar
Source: Waking Hours: Book 1 in East Salem Trilogy with Pete Nelson (Thomas Nelson), p. 140
“With this film I have made more money than any of my other films. It was a high-wire act.”
Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor
On the success of his innovative Tamil film Apoorva Sahodarakal (Unique brothers) after a series of flops, <br class="br">In Comeback king (31May 1989) http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kamalhasans-latest-performance-dwarfs-his-earlier-hits/1/323484.html
Joseph Stella (1877–1946) American artist
Source: "The Brooklyn Bridge (A page of my life)," 1929, p. 88; Cited in: Beth Venn, Adam D. Weinberg. Frames of Reference: Looking at American Art, 1900-1950 : Works from the Whitney Museum of American Art. University of California Press, 1999. p. 123
Rudolf Mildner (1902) Chief of the Gestapo at Katowice
To Leon Goldensohn (12 February 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker
On Fellini and Fernando Pessoa
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)
Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing
Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 11 (p. 87)
Isabel Paterson (1886–1961) author and editor
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 39
Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments
Jace and Clary, pg. 255
The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)
Ray Lyman Wilbur (1875–1949) President of Stanford University
"Ray Lyman Wilbur", The Washington Post, June 28, 1949
Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist
1961 and later
Source: 'New York Times', 3 April 1969
Charles Stross book Rule 34
Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 26, “Liz: It’s Complicated” (pp. 287-288)
Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist
Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 15
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)
Norman Spinrad book The Void Captain's Tale
Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 10 (p. 117)
Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author
Source: If They Come in The Morning (1971), Chapter 2, "Lessons: From Attica to Soledad"
Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist
Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 26
Mark Pesce (1962) American writer
From the narration to <i> Becoming Transhuman http://www.webearth.org/bt.pdf</i>
Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist
Dialogue between Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters, (1956) with introduction in: Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling-- Memories of Kurt Schwitters; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, commissioned by w:Rudi Fuchs, 2000, pp. 139-140
1950s
Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin
Let the Great World Spin (2009), The Ringing Grooves of Change
Bassel Khartabil (1981–2015) free culture and democracy activist, Syrian political prisoner
Tweet Jan 21, 2010, 1:17PM https://twitter.com/basselsafadi/status/8041907590 at Twitter.com
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)
“Aunt Agatha, who eats broken bottles and wears barbed wire next to the skin.”
P.G. Wodehouse book The Code of the Woosters
The Code of the Woosters (1938)
John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up
December “HOUSE TO HOUSE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)
Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist
I Don't Know One Editor In India Who Is Well-Read
“Is our time up and on to the next fire / Got my fingers burnt and cut into the wire.”
Kim Wilde (1960) English pop singer
Shangri-la
Teases and Dares (1984)
Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator
Scientific American June 18th, 2013, regarding the need for noninvasive wearable devices http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/next-big-thing-wearable-gadgets-very-small/.
Shawn Lane (1963–2003) American musician
http://bardorecords.com/Bardo136.htm Press site for the album Temporal Analogues of Paradise (1995)
George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian
Source: The Shape of Time, 1982, p. 40; as cited in Lee (2001, p. 55)
Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor
22 June 2004
Dennis Miller
Gregory Bateson book Steps to an Ecology of Mind
7.4 Ecology and Flexibility in Urban Civilization
Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972)
Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress
I was madly in love with him and stepped happily into the Wonderland of his fame.
Afterword to The Dud Avocado (2006)
“the roads lay under us in white quilts
the telegraph-wires jerked tight and wrote
mantras on the sky”
Lajos Kassák The Horse Dies the Birds Fly Away
"A ló meghal a madarak kirepülnek" ("The Horse Dies the Birds Fly Away"), 1922, translated by Edwin Morgan
Moshe Dayan (1915–1981) Israeli military leader and politician
Rise and Kill First (2018) by Ronen Bergman, p. 49. Citing Moshe Dayan by Mordechai Bar-On, p. 128-129
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party
21 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)
Elisabetta Canalis (1978) Italian model and actress
Letter to Vogue Italia; quoted in "Lose the Fur: Elisabetta Canalis’ Message to New Editor of ‘Vogue Italia’" https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/lose-the-fur-elisabetta-canalis-vogue-italia/, PETA UK (22 February 2017).