Reading Clippings

A journalism that starts out assuming it knows the answers can be far less valuable to the reader than a journalism that starts out with a humbling awareness that it knows nothing. […] Our role, we knew, was to help readers understand such threas, and this required empathetic - not sympathetic - reporting. This is not an easy distinction but good reporters make it: they learn to understand and communicate the sources and nature of a toxic ideology without justifying it, much less advocating it. […] You did not have to pretend things were simpler than they actually were. You did not have to go along with anything that any tribe said. You did not have to pretend that good guys, much as you might have respected them, were right about everything, or that the bad guys, much as you have disdained them, never had a point. You did not, in other words, ever have to lie. This fundamental honesty was vital for readers, because it equipped them to make better, more informed judgments about the world. Sometimes it might shock or upset them by failing to conform to their picture of reality. But it also granted them the respect of acknowledging that they were able to work things out for themselves. […] James Bennet, When the NYT Lost Its Way

The kid rose and looked about at this desolate scene and then he saw alone and upright in a small niche in the rocks an old woman kneeling in a faded rebozo with her eyes cast down. He made his way among the corpses and stood before her. She was very old and her face was gray and leathery and sand had collected in the folds of her clothing. She did not look up. The shawl that covered her head was much faded of its color yet it bore like a patent woven into the fabric the figures of stars and quartermoons and other insignia of a provenance unknown to him. He spoke to her in a low voice. He told her that he was an American and that he was a long way from the country of his birth and that he had no family and that he had traveled much and seen many things and had been at war and endured hardships. He told her that he would convey her to a safe place, some party of her countrypeople who would welcome her and that she should join them for he could not leave her in this place or she would surely die. He knelt on one knee, resting the rifle before him like a staff. Abuelita, he said. No puedes escúcharme? He reached into the little cove and touched her arm. She moved slightly, her whole body, light and rigid. She weighed nothing. She was just a dried shell and she had been dead in that place for years. Cormack MacCarthy, Blood Meridian

Dans le salon vaguement éclairé par les lueurs du feu où Mrs Woolf avait bien voulu m’accueuillur, je regardais er profiler sur la pénombre ce pâle visage de jaune Parque à peine vieillie, mais délicatement marquée des signes de la pensée et de la lassitude, et je me disais que le reproche d’intellectualisme est souvent addressé aux natures les plus fines, les plus ardemment vivantes, obigées par leur fragilité ou par leur excès de forces à recourir sans cessse aux dures disciplines de l’esprit. Pour de telles êtres, l’intelligence n’est qu’une vitre parfaitement transparente derrière laquelle ils regardent attentivement passer la vie. Marguerite Yourcenar, préface aux Vagues de Virginia Woolf

Le temps passe, je sais. Nous vieillissons. Mais être assis près de vous, seul avec vous, au cœur de Londres, dans cette chambre éclairée par le reflet du feu, c’est le comble du bonheur. Tous les trésors du monde ne forment qu’un seul butin, et tous ses sommets ont été pour nous dépouillés de leurs fleurs. Le reflet du feu met un fil d’or dans l’épaisseur des rideaux. Le fruit qu’il touche pèse de tout son poids. Il fait briller le bout de vos chaussures; il met autour de votre tête une rouge auréole. Je sais que ce reflet provient du feu, et non de votre visage: ces livres étagés le long du mur sont des livres, ce rideau est un rideau, et ce fauteuil n’est qu’un fauteuil. Mais quand vous êtes là, tout se transforme. Les tasses et les soucoupes ont changé d’aspect quand vous êtes entré ce matin. J’ai posé mon journal sur la table, et je me suis dit que certes nos médiocres vies sans beauté ne se recouvrent de splendeur, ne s’enrichissent d’un sens que sous l’éclairage de l’amour. Virginia Woolf, Les Vagues

Je vois les abîmes. Je sais de quelle façon l’amour flambe et se tord dans la flamme, et comment la jalousie lance ça et là ses verdâtres éclairs; et par quelles voies tortueuses l’amour contrarie l’amour; et comment l’amour noue les fils; et avec quelle brutalité l’amour les arrache ensuite. J’ai été noué. J’ai été arraché. Virginia Woolf, Les Vagues

Comme il était doué d’un sens profond de sa place dans l’univers, c’était en vérité un maître de l’art de vivre, et si grand dans cet art qu’il paraissait avoir derrière lui l’expérience d’un long passé. Il semblait enveloppé de calme, et presque d’indifférence, en tout cas d’indifférence à son propre avenir. Virginia Woolf, Les Vagues

I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, [says Socrates] that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence… You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speakers always gives one unvarying answer. Plato, reported by James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

Reversed for me our grandire’s fate of yore, He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore. Byron David Grann, The Wager, A Tale of Shripwreck, Mutiny and Murder

The deck was dirty, slippery and wet; the smells abominable; the whole sight disgusting; and when I remarked the slovenly attire of the midshipmen, dressed in shabby round jacket, glazed hats, no gloves, and some without shoes, I forgot all the glory… and, for nearly the first time in my life, and I wish I could say it was the last, took the handkerchief from my pocket, covered my face, and cried like the child I was. John Byron David Grann, The Wager, A Tale of Shripwreck, Mutiny and Murder

Seamen refer to the latitudes in which they blow with names that capture the increasing intensity: the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and the Screaming Sixties. Below forty degrees of latitude, there is no law. Below fifty degrees, there is no God. David Grann, The Wager, A Tale of Shripwreck, Mutiny and Murder

Ice has a memory. It remembers in details and it remembers for a million years or more. It remembers forest fires and rising seas. It remembers the chemical composition of the air around the start of the last Ice Age, 110,000 years ago. It remembers the temperature of the clouds at a moment of snowfall early in the Holocene. It remembers the explosions of the Tambora in 1815, Laki 1783, Mont St Helens in 1482 and Kumar in 1454. It remembers the smelting boom of the Romans, and it remembers the lethal quantities of lead that were present in petrol in the decades after the Second World War. It remembers and it tells - tells us that we live on a fickle planet, capable of swift shifts and rapid reversals. Ice has a memory, and the colour of this memory is blue. Robert McFarlane, Underland, a Deep Time Journey

The cenote was understood by the local indigenous people to be an access point to the Mayan underworld, to Xibalba. In Mayan, Xibalba means “place of fear”. Robert McFarlane - Underland: A Deep Time Journey

They stick in the throat in two ways: they are difficult to utter and hard to swallow. Only one of these recent coinages resonates with me: ‘species loneliness’, for the intense solitude that we are fashioning for ourselves as we strip the Earth of the other life with which we share it. Robert McFarlane - Underland: A Deep Time Journey

There in the grove with Merlin, I recall Kimmerer, Hardy and Nelson, and feel a sudden, angry impatience with modern science for presenting as revelation what indigenous societies take to be self-evident. Robert McFarlane - Underland: A Deep Time Journey

Philip Larkin famously proposed that what will survive us is love. Wrong. What will survive us is plastic, swine bones and lead-207, the stable isotope at the end of the uranium-235 decay chain. Robert McFarlane - Underland: A Deep Time Journey

The halite will flow around it as the tunnel naturally closes up. It is an astonishing image: the translucent halite melting around this cybernetic dragon - the fossilization of this machine-relic in its burial shroud of salt. Robert McFarlane - Underland: A Deep Time Journey

Where the river Elbe flows through the Czech Republic, summer water levels have recently dropped so far that ‘hunger stones’ have been uncovered - carved boulders used for centuries to commemorate droughts and warn of their consequences. One of the hunger stones bears the inscription ‘iWenn du mich siehst, dann weine’: ‘If you see me, weep’. Robert McFarlane - Underland: A Deep Time Journey

Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously. David Goldstein - Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics

The paradise of Bagamoyo, however, came with a sad legacy. It was the terminus of the slave caravans and the last African soil that slaves would ever tread. Originally, the Arabs had named the town Bwagamaoyo - “throw off melancholy” - but the slaves changed it. Bagamoyo, in Swahili, means “crush your heart”. Martin Dugard - Into Africa: the Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone

Then Livinstone’s tone changed abrubtly. “I hope you are playing with your children instead of being bothered with idiots. In looking back,” he wrote, “I have but one regret and that is that I did not feel it my duty to play with my children as much as to teach the Balkwains. I worked very hard at that and was tired out at night. Now I have none to play with.” Martin Dugard - Into Africa: the Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone

Speaking to myself already might not have been a good sign, but as an old farmer in Somalia once remarked to me, talking to oneself means nothing. The trouble starts only when one begins to reply. Felice Benuzzi - No Picnic on Mount Kenya

Solemnly we sipped the first hot drink of our escape, the “first coffee in freedom” for two years. Never in my life had I drunk better coffee. Felice Benuzzi - No Picnic on Mount Kenya

Amy thought they were talking about love. Cheating wasn’t easy, thought Amy. It was hard; so very, very hard. It wasn’t some failure of character. It just was. It wasn’t even cheating. Because if it was being true to yourself, then wasn’t the real cheating the charade you played out with your spouse ? Richard Flanagan - The Narrow Road to the Deep North

[…] toute cette besogne inhumaine, immorale que nous devons faire parce que nous sommes des soldats et que c’est la guerre. Notre revanche aujourd’hui, c’est de saluer un ennemi brave qui vient de mourir, de proclamer que Nowotny nous appartient, qu’il fait partie de notre sphère où nous n’admettons ni les idéologies, ni les haines, ni les frontières. Cette camaraderie là n’a rien à voir avec le patriotisme, la démocratie, le nazisme ou l’humanité. Tous ces garçons, ce soir, le comprennent d’instinct. Et s’il en est qui haussent les épaules, c’est qu’ils ne peuvent pas savoir - ils ne sont pas pilotes de chasse. […] La conversation est tombée, les verres de bière sont vides, la radio s’est tue parce qu’il est minuit passé. Bruce Cole, qui c’est ni poète ni phiolosophe, laisse tomber ce mot: “Le premier qui a osé peindre une cocarde sur l’aile d’un avion était un salaud”. Pierre Clostermann - Le Grand Cirque

C’est une telle émeute que le chef de gare se dérange en personne, suivi d’une importante escorte de “Military Police”. Mal lui en prend, car sa magnifique casquette à galons dorés se trouve quelques minutes plus tard dans la valise de Tommy. Cette casquette figure aujourd’hui parmi les trophées de l’escadrille, entre un casque bleu cucurbitacé de policeman londonien, un béret de général canadien et un calot de colonel de “Panzer Grenadier” ramené de Dieppe par Bill Lood. Pierre Clostermann - Le Grand Cirque

Sometimes you want to order from a standard menu, quickly and wordlessly. But sometimes it’s nice to order hash browns and eggs the way you like them, and hear a waitress say, “I got you, baby”. It feels like home. The Economist, 2022, on Waffle House

One exceedingly useful item to scavenge from the supermarket shortly after the Fall would be a bottle of craft ale that contains a sediment of live yeast at the bottom. The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch - Lewis Dartnell

Mon expérience de l’histoire contemporaine avit profondément ancré en moi le sentiment que toutes choses sont incertaines et imprévisibles. L’homme prudent, c’était notre impression à tous, risque tout autant que l’audacieux, mais renonce en outre à l’ivresse de l’audace. Histoire d’un Allemand - Sebastian Haffner

Non, tout compte fait, ce gouvernement n’était pas un motif d’inquiétude. […]. Le lendemain, il s’avéra que ce pronostic était aussi celui de la presse intelligente. Il est curieux que la lecture en paraissent encore convaincante aujourd’hui, alors que l’on sait ce qui s’est passé. Comment les choses ont-elles pu prendre un cours aussi différent ? Histoire d’un Allemand - Sebastian Haffner

En ce qui concerne les nazis, mon nez n’hésita pas. Il était inutile de se fatiguer à parler pour savoir lesquels de leurs prétendus buts et intentions valaient une discussion, ou du moins présentaient une “justification historique”, étant donné l’odeur qu’exhalait l’ensemble. Histoire d’un Allemand. Sebastian Haffner

In all the frequent troubles of our days A God gave compensation more his praise In looking sky and heavenward as duty In sunshine and in virtue and in beauty Mildred Harnack - Rapporé par Rebecca Donner - All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learned the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical… Will our inward power of resistence be strong enough ? Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Rapporté par Rebecca Donner - All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days

Within the ideal world of mathematics, infinitesimals don’t exist in thereal number system, but they do exist in certain nonstandard number systems that generalize the real numbers. For Leibniz and his followers, they existed as fictions of the mind that came in handy. That’s the way we will be thinking about them. Steven Strogatz - Infinite Powers

Il fait encore bon, je pourrais faire le tour de France en stake-stop. J’ai ma carte de groupe sanguin, une petite transfusion par ci par là et c’est reparti !Je tiendrais une carnet de board. Je goûterais à tous les alcools, ne dormirais quasiment jamais et parlerais toutes les langues, surtout celles que je ne connais pas. J’en inventerais une, prendrais des photos, écrirais dessus et les enverrais en guise de cartes postales. J’apprendrais à construire des jouets en bois, je rencontrerais le Père Noël et, si je ne le trouvais pas, le deviendrais moi-même. Je me bâtirais un atelier en haut de la Rhune, cette montagne majestueuse qui surplombe la baie de Saint-Jean-de-Luz, je descendrais sur un vieux BMX jusqu’à l’océan pour aller surfer. J’écouterais de la musique toute la journée, j’en jouerais toute la nuit. Je ferais claquer des bouquets de feux d’artifice par la cheminée de l’atelier, fabriquerais une constellation mouvante jusque au dessus du toit, des étoiles entre lesquelles je tisserais des hamacs. Dans le jardin, il y aurait des balançoires argentées et un terrain de football miniature en moquette épaisse. J’élèverais des écureuils parlants et mes chiens de garde seraient des hérissons géants. Il y aurait un volcan de cinquante centimètres de haut en activité pour faire cuires des omelettes - parce que j’aurais des poules. Les seules poules au monde capables de pondre des oeufs en chocolat ! Oui! Rosy serati là, elle serait devenue mini-mannequin et scientifique de renom. Elle donnerait des conférences en amourologie dans le monde entier. Quand elle rentrerait, on fabriquerait des enfants en dansant. Quand ils auraient grandi, on installerait une source d’eau chaude dans la salle à manger pour se baigner en regardant des films. Toute la famille et les copains viendraitent et ce serait comme un parc d’attractions vivant… Mathias Malzieu - Journal d’un Vampire en Pijama

C’est reposant de ne pas avoir à tout ré-expliquer. Les petites attentions me réchauffent le coeur mais ce qui m’aide le plus en ce moment, ce sont les gens attentifs. Mathias Malzieu - Journal d’un Vampire en Pijama

How many millions of people with depression, over the course of human history, have had their isolation and suffering compounded this way, by helplessly eliciting anger and frustration in others - excerbating all the other challenges and agonies of their diesease ? Even with this perspective, I still had to work on my own cognitions, to not react negatively to him as a person. Knowing is one thing, but understanding is another. Karl Deisseroth - Projections

“A group in which some people tolerate unlikeliness this way may do well over time”, he had said, “but don’t forget - some will suffer terribly”. Now in her appartment she wanted to respond, but it was too late. She wanted to tell him that she understood now, and that this was not just true, and important, but should be taught to the community - to advance understanding, to elicit gratitude even - so that all could truly see the people who where ill, to understand their burden borne for us. Karl Deisseroth - Projections

In those streets everyone moved faster than me, but what they didn’t know was that I had already moved too fast, too far, and wished to travel no further. Emily St John Mandel - Sea of Tranquility

In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on. Robert Frost - Interview by Ray Josephs

The ocean stretches forever, cold and blue out there, and produces a strange sense of despair. Coastal people never really know what the ocean symbolises to landlocked inland people - what a great distant dream it is, present but unseen in the deepest levels of subconsciousness, and when they arrive at the ocean and the conscious images are compared with the subconscious dream there is a sense of defeat at having come so far to be so stopped by a mystery than can never be fathomed. The source of it all. Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

At present we’re snowed under with an irrational expansion of blind data-gathering in the sciences because there’s no rational format for any understanding of scientific creativity. At present we are also snowed under with a lot of stylishness in the arts - thin art - because there’s very little assimilation or extension into underlying form. We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly. The time for real reunification of art and technology is really long overdue. […] I say inner peace of mind. It has no direct relationship to external circumstances. It can occur to a monk in meditation, to a soldier in heavy combat or to a machinist taking off that last ten-thousandth of an inch. It involves unselfconsciousness. […] I think that when this concept of peace of mind is introduced and made central to the act of technical work, a fusion of classic and romantic quality can take place at a basic level within a practical working context. I’ve said you can actually see this fusion in skilled mechanics and machinists of a certain sort, and you can see it in the work they do. To say they are not artists is to misunderstand the nature of art. They have patience, care and attentiveness to what they’re doing, but more than this - there’s a kind of inner peace of mind that isn’t contrived but results from a kind of harmony with the work in which there’s no leader and no follower. […] Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all. Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of ‘style’ to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes it all the worse. Now it’s not just depressingly dull, it’s also phony. Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I rally am interested in this continuity and the way we talk and think about it and so tend to get removed from the usual lunchtime situation and this gives an appearance of remoteness. It’s a problem. Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Although surface ugliness is often found in the classic mode of understanding it is not inherent in it. There is a classic esthetic which romantics often miss because of its subtetly. Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I just think that their flight from and hatred of technology is self-defeating. The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer of the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself. That is what I want to talk about in this Chautauqua. Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Dad, I’m going backwards, I can feel it. Like the mouse, Dad, like Algernon. Richard Powers - Bewilderment

An oval leaf of ciabatta. It’s not a metaphor. It’s just a loaf of bread. I made it. I baked it. It’s food. We can eat it together tonight. From each according to her abilities, eh ? Just stay with me, Spring through Winter. Stay with me when there’s nothing left. I’ll stay with you. There’ll always be food enough. Richard Powers - Bewilderment

I would never have gone to college. As it was, I went only because it beat the summer job I had, cleaning out septic tanks for a company whose slogan was, “A Straight Flush Beats a Full House”. Richard Powers - Bewilderment

I would never have gone to college. As it was, I went only because it beat the summer job I had, cleaning out septic tanks for a company whose slogan was, “A Straight Flush Beats a Full House”. Richard Powers - Bewilderment

La génération Y ou Millinium n’a connu ni l’esclavage, ni la colonisation, ni la déportation, ni le stalinisme. A force de voir le monde de façon décontextualisé et anachronique à travers internet, elle se voit pourtant parfois esclave, indigène, voir menacée d’extermination. […] Tout en les prévenant que j’allais sûrement les “offenser”, je me suis mise à parler très librement du droit au blasphème, du féminisme et de la laïcité, tels que la gauche Charlie les défend. Caroline Fourest - Génération Offensée

He stole my music, but he gave me my name. Muddy Waters on Mick Jagger

Le but ultime de l’anti-racisme c’est pas d’exister comme victime mais d’éradiquer les préjugés. Comment espérer renverser les stérétypes et faire grandir le cercle des éveillés si l’on poursuit ce vieux réflexe consistant à juger les êtres et les âmes en fonction de leur couleur de peau. Caroline Fourest - Génération Offensée

Sur ces dix ans j’ecris ton nom, mon amour. Depuis dix ans, quand je salue la vie, avec regret ou avec espoir, c’est par ton nom. Qui remercier sinon la vie, et toi, de tout mon amour. Albert Camus - Maria Casarés - Correspondance

The world is sensitive to our touch. It has a kind of ‘Zing’ that makes it fly off in ways that were not imaginable classically. The whole structure of quantum mechanics may be nothing more than the optimal method of reasoning and processing information in the light of such a fundamental (wonderful) sensitivity. Fuchs cited by Philip Ball - Beyond Weird

Certainly, philosophers have a thing or two to tell to physicists about how delicate and slippery a term “the nature of reality” is. Philip Ball - Beyond Weird

As Tegmark puts it, “equations are ultimately more fundamental than words” (an idea curiously resistant to being expressed without words). Philip Ball - Beyond Weird

I hope you can accept Nature as she is - absurd. Richard Feynman

Seventh knew the looks, they all knew the looks. It was nothing overt, nothing big. It wasn’t a You’re a Fucking Cannibal Look, that way it wasn’t necessary a You’re a Dirty Jew Look, or You’re a Scary Black Guy Look. It was the You’re Not Me Look. Shalom Auslander - Mother for Dinner

The good news is that boxes are fairly simple to climb out of. Then how come so few do it ? he asked. I said it was simple, said Dr. Isaacson, I didn’t say it was easy. Shalom Auslander - Mother for Dinner

What about F-150s? The Elders asked. For they are not cars, but trucks. Ford trucks too, said the Elder Elders, are forbidden. What about Lincolns? the Elders asked. Lincolns are permitted, said the Elder Elders. But Lincoln is owned by Ford, said the Elders. Yes, said the Elder Elders, but nobody drives Lincolns anyway. I drive a Lincoln, said the Elders. Then you are a fool, said the Elder Elders. Shalom Auslander - Mother for Dinner

He didn’t think himself a Jewish Cannibal-American, but the Judaic concept of an Asshole God fit his generally negative view of the universe. Shalom Auslander - Mother for Dinner

C’est une eau que les jeunes gens laissent couler sans le savoir. Jean Anouilh - Antigone

Nuestra mente es porosa para el olvido; yo mismo estoy falseando y perdiendo, bafo la tragica erosión de los años, los rasgos de Beatriz. Jorge Luis Borges - El Aleph

Comprendi que el trabajo del poeta no estaba en la poesía; estaba en la inveción de razones para que la poesía fuera admirable. Jorge Luis Borges - El Aleph

To betray, you must first belong. I never belonged. Kim Phillby (from Owen Matthews - An impeccable spy)

Une expérience phénoménologique intéressante consisterait à interroger les fondements du non-apparaître à la conscience de certains de ce qui apparaît à la conscience des autres. Muriel Barbery - L’Elégance du Hérisson

Le plus grand obstacle à la vie, c’est l’attente, qui se suspend au lendemain et ruine l’aujourd’hui. Sénèque - De la Brièveté de la Vie

Hay dos clases de seres que nunca abandonarán Nueva Orlans: los músicos y los fantasmas. Dolores Redondo - La Cara Norte del Corazón

Beyond the small and slippery pyramid which composed Mrs.Archer’s world lay the almost unmapped quarter inhabited by artists, musicians and “people who wrote”. These scattered fragments of humanity had never shown any desire to be amalgamated with the social structure. In spite of odd ways they were said to be, for the most part, quite respectable; but they preferred to keep to themselves. Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence

EACH TIME YOU HAPPEN TO ME ALL OVER AGAIN. Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence

His heart sank, for he saw that he was saying all the things that young men in the same situation were expected to say, and she was making the answers that instinct and tradition thought her to make - even to the point of calling him original. Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence

El primero de la estirpe está amarrado en un árbol y al último se lo están comiendo las hormigas […] Sin embargo, antes de llegar al verso final ya habia comprendido que no saldría jamás de ese cuarto, pues estava previsto que la ciudad de los espejos (o los espejismos) sería arrasada por el viento y desterrada de la memoria de los hombres en el instante en que Aureliano Babilonia acabara de descifrar los pergaminos, y que todo lo escrito en ellos era irrepetible desde siempre y para siempre, porque las estirpes condenadas a cien años de solodad no tenían una segunda oportunidad sobre la tierra. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Cien Años de Soledad

Ce qu’il faut de sanglots pour un air de guitare Louis Aragon - fou d’Elsa - Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux

Taciturno, silencioso, insensible al nuevo soplo de vitalidad que estremacía la casa, el coronel Aureliano Buendía apenas si comprendió que el secreto de una buena vejez no es otra cosa que un pacto honrado con la soledad. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Cien Años de Soledad

En un instante descubrió los arañazos, les vedrugones, las mataduras, las ulceras y cicatrices, que habia dejado en alla más de medio siglo de vida cotidiana, y comprobo que esos estragos no suscitaban en él ni siquiera un sentimiento de piedad. Hizo entonces un ultimo esfuerzo para buscar en su corazón el sitio donde se la habían podrido los afectos, y no pudo encontrarlo. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Cien Años de Soledad

No me verás - dijo el coronel Aureliano Buendia - Ponte los zapatos y ayudame a terminar por esta guerra de mierda. Al decirlo, no imaginaba que era mas facil empezar una guerra que terminarla. Necesitó casi un año de rigor sanginario para forzar al Gobierno a proposar condiciones de paz favorables a los rebeldes, y otro año para persuadir a sus partidarios de la conveniencia de acceptarlas. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Cien Años de Soledad

La mer était gaie au soleil. Une caresse préalable assaisone les trahisons. De ces caresses-là, la mer n’en est point avare. Quand on a affaire à cette femme, il faut se défier du sourire. Victor Hugo, Les Travailleurs de la Mer

Cette grotte inconnue était, pour ainsi dire, et si une telle expression était admissible, sidéralisée. Victor Hugo, Les Travailleurs de la Mer

Les oeuvres de la nature, non moins suprêmes que les oeuvres du génie, contiennent de l’absolu, et s’imposent. Leur inattendu se fait obéir impérieusement par l’esprit; on y sent une préméditation qui est en dehors de l’homme, et elles ne sont jamais plus saisissantes que lorsqu’elles font subitement sortir l’exquis du terrible. Victor Hugo, Les Travailleurs de la Mer

Demain, dès l’aube, à l’heure où blanchit la campagne, Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends. J’irai par la forêt, j’irai par la montagne. Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps. Victor Hugo, Les Contemplations

La vertu et la probité ont, cela s’est vu, des aventures. Il ne faut, d’emblée, ni estimer les Louvres ni mépriser les bagnes. Le respect public de même que la réprobation universelle, veulent être épluchés. On y a des surprises. Un ange dans le lupanar, une perle dans le fumier, cette sombre et éblouissante trouvaille est possible. Victor Hugo, Les Travailleurs de la Mer

Il était prudent, et il poussait quelquefois la prudence jusqu’à oser, ce qui est une grande qualité à la mer. Il avait la crainte du probable tempérée par l’instinct du possible. C’était un de ces marins qui affrontent le danger dans une proportion à eux connue et qui de toute aventure savent dégager le succès. Victor Hugo, Les Travailleurs de la Mer

MAXIMUM HAPPY IMAGINATION “… CALLED SINGULARITY SINGLES,” Kat Potente is saying. She’s wearing the same red and yellow BAM! T-shirt from before, which means (a) she slept in it, (b) she owns several identical T-shirts, or (c) she’s a cartoon character—all of which are appealing alternatives. Robin Sloan - Mr Penumbra’s 24-hour bookstore

Ton poids alourdissait ma hanche et nous restions ensemble infiniment Huguette Junod

Motive should never be in the fruits of action Nor should you cling to inaction Abiding in yoga, engage in actions Let go of clinging, and let fulfilment And frustration be the same Bhagavad Gita - Laurie Patton

Mindfulness meditation has a philosophical point: something more than therapy for the stress of daily life, something less than metaphysical revelation. Kieran Setiya - Midlife Crisis

So tell yourself this: atlthough I may regret regret, desire that no desire go unfullfilled, I canno’t in the end prefer to have desires that could be fully met. The sense of loss is real, but it is something to concede, not wish away. Embrace your losses as fair payment for the surplus of being alive. Kieran Setiya - Midlife Crisis

Gilgamesh wept over Enkidu his friend bitterly he wept through the wilderness. “Must I die too ?”, must I be as lifeless as Enkdu ? How can I bear the sorrow that gnaws at my belly, this fear of death that restlessly drives me onward ? Stephen Mitchell - Gilgamesh: a New English Version

You can, of course, experiment with your own life. Maybe you shouldn’t do it with other people’s. Hanif Kureishi - Intimacy

Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise. Thomas Gray’s 1742 poem, ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’

La construction primitive des pionniers se trouva remplie d’outils et de matériaux, d’ouvriers suffocants et suants qui priaient tout le monde de ne pas se mettre dans leurs pieds sans que l’idée leir vînt que c’était eux qui se mettaient dans les pieds de tout le monde. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Cent Ans de Solitude

Il avait échappé à tout ce que l’humanité avait subi de catastrophes et de fléaux. Il survécut à la pellagre en Perse, au scorbut dans l’archipel de la Sonde, à la lèpre en Alexandrie, au béribéri au Japon, à la peste bubonique à Madagascar, au tremblement de terre en Sicile et au naufrage d’une fourmillère humaine dans le détroit de Magellan. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Cent Ans de Solitude

[…] bien qu’elle ne permit jamais qu’on lui fît un daguerréotype car (pour reprendre ses propres termes) elle ne voulait pas demeurer indéfiniment la risée de ses petits-enfants Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Cent Ans de Solitude

• Et tu brilles et brûles toujours avec la même ardeur, ma chère petite flamme, dit-elle doucement d’une voix humide et lourde de sommeil. Viens un instant t’assoir plus près, tout à côté de moi. Je vais te raconter ce que je viens de rêver. Et il éteignit la lampe Boris Pasternak - Le Docteur Jivago

Manger un fruit, c’est faire entrer en soi un bel objet vivant, étranger, nourri et favorisé comme nous par la terre; c’est consommer un sacrifice où nous nous préférons aux choses. Marguerite Yourcenar - Les Mémoires d’Hadrien

Gertrude avait ceci de bien qu’elle ne faisait jamais semblant de comprendre, comme le font si souvent les gens, qui meublent ainsi leur esprit de données imprécises ou fausses, par quoi tous les raisonnements sont ensuite viciés. Tant qu’elle ne s’en était point fait une idée nette, chaque notion demeurait pour elle une cause d’inquiétude et de gêne. André Gide - la Symphonie Pastorale

If I am not for myself, who will be for me ? And if I am for myself only, what am I ? And if not now, when ? Rabbi Hillel

• Mas tu também não disseste que me matavas ?
• Disse no começo. Depois matei você ao contrário. Fiz você morrer nascendo no meu coraçao. Você é a única pessoa de que eu gosto, Portuga. Jode Mauro de Vasconcelos, O Meu Pé de Laranja Lima

Le plus grand bonheur après que d’aimer, c’est de confesser son amour. André Gide

There is freedom waiting for you, on the breezes of the sky. And you ask, “What if I fall?” Oh, but my darling, “What if you fly? Erin Hanson

Surfing has cost me two wedding rings, many thousands of dollars, and a few millimeters of intervertebral space in my spine. And I’m still not that good at it. https://www.outsideonline.com/2420015/beginners-book-excerpt-tom-vanderbilt-surfing

Ironically, a theory paper that ‘solves’ a difficult problem with a simple, transparent, and elegant solution can be easily devalued. It can take months or years of work to come to a result, which once understood, seems simple, and perhaps obvious. All of the underlying work and the multiple fruitless avenues of exploration may not show, once the answer is clear. And if the answer is a few simple differential equations or calculations, the reader might feel that they could have done the work in two hours, not remembering that until it had been done, no one knew the solution, or that it was an interesting problem. Eve Marder - Twitter

Being the center of your own universe might sound appealing at first, until your factor in that the observational evidence for this is that everything is trying to get away from you as fast as possible. Katie Mack, The Enc of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)

Fortunately, if we need weirdness in physics, we can always rely on the quantum realm to serve up something good. Katie Mack, The Enc of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)

Je m’en fous, Dieu, pour moi, c’est comme le bridge: je n’y pense jamais. Donc je ne me définis pas pas par le fait que je me fous du bridge, et je ne me réunis pas non plus avec des gens qui discutent du fait qu’il se foutent eux aussi du bridge. Hervé le Tellier - L’Anomalie

• Alors, en ce moment, je ne bois pas mon café à une table ? dit Silvera. Ce que nous percevons, sentons, voyons… Cerait aussi simulé ? Tout est faux ?
• Général, ça ne change pas le fait que vous êtes en train de boire un café à cette table, reprend Wesley, ça change seuleument de quoi sont faits le café et la table. Hervé le Tellier - L’Anomalie

Meredith crie une phrase où il est question de probabilistees endanglantés et d’un voyage vers l’enfer qu’il est prié d’accomplir mais il est déjà dans le hall. Hervé le Tellier - L’Anomalie

Les escarmouches avec les théologiens avaient eu leur charme, mais il savait fort bien qu’il n’existe aucun accommodement durable entre ceux qui cherchent, pèsent, dissèquent, et s’honorent d’être capables de penser demain autrement qu’aujourd’hui, et ceux qui croient ou affirment croire, et obligent sous peine de mort leurs semblables à en faire autant. Marguerite Yourcenar - L’Oeuvre au Noir

Dans ce tintoin de paroles, ce fracas d’armes, et parfois ce bon bruit d’écus, ce qu’on entend encore le moins, ce sont les cris de ceux qu’on rompt ou qu’on tenaille. Marguerite Yourcenar - L’Oeuvre au Noir

Il en était des créatures abordées, puis quittées, au cours de l’existence comme de ces figures spectrales, jamais vues deux fois, mais d’une spécificité et d’un relief presque terribles, qui se détachent la nuit des paupières à l’heure qui précède le sommeil et le songe, et tantôt passent et fuient à la vitesse d’un météore, et tantôt se résorbent en elles-mêmes sous la fixité du regard interne. Marguerite Yourcenar - L’Oeuvre au Noir

Frère, il y a dans presque toutes les choses terrestres je ne sais quelle lie ou quel déboire qui vous en dégoûtent, et les rares objets qui par hasard ont la perfection en partage sont mortellement tristes. Marguerite Yourcenar - L’Oeuvre au Noir

Petite âme, âme tendre et flottante, compagne de mon corps, qui fut ton hôte, tu vas descendre dans ces lieux pâles, durs et nus, où tu devras renoncer aux jeux d’autrefois. Un instant encore, regardons ensemble les rives familières, les objets que sans doute nous ne reverrons plus… Tâchons d’entrer dans la mort les yeux ouverts… Marguerite Yourcenar - Mémoires d’Hadrien

Ma patience porte ses fruits; je souffre moins; la vie redevient presque douce. Je ne me querelle plus avec les médecins; leurs sots remèdes m’ont tué; mais leur présomption, leur pedantisme hypocrite est notre oeuvre: ils mentiraient moins si nous n’avions pas si peur de souffrir. Marguerite Yourcenar - Mémoires d’Hadrien

Je goûtais cette odeur de sel et de soleil sur la peau humaine, ce parfum de lentisque et de térébinthe des îles où l’on voudrait vivre, et où l’on sait qu’on ne s’arrêtera pas. Marguerite Yourcenar - Mémoires d’Hadrien

Akiba et ses fidèles moururent persuadés jusqu’au bout d’être les seuls innocents, les seuls justes; audun d’eux ne songea à accepter sa part de responsabilité dans les malheurs qui accablaient son peuple. On les envierait, si l’on pouvait envier des aveugles. Je ne refuse pas à ces dix forcenés le titre de héros; en tout cas, ce n’étaient pas des sages. Marguerite Yourcenar - Mémoires d’Hadrien

Il faut faire ici un aveu que je n’ai jamais fait à personne: je n’ai jamais eu le sentiment d’appartenir complètement à aucun lieu, pas même à mon Athènes bien-aimée, pas même à Rome. Etranger partout, je ne me sentais particulièrement isolé nulle part. Marguerite Yourcenar - Mémoires d’Hadrien

«Je n’écris pas pour une minorité choisie, qui ne m’importe guère, ni pour cette entité platonique tellement adulée qu’on surnomme la Masse. Je ne crois à aucune de ces deux abstractions, chères au démagogue. J’écris pour moi, pour mes amis et pour atténuer le cours du temps.» Jorge Luis Borges

In our view, a lie becomes bullshit when the speaker attempts to conceal it using various rhetorical artifices. Carl Begstrom and Jelvin West, Calling Bullshit

Every generation thinks that its successor’s lazy habits of mind will bring on a cultural and intellectual decline. It may be a stodgy lament that has been repeated for thousands of years, but it’s our turn now, and we’re not going to miss the opportunity to grumble. Carl Begstrom and Jelvin West, Calling Bullshit

Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education. John Alexander Smith

Et maintenant, parlons de choses sérieuses. J’ai peur que tu ne fasses pas de folies. Cela n’empêche ni la gravité, ni la mélancolie, ni la solitude: ces trois gourmandises de ton charactère. Tu peux être grave et fou, qui empêche ? Tu peux être tout ce que tu veux et fou en surplus, mais il faut être fou, mon enfant. Regarde autour de toi le monde sans cesse grandissant qui se prennent au sérieux. Outre qu’ils se donnent un ridicule irrémédiable devant les esprits sembables au mien, ils se font une vie dangereusement constipée. Le Hussard sur le toit. Jean Giono

A orillas del Azov me quiso una mujer que no olvidaré; la deje o ella me dejó, lo cual es lo mismo. Fui traicionado, y traicioné. Mas de una vez el destino me hizo matar. Un soldado griego me desafió y me dio la elección de dos espadas. Una le llevaba un palmo a la otra. Comprendi que trataba de intimidarme y elegi la mas corta. Me pregunto por qué. Le respondi qhe de mi puño a su corazon la distancia era igual. El Libro de Arena / Undr, Jorge Luis Borges

Remember, we have no enemies, only opponents. Ronald Reagan Jorge Luis Borges, El Libro de Arena/El Otro

Là sombre et s’engloutit, dans des flots de désastres, L’hydre Univers tordant son corps écaillé d’astres ; Victor Hugo, Les Contemplations/Ce que dit la bouche d’ombre

“If someone says it’s raining, and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true.” Jonathan Foster - Twitter

I think it is terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people’s expectations David Bowie, 1997 interview

On 3 September Britain and France declared war. People were in a state of shock. Instead of the wild enthusiasm of 1914, the declaration of war aroused, in Heinrich Hoffmann’s words, ‘abysmal despondency’. ‘Today, no excitement, no hurrahs, no cheering, no throwing of flowers, no war fever, no war hysteria,’ observed William SHirer from Berlin. ‘There is not even any hate for the French and British’. How to Be a Dictator, Frank Dikötter

Yes, madam, I am finished. My star has fallen. I await the end of the tragedy and - strangely detached from everything - I do not feel anymore an actor. I feel I am the last of the spectators. Mussulini, January 1945, interview with Madeleine Mollier

“A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in.” After Life, Anne

Siempre me has gustado, cabrón. Patria, Fernando Aramburu

Constató: pedir perdón exige más valentía que disparar un arma, que accionar ona bomba. Eso lo hace cualquiera. Basta con ser joven, crédulo y tener la sangre caliente. Patria, Fernando Aramburu

“J’aimerais te donner une joie que ne t’aurait donnée encore aucun autre. Je ne sais comment te la donner, et pourtant, cette joie, je la possède. Je voudrais m’adresser à toi plus intimement que ne l’a fait encore aucun autre. Je voudrais arriver à cette heure de nuit où tu auras successivement ouvert puis fermé bien des livres cherchant dans chacun d’eux plus qu’il ne t’avait encore révélé ; où tu attends encore ; où ta ferveur va devenir tristesse, de ne pas se sentir soutenue. Je n’écris que pour toi ; je ne t’écris que pour ces heures. Je voudrais écrire tel livre d’où toute pensée, toute émotion personnelle te semblât absente, où tu croirais ne voir que la projection de ta propre ferveur : Je voudrais m’approcher de toi et que tu m’aimes.” Les Nourritures Terrestres, André Gide

Quand l’eau se retire sur la plage, juste avant le tsunami, qu’est-ce qu’on s’emmerde. entendu dans un CHU en mars 2020

• more on the sublime, childlike thrill of catching a wave—the momentary mastering of a frightening thing, the drop down its face and the swoop along its length to keep ahead of the white water. And about the beauty of the shoreline when seen from a buoyant lump of foam and fibreglass, while you get your breath back and wait for the next wave to come. https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2010/07/08/rolling-and-riding

But man is surfing honest. From shameful moments like blowing a wave or getting caught inside to triumphs like head dip or a committed turn, playing in the ocean is fun. It’s the sun, the saltwater, and big plans of enjoying all of it. Most people haven’t done it and never will. We do. Some of us often. For that, we’re very lucky. https://www.theinertia.com/surf/in-times-of-crisis-we-surf/ Zach Weisberg

Certes, mes deux amis défendaient leurs choix, n’hésitaient pas à porter le fer de la parole quand il le fallait dans les discussions de tard le soir mais l’anatheme ou la fatwa ne figuraient pas au cataologue de leurs armes favorites. Ils préféraient le tire-bouchon. Le vin et moi - Jacques Dupont

It is one thing to be cosmetically defiant of authority by wearing unconventional clothes - what social scientists and economists call “cheap signaling” - and another to prove willingness to translate belief into action. The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Une oeuvre de génie - ou si l’on veut - un oeuvre d’âme - où tout est bien vu, bien observé, bien compris, bien imaginé - est toujours très bien executée, quand elle l’est suffisamment - Ensuite - qu’il y a une grande différence entre en morceau fait et un morceau fini - qu’en général ce qui est fait n’est pas fini, et qu’une chose très finie peut n’être pas faite du tout - que la valeur d’une touche spirituelle, immportante et bien placée est énorme… Salon de 1845 - Critique d’Art - Baudelaire. La pleïade vol2 p390

Utaaq, mon maître chaman, me répétait: “Un homme intelligent ne pose pas de questions qui sont sans réponse”. Oser, Résister. Jean Mallaurie

Rien n’est pire, dans ces disciplines fragiles que sont les sciences humaines, que le consensus. Oser, Résister. Jean Mallaurie

Cette foi trop grande dans le raisonnement, qui conduit un physiologiste à une fausse simplification des choses, tient d’une part à l’ignorance de la science dont il parle, et d’autre part à l’absence du sentiment de complexité des phénomènes naturels. Introduction à la Médecine expérimentale Claude Bernard 1865

Je critique ce qu’il est aisé de critiquer: l’anthropologie de tradition américaine ou anglaise ne cite que des travaux publiés dans leur langue. Or il est impossible de réféchir sur les grands courants de la comédie humaine sans se référer à Goethe, Kant, Hume, Rousseau, Balzac, Zola, Melville, Dostoïevski, Kierkegaard… Oser, Résister. Jean Mallaurie

Regardant avec émotion en direction des lointaines forêts de sa terre natale, il dit “Shouwe t-maten ya” (“la nostalgie est en train de me tuer”). […] La liberté est précieuse aux hommes blancs. Pour les vagabonds indomptés de la nature, elle est une absolue nécessité. Aux confins de la Terre. Une Vie en Terre de Feu. Lucas Bridges

MUSICIEN.- L’amour c’est une question de nez, ça te rentre par la narine, ça remonte le long de la cloison et ça vient se loger tout là-haut, dans la tête et ça te fait exploser la tête, moi les filles, c’est terminé, le désert, les nanas, c’est terminé, juste un petit peu de musique à haute dose, un petit peu de musique le matin, un peu le midi, un peu le soir… Bal-trap Xavier Durringer

He could not guess Yẹmi’s opinion. Sometimes, his friend’s mind seemed a shallow pond filled with small fish and microscopic impressions. Other times, his pronouncements were as deep as an oracle’s. Welcome To Lagos - Chibundu Onuzo

He was too smart and too foolish for Lagos Welcome To Lagos - Chibundu Onuzo

Often, I would like to be wrong, but so far it has never happened. Benito Mussolini to a journalist

Particle Physics: the attempt to determine the beautiful truth underlying reality by smashing little bits of it as hard as possible. Science Abrigded Beyond the Point of Usefulness

Aristotle said a bunch of stuff that was wrong. Galileo and Newton fixed things up. Then Einsten broke everything again. Now, we’ve basically got it all worked out, except for small stuff, big stuff, hot stuff, cold stuff, fast stuff, heavy stuff, dark stuff, turbulence, and the concept of time. Science Abrigded Beyond the Point of Usefulness

There are days when I sit down in the morning with my cup of coffee, I fall through the page and I wake up and it’s dark outside and my coffee is still next to me, it’s ice cold and I’ve just spent the day in Westeros. George R.R. Martin - Interview in the Guardian

I asked Judea Pearl, father of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, why he was working for reconciliation between Jews and Muslims, he replied with heartbreaking lucidity, “Hate killed my son. Therefore I am determined to fight hate.” Jonathan Sacks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_Pearl

I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar. Winston Churchill

Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in. Anthem - Leonard Cohen

I do not see how the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission. We are a university, not a bathhouse. Hilbert

Mathematics is seeing students damaged by the cult of the genius. The genius cult tells students it’s not worth doing mathematics unless you’re the best at mathematics, because those special fews are the only ones whose contribution matter. We don’t treat any other subject that way ! How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking - Jordan Ellenberg

If you never miss the plane, you spend too much time in airports. George Stigler

If gambling is exciting, you’re doing it wrong. James Harvey

Mathematics is filled with ideas that feel obvious now- that negative quantities can be added and subtracted, that you can usefully represent points in a plane by pair of numbers, that probabilities of uncertain events can be mathematically described and manipulated- but are in fact not obvious at all. If they were, they would not have arrived so late in the history of human thought. How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking - Jordan Ellenberg

Don’t talk about percentages of numbers when the numbers might be negative. How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking - Jordan Ellenberg

As a mode of religious inquiry, this seems strange at first. Is the God of the Old Testament really the kind of deity who signals his presence by showing up in a word search? In the Torah, when God wants you to know he’s there, you know - ninety year old women get pregnant, bushes catch fire and talk, dinner falls from the sky. How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking - Jordan Ellenberg

“All you care about is finding a perfect wave or something. I mean, what will you do if you find it ? Ride it five or six times and then what ?” I was a good question. We could only hope that at some point we’d be forced to answer it. Barbarian Days, John Finnegan

My regular slog through the chlorinated cross-chop of the water aerobics class is all that stands between me and a longboard-only existence. Barbarian Days, John Finnegan

He had been diving and escaping the unimaginable just as narrowly as I did. His leash had not broken, however; he was reeling in his board. As he did so, he turned to me with a manic look in his eyes and yelled “This is great!”. It could have been worst. He could have yelled “This is interesting !”. Barbarian Days, John Finnegan

Better to follow the deeply unsexy advice you’re probably sick of hearing, the “eat your vegetables and take the stairs” of financial planning: instead of hunting for a magic system or an advisor whith a golden touch, put your money in a big dull low-fee index fund and forget about it. How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking - Jordan Ellenberg

I would highly recommend having written a book. I can’t in good conscience recommend writing one, though. Jake VanderPlas @jakevdp. twitter

Economics is a discipline for quiet times. The profession, it turns out, … has no grip on understanding how the abnormal grows out of the normal and what happens next, its practitioners like weather forecasters who don’t understand storms. The Observer, London - Will Hunton

The railroad come-ons painted Texas as a paradise of benign weather, when in fact hurricanes scoured its coast, plumes of hot wind baked apples in trees, and “blue northers” could drop the temperature fifty degrees in a matter of minutes. Isaac’s storm - Erik Larson

Keep firmly in mind that there was a time when you didn’t understand any of this either. Recapitulate the first steps that led you from ignorance to knowledge. Never forget that native interlligence is widely distributed in our species. Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

In theological discussion with religious leaders, I often ask what their response would be if a central tenet of their faith were disproved by science. When I put this question to the current, Fourteenth, Dalaï Lama, he unhesitatingly replied as no conservative or fundamentalist religious leaders do: in such a case, he said, Tibetan Buddhism would have to change. Even, I asked, if it’s a really central tenet, like (I searched for an example) reincarnation? Even then, he answered. However, he added with a twinkle, it’s going to be hard to disprove reincarnation. Plainly, the Dalaï Lama is right. Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re not longer interested in finding out the truth. Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims than cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

When I was a boy, our house was filled with monsters. They lived in the closets, under the beds, in the attic, in the basement, and - when it was dark - just about everywhere. This book is dedicated to my father, who kept me safe from all of them. Gary Larson (American cartoonist)

The extraterrestrials are very advanced, remember. So I ask things like, ‘Please provide a short proof of the Fermat theorem’. Or the Goldback conjecture. And then I have to explain what these are because extraterrestrials will not call it Fermat’s Last theorem. So I write out the simple equation with the exponents. I never get an answer. On the other hand, if I ask something like ‘Should we be good?’, I almost always get an answer. Anything vague, especially involving some conventional moral judgment, these aliens are extremely happy to respond to. But on anything specific, where there is a chance to find out if they actually know anything beyond what most humans know, there is only silence. Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interset, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvelous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)

Forget for a while all your knowledge of physics… Remove from your mind all objections that may occur… Never reason for six weeks… Be very credulous, be very persevering; reject all past experience, and do not listen to reason. Oh, yes, a final piece of advice: ‘Never magnetize before inquisitive persons’. Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Honest religion, more familiar than its critics with the distortions ans absurdities perpretated in its name, has an active interest in encouraging a healthy skepticism for its own purposes… There is the possibility for religion and science to forge a potent partnership against pseudo-science. Strangely, I think it would soon be engaged also in opposing pseudo-religion. Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Soyez beau tant que vous voulez, et montrez vous original; que chez vous l’imagination se déploie avec tout son cortège de raison, d’esprit, de sentiment, de passion; mais, prenez-y bien garde, jamais sans un grain de folie. Wolfgang von Goethe - Faust

Violent blood was in them all, perilously close to the surface, lurking just beneath the kindly courteous exteriors. Margaret Mitchell - Gone With the Wind

Peter sucked in his breath and his wrinkled brow showed deep furrows but he kept his eyes straight ahead. He had never had the term “nigger” applied to him by a white person in all his life. By other negroes, yes. But never by a white person. And to be called untrustworthy and an “old pet,” he, Peter, who had been the dignified mainstay of the Hamilton family for years! Margaret Mitchell - Gone With the Wind

“All wars are sacred,” he said. “To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? Gone with the wind (Margaret Mitchell)

We should have paid heed to cynics like Butler who knew, instead of statesmen who felt — and talked. Gone with the wind (Margaret Mitchell)

“Money can’t buy everything.” “Someone must have told you that. You’d never think of such a platitude all by yourself. What can’t it buy?” “Oh, well, I don’t know — not happiness or love, anyway.” “Generally it can. And when it can’t it can buy some of the most remarkable substitutes.” Gone with the wind (Margaret Mitchell)

The truth is, that a desperado and a man who sets some value on his life do not meet on even terms. The Art of War (Sun Tzu)

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. The Art of War (Sun Tzu)

Collectibles were crucial in making these kinds of transactions possible for the first time. Collectibles augmented our large brains and language as solutions to the Prisoner’s Dilemma that keeps almost all animals from cooperating via delayed reciprocation with nonkin. Foundations of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Programming for Beginners - Chris Dannen (Chris Dannen)

Aristotle wrote, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fxck (Mark Manson)

As Freud once said, “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fxck (Mark Manson)

This wealth was coming out of people’s pockets. For hedge funds, the smuggest of the players on Wall Street, this was “dumb money.” Other People’s Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People? (John Kay)

Dès lors que le taux de rendement du capital dépasse durablement le taux de croissance de la production et du revenu, ce qui était le cas jusqu’au XIXe siècle et risque fort de redevenir la norme au XXIe siècle, le capitalisme produit mécaniquement des inégalités insoutenables, arbitraires, remettant radicalement en cause les valeurs méritocratiques sur lesquelles se fondent nos sociétés démocratiques. Le capital au XXIe siècle (Thomas Piketty)

When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing. When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)

Cadaver dissection is a medical rite of passage and a trespass on the sacrosanct, engendering a legion of feelings: from revulsion, exhilaration, nausea, frustration, and awe to, as time passes, the mere tedium of academic exercise. Everything teeters between pathos and bathos: here you are, violating society’s most fundamental taboos, and yet formaldehyde is a powerful appetite stimulant, so you also crave a burrito. When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)

“As simple as that? You didn’t use magic?” “Only common sense. It’s a lot more reliable in the long run.” Mort (Terry Pratchett)

En azarosos y desesperados procesos de destilación, fundida con los siete metales planetarios, trabajada con el mercurio hermético y el vitriolo de Chipre, y vuelta a cocer en manteca de cerdo a falta de aceite de rábano, la preciosa herencia de Úrsula quedó reducida a un chicharrón carbonizado que no pudo ser desprendido del fondo del caldero. Cien años de soledad (García Márquez)

Another said, “It was good that the bomb dropped on Urakami. If it had dropped on people without faith, they could not have borne the burden.” Nagasaki : Life After Nuclear War (Susan Southard)

Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth. An Enemy of the People, 1882 - Henrik Ibsen

History will judge whether Greenspan was the man who made millions of Americans rich – or the man who could not bear to tell them they had only imagined it. The Truth about Markets, 2003, pp. 5–6 (John Kay)

‘data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom’ American computer scientist Clifford Stoll

The Gaussian copula – the ‘formula that killed Wall Street’ – was a method of calculating how the correlation between defaults on the components of an asset-backed security determined its overall default probability. Other People’s Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People? (John Kay)

Michel Albert, a French economist turned insurance company boss, offered an entertaining account of the development of the global insurance market in the eighteenth century. He explained how, in Edward Lloyd’s coffee house in London, leisured English gentlemen gathered to gamble on the fate of ships at sea. The value of these positions ebbed and flowed with the tides; their fortunes were buffeted by the weather. A thousand miles away, Swiss villagers came together to agree that, if a cow died, they would take collective responsibility for replacing it. The English traded risks; the Swiss mutualised them.12 The Swiss practised Gemeinschaft; the English, not knowing the meaning of Gesellschaft, equated it with wagering. The elision would have profound consequences. Other People’s Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People? (John Kay)

Every industry I have ever dealt with believes its characteristics are unique, and there is something in this, although never as much as those who work in them think. Other People’s Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People? (John Kay)_

I can predict the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of crowds. Isaac Newton

The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own … Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776 Other People’s Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People? (John Kay)

“Then you don’t remember a world without robots. There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?” I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)

They laugh at this, the idea that one might keep herds of friendly deer or elk that walk happily to their slaughter whenever it’s time for the human to eat meat. Some ask openly if there aren’t consequences of a life so easy to live. The question fascinates me. The Orenda Joseph Boyden (Joseph Boyden)

He speaks as if his mouth is full of birchbark, and his vocabulary is less than a child’s, but I only need remind the ones who laugh the loudest to try and speak even a few words of the Crow’s tongue to see how gifted this one truly is. The Orenda Joseph Boyden (Joseph Boyden)

‘Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic, and a dyslexic.’ ‘I give.’ ‘You get somebody who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there’s a dog.’ Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)

I don’t do it for political leaders, I don’t do it for unions, I don’t do it for organizations, I do it for music. We’ve been offered three or four times to play for the big communist party picnic in France, which is the big social event that they have every summer, and they offer a lot of money. I don’t want to work for communists. Fuck the communists. I don’t like those people. I do my music for people who like music. Frank Zappa

Il m’a souvent paru qu’à partir d’un certain degré de sérieux, de gravité, un homme, dans la vie, est un infirme, on a toujours envie de l’aider à traverser la rue. Romain Gary - Les Racines du Ciel

Quand vous n’en pouvez plus, faites comme moi: pensez à des troupeaux d’éléphants en liberté en train de courir vers l’Afrique, des centaines et des centaines de bêtes magnifiques auxquelles rien ne résiste, pas même un mur,pas même un barbelé, qui foncent à travers les espaces ouverts et qui cassent tout sur leur passage, qui renversent tout et tant qu’ils sont vivants, rien ne peut les arrêter- la liberté quoi! Romain Gary - Les Racines du Ciel

Simpson’s Paradox. Girls gone average. Statistics gone wild. http://vudlab.com/simpsons/

Rather, the idea is that there are some moments, not all of them by any means, but there are some moments; and in the shadows of these moments we will find out what is most important in our lives. Mark Rowlands - The Philosopher and the Wolf

Even if you’re faced with a dreadful airway in a pre-hospital environment your concerned face should be no more severe than if you’re taking off the ferring off a bike in a workshop. Because you have to bring some element of calm and control in these situations. There is nothing to be gained by panicking and flapping about. So we know what this man needs, he needs an RSI (rapid sequence intubation). We’ve got a system to do that, we’ve got a team that can deliver it, so there’s no need for concern here. Or so I told myself. Doctor John Hinds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsZBXlTHPCg&authuser=0

When Brenin was around two months old… Rugger [a pit bull] lost his temper, grabbed Brenin by the neck and pinned him to the ground. Most puppies would have screeched out in shock and fear. Brenin growled. This was not the growl of a puppy, but a deep and calm and sonorous growl that belied his tender age. That is strength. And that is what I have always tried to carry around with me, and I hope I always will. Watching Brenin, I realised that we are at our best when death is leaning over our shoulder but we can say in this moment, I feel good and strong. In the end, time will take our strength. But it can never take from us who we were in our best moments. Mark Rowlands - The Philosopher and the Wolf

[…] the idea has spread that people and groups have a right not to be offended. This may sound innocuous. Politeness is a virtue, after all. But if I have a right not to be offended, that means someone must police what you say about me, or about the things I hold dear, such as my ethnic group, religion, or even political beliefs. Since offense is subjective, the power to police it is both vast and arbitrary. The Economist - Free Speech Under Attack - June 4th 2016

Il n’y a qu’un seul problème philosophique vraiment sérieux, c’est le suicide. Albert Camus - Le Mythe de Sysiphe

César avait raison de préférer la première place dans un village à la seconde à Rome. Non par ambition, ou par vaine gloire, mais parce-que l’homme placé an second n’a le choix qu’entre les dangers de l’obéissance, ceux de la révolte et ceux, plus graves, du compromis. Marguerite Yourcenar - Les mémoires d’Hadrien

Je hais les cyniques! Tous ceux qui disent “le monde est laid, rendons-le encore plus laid en attendant l’apocalypse”. Les cyniques ne se mouillent jamais, ils distribuent les bons et les mauvais points. Moi, je préfère être violent que cynique. Je préfère être celui qui frappe plutôt que celui qui se réjouit de me voir frapper. Tonino Benaquista - Un Contrat

In the words of computer scientist Edsger Dijkstro, “the question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim”. Jerry Kaplan - Humans need not apply

On est ici sur les confins de la Normandie, de la Picardie et de l’île de France, contrée bâtarde où le language est sans accentuation, comme le paysage sans caractère. Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary

I did not seek American citizenship and was happy to have a green card to be accounted as “resident alien”. This accorded to how I felt, at least for much of the time - a friendly, observant alien noting everything around me but without civic responsibilities such as voting or jury duty or need to affiliate myself with the country’s policies or politics. I often felt (as Temple Grandin said of herself), that I was an anthropologist on Mars. Oliver Sacks - A Life

Categorization is the main task of the brain, and constant signaling allows the brain to categorize its own categorizations, to re-categorize these, and so on. Such a process is the beginning of an enormous upward path enabling ever higher levels of thought and consciousness. Oliver Sacks - A Life

The States is for you. Nobody will push you around. If you’re good, you go up. If you’re phony, they’ll soon catch on. Oliver Sacks - A Life

When I was 12, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report: “Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far”, and this was often the case. Oliver Sacks - A Life

The little boy in him was crestfallen that he wasn’t going on the adventure. Then he reminded himself that he was already part of the biggest adventure ever, and that, so far, it had been altogether miserable. Blaine Harden - Escape From Camp 14

There is no “human right issue” in this country, as everyone leads the most dignified and happy life. North Korean News Agency - 6-MAR-2009

The French Foreign Legion was participating in what might be the last battle ever fought. But the television news cameras couldn’t get anywhere near the action, so the coverage mostly consisted of journalists interviewing each others about how little they knew. Neil Stephenson - Seveneves

He’ll go back to his usual grousing about how his taxes are too high and the federal government needs to be scaled back to a size where he can personally stomp it to death with steel-toed boots. Neil Stephenson - Seveneves

Out East, in Cambridge MA, a molecular geneticist makes a novel organism from scratch, one with its own genetic code. It won’t be dangerous, a panel of scientists says, unless it escapes the lab. Everything gets loose, a panel of historians says. Life is an escaped experiment, say the artists, and the only real safety is death. Richard Powers - Orfeo

Let’s build something. Something good. [to his daughter:] Richard Powers - Orfeo

Little girl, anywhere, without an audience: so long as no one listens, you’re better than safe: you’re free. Richard Powers - Orfeo

Perdre un livret, c’est un accident, en égarer plusieurs, c’est le bordel, c’est plus militaire, ça passera mieux. Pierre Lemaître - Au revoir là-haut

Je croirai à cette assimilation de l’amour aux joies purement physiques (à supposer qu’il en existe de telles) le jour ou j’aurais vu un gourmet sangloter de délices devant son mets favori, comme un amant sur une jeune épaule. De tous nos jeux, c’est le seul qui risque de bouleverser l’âme, le seul aussi ou le joueur s’abandonne nécessairement au délire du corps. Il n’est pas indispensable que le buveur abdique sa raison, mais l’amant qui garde la sienne n’obéit pas jusqu’au bout à son dieu. Marguerite Yourcenar - Mémoires d’Hadrien

[About truly autonomous robots] We’ll know they exist when rather than going to work, they’ll go to the beach instead. Software Engineer quoted by John Markoff - Machines of Loving Grace

I do not believe that my father was (or ever could have been) such a Poet as I shall be an Analyst; for with me the two go together indissolubly. Ada Lovelace

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. Woody Allen

We all know what to do; we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it. Jean-Claude Juncker - Luxembourg Prime Minister

[What it looks like when racism is enshrined in the law] We hold as undeniable truth that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the write race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable. That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian Nation, while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States. Declaration of the Causes Which Impel the State of Texas to Secede From the Federal Union - 1861

Kids today. So spoiled by these fast computers and fancy dynamic languages. Write first, ship second, debug third (if ever). In my day we had discipline. Discipline I say! We had to write programs by hand, on paper, and feed them on puchcards. And we liked it ! Mark Pilgrim - Dive Into Python

[…] in Python we write programs that do things with stuff* […] Pardon our formality, we’re computer scientists Mark Lutz and David Asher - Learning Python

I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me. Isaac Newton

Concentric geometries of transparency slightly jogged sink through algebras of proud inwardlyness to collide spirally with iron arithmetics. E.E. Cummings

Si je suis descendu, je ne regretterai absolument rien. La termitière future m’épouvante. Et je hais leur vertu de robots. Moi, j’étais fait pour être jardinier. Antoine de St Exupéry - lettre a Pierre Dallaz

A bird cannot carry its cage when it flies. Mis Xue

It’s hell writing, but it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having written. Robert Hass (poet)

I had been meaning to shoot something while swinging in the hammock - that would be proper living - but had not yet been successful. Philippe Meyer - The Son

His fame seemed to him a failure of perception on the part of others. He had avoided what he regarded as some obvious errors of life, such as politics and golf. Richard Flanagan - The Narrow Road to the Deep North

I have never for one instant felt pious, yet Don Peppino’s words resounded with something beyond the religious. Roberto Saviano - Gomorrah

A camorrista knows to take care of his loyal enemies, who are always more valuable than his false friends. Roberto Saviano - Gomorrah

It is known that Alexander the Great, on his last night of mortal life, crawled from his palace and tried to slip into the Euphrates, knowing that if his body disappeared, his people would assume he had ascended to heaven as a god. His wife stopped him at the water’s edge. She dragged him home to die mortal. And people ask me why I didn’t remarry. Philippe Meyer - The Son

As a creator, I want to bend and twist the grammar of my world-making, I want crookedness and deformation, I want to introduce errors that explode into the pleasure of surprise. In art, a regularity of form is essential, but determinism is boring. Vikram Chandra - Geek Sublime : The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty

But if you ask me whether a whiff of consciousness is enough to qualify for murder, I say tonight at dinner you’ll eat a soul much larger than you just killed at the operating table. Giulio Tononi - Phi

If you are going to kill the animal, it seems only polite to use the whole thing. Fergus Henderson, of London’s beloved piggy restaurant, St John’s

Il s’agit pour quelques-uns de faire consciemment ce que tous font inconsciemment. Feuillet de présentation du Collège de Pataphysique

Lean back under a tree, put your arms behind your head, wonder at the pass we’ve come to, smile and remember that the beginnings and ends of man’s every great enterprise are untidy. Of Time, Work and Leisure - de Grazia

Macbeth’s self justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they lacked ideology. Alexandre Soljenitsyne

The moral of that is - ‘Be what you would seem to be’ - or, if you’d like it put more simply - ‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared them to be otherwise’ Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Caroll

A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship. Marcus Zusak, The Book Thief

Shooting skeet eight hours a month was an excellent training for them. It trained them to shoot skeet. Joseph Heller, Catch 22

You know what I mean? You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Yossarian knew what he meant. “That’s not what I meant”, Doc Daneeka said, as Yossarian began scratching his back. Joseph Heller, Catch 22

Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch 22 and let out a respectful whistle. “That’s some catch, that catch 22” he observed. Joseph Heller, Catch 22.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Ralph Waldo Emerson

It has not yet become obvious to me that there is no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem. Richard Feynman, about quantum physics - Speech at MIT in 1981

Peter Landsberg wrote its obituary this way: “Maxwell’s demon died at the age of 62 (when a paper by Leó Szilárd appeared), but it continues to haunt the castles of physics as a restless and lovable poltergeist”. James Gleick - The Information

On two occasions I have been asked “Pray Mr Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?”. In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. James Gleick - The Information

The Muses are the daughters of Mnemosyne. James Gleick - The Information

The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning. Claude Shannon - A Mathematical Theory of Communication

None have been so blessed with raw materials. We had investment bankers wolfing down Milk Bones and sprinting through Midtown Manhattan, bearing last-minute bids. We had a CEO whose dog rated a corporate jet and whose motto was “a few millions are lost in the sands of time”. We are forever grateful to them. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Bryan Burrough & John Helyar - Barbarians at the Gate

CEOs learned two things from LBOs, says Dick Beattie, who remained in the midst of major deals through the 90s. First the way to build significant wealth was through equity ownership, not salary and bonuses, and second, you didn’t need to do any LBO to build equity. You could give yourself stock options. Bryan Burrough & John Helyar - Barbarians at the Gate

Any Neanderthal can go in there and whack away and cut costs, show me a guy that can spend money. Ross Johnson - RJR Nabisco Executive

The Nobel Prize winning French biologist Jacques Monod went so far as to define a cornerstone of modern biology as “the systematic or axiomatic denial that scientific knowledge can be obtained on the basis of theories that involve, explicitly or not a theological principle”. Brian Cox - The Quantum Universe

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have told me faster horses. Henri Ford - from dubious sources, most likely inaccurate

A poet once said “the whole universe is in a glass of wine”. We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the Earth’s rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe’s age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation? Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as Louis Pasteur did, the course of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it? In our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all ! Richard Feynman - Lectures on Physics

Elle était tombée à genoux, la tête sur son lit, les mains jointes sur la tête, pleine d’anxiété et de frémissement, et quoique égyptienne, idolâtre et païenne, elle s’était mise à demander avec sanglots grâce au bon Dieu chrétien et à prier Notre-Dame son hôtesse. Car, ne crût-on à rien, il y a des moments dans la vie où l’on est toujours de la religion du temple qu’on a sous la main. Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris

Congress on strike. So Fox News is appalled to discover a slacker who is taking government benefits and perfectly comfortable about doing nothing to earn them (“Pincer movement”, September 28th). I know where it can find 535 more. Patrick Leach, Missouri City, TX, TE courrier des lecteurs

Sauvée, sauvée se réjouissait Iouri Andréiévitch, sans comprendre ce que disait l’infirmière ni pourquoi elle paraissait l’associer à ce qui venait de s’accomplir. Y était-il en effet pour quelque-chose ? Père-fils, il ne voyait sujet d’orgueil dans ce don gratuit de la paternité. Cette filiation qui lui tombait du ciel le laissait froid. Tout cela restait extérieur à sa conscience. Une seule chose comptait: Tonia, Tonia qui avait été exposée à un danger de mort et qui y avait heureusement échappé. Le Docteur Jivago, Boris Pasternak

Soljenitsyne l’a noté: un des aspects les plus pernicieux du système soviétique, c’est qu’à moins d’être un martyr on ne pouvait pas être honnête. S’ils n’étaient pas complètement abrutis ou cyniques, les officiels avaient honte de ce qu’ils faisaient, honte de ce qu’ils étaient. Emmanuel Carrère - Limonov

Il ne faut pas seulement executer des coupables, l’exécution des innocents impressionne davantage. Krylenko, commissaire à la justive, URSS

I recalled my father-in-law’s aphorism “to fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom” and I pretended to extract a speck from my eye. David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Messieurs, il y trois choses qui sont à Dieu et qui n’appartiennent pas à l’homme: l’irrévocable, l’irréparable, l’indissoluble. Malheur à l’homme s’il les introduit dans ses lois. Tôt ou tard elles font plier la société sous leurs poids, elles dérangent l’équilibre nécessaire des lois et des moeurs, elles ôtent à la justice humaine ses proportions; et alors il arrive ceci, réfléchissez-y messieurs, que la loi épouvante la conscience… Victor Hugo, Discours devant l’Assemblée constituante, 15 septembre 1848

Those who can’t discipline themselves will quickly find somebody else doing it for them. Nietzche ?

Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit them, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. John Maynard Keynes

With four parameters I can fit an elephant. And with five I can make him wiggle his trunk. Jogn Van Neumann - Mathematicien

Men Wanted, for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success. Ernest Shackleton - Antarctica Ad - Dubious sources, most likely inaccurate

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. Douglas Adams - Hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy

More generally, people enjoy and feel empowered by the confidence, however vague, that they have “history on their side”. This concept was a typical nineteenth century successor to the earlier assurance, much sought after by all combatants, that “God was on their side”. Nobody suggested, as far as I am aware, that this assurance would weakens anyone fighting spirit. Albert O. Hirschman - The Rethoric of Reaction (1991)

From these common exaggerations and illusions of reactive and progressive rhetoric it is possible to derive, in contrast to both, two ingredients of what might be called a “mature position”: (1) there are dangers and risks in both action and inaction. The risks of both should be canvassed, assessed, and guarded against to the extent possible. (2) The baneful consequences of either action or inaction can never be known with the certainty affected by the two types of alarm sounding Cassandras with whom we have become acquainted. When it comes to forecasts of impending mishaps or disasters, it is well to remember the saying “le pire n’est pas toujours sûr”. Albert O. Hirschman - The Rethoric of Reaction (1991)

Just once in a while one would like to see them a little less disabused and bitter [ie the conservatives], with perhaps a dash of that naiveté they are so bent on denouncing, with some openness to the unexpected, the possible. Albert O. Hirschman - The Rethoric of Reaction (1991)

What is the difference between capitalism and socialism ? In capitalism man exploits man. In socialism, it’s the other way around. Albert O. Hirschman - The Rethoric of Reaction (1991)

[…] reactionaries are not likely to launch an all-out attach on that objective. Rather, they will endorse it, sincerely or otherwise, but then attempt to demonstrate that the action proposed or undertaken is ill-conceived; indeed, they will most typically urge that this action will produce, via a chain of unintended consequences, the exact contrary of the objective being proclaimed and pursued. Albert O. Hirschman - The Rethoric of Reaction (1991)

Shared hatred makes for strange bedfellows. Albert O. Hirschman - The Rethoric of Reaction (1991)

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. They forge their fetters. Burke - Open Letter (1791)

Worshiping a dictator is such a pain in the ass. Chinua Achebe - Anthills of the Savannah

Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men’s minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from the wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theatre, because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion. Francis Bacon - Novum Organum (1620)

Take care to look wisdom in every feature; speak but little, and let it be impossible that little should be understood; let every hint, every shrug be carefully calculated to give the hearers a wonderful opinion of your learning and experience. In your half-heard and mysterious conversation with your medical inferior, do not forget to drop a few observations upon “the animal oeconomy”, “circulation of the blood”, “acrimony”, “the non-naturals”, “stricture upon the parts”, “acute pain”, “inflammatory heat”, “nervous irritability”, and those technical traps that fascinate the hearers, and renders the patient yours adlibitum. William Taplin - AEsculapian Labyrinth

• [B] ma musique préférée c’est la musique de jazz. Je suis un forcené de la musique de jazz.
• […]
• [I] mais c’est assez curieux parcequ’il y a très peu de jazz dans votre musique.
• [B] mais si il y en a énormément. Il faut demander ça aux musiciens ils vous le diront.
• […]
• [I] pardonnez-moi d’être un peu effronté, mais je ne suis pas tout à fait d’accord avec cette analyse
• [B] et bien vous avez tort. C’est parce que vous ne conaissez pas bien le jazz. Certainement, vous avez une idée vague du jazz et vous n’en connaissez pas les racines. C’était ça le jazz à l’origine.
• […] A propos de Django et Grappelli et la Marseillaise
• [B] Ils ont fait à Londres un enregistrement qui a fait hurler naturellement les gens. Les gens ils gueulent tout le temps, sauf pour les bonnes raisons d’ailleurs. Ils ont gueulé parceque les autres avaient de nouveau “tourné en dérision” la Marseillaise.
• […]
• [B] Je me suis engagé dans la plupart de mes chansons, mais les connards ne s’en sont pas aperçus.
• […]
• [B] Je fais de la propagande de contrebande. George Brassens - Interview

In an age when American primaries can be won only by appealing to the basest ignorant prejudices, I fail to understand how the charge of being a flip-flopper can be considered a bad thing. Grant Lewis - TE courrier des lecteurs 2012

As a veteran surfer and Economist reader, I felt compelled to answer your request for “more on the sublime, child-like thrill of catching a wave” (“Rolling and riding”, July 10th). It’s simple: the joy of surfing a wave thrown up by Mother Nature’s raw power surely beats any pleasure one gets from hitting a small white ball around a green into holes with colleagues you’d rather not spend your Sundays with. Tim Hall, Tokyo - TE courrier des lecteurs 2011

Je sus rompre devant cette autorité américaine comme j’avais su rompre devant tant d’autres autorités, en lui présentant donc ma verge d’abord, et puis mon derrière, par suite d’un demi-tour preste, le tout accompagné du salut militaire. Céline - Le Voyage au Bout de la Nuit

Le puritanisme anglo-saxon nous déssèche chaque mois davantage, il a déjà réduit à à peu près rien la gaudriole impromptue des arrières-boutiques. Céline - Le Voyage au Bout de la Nuit

Look for the sucker and if you can’t see one, get up and leave, ‘cause the sucker is you. Thomas Amarillo “Slim” - Poker Player - The Economist

I am no more surprised or distressed at the limitation of science when faced with this great problem of creation than I am at the limitation of the spectroscope in describing the radiance of a sunset or at the theory of counterpoint in describing the beauty of a fugue. Bernard Lovell - The Economist

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. Richard Feynman - Documentaire BBC sur l’enquête après Challenger 6

Questionable management has sometimes led to bizarre engineering. Richard Feynman - Documentaire BBC sur l’enquête après Challenger 6

Quand je suis arrivé aux Etats-Unis, à la douane, ils m’ont même demandé si j’avais dédicacé mon livre à El Chapo Guzman. Incroyable ! Si la présence de mon livre dans sa planque suscite tant d’étonnement, c’est parce qu’on oublie souvent que les chefs mafieux ne sont pas des crétins analphabètes mais des hommes d’affaires et d’expérience qui lisent, approfondissent, analysent le monde qui les entoure et qu’ils se mesurent à l’image que le monde leur renvoie d’eux-mêmes. La plus grande erreur consiste à ne voir en eux que des machines de guerre, ou à les juger sur des détails qui les rendent pittoresques. Ce faisant, on ne mesure pas leur capacité d’agir, d’influencer le monde et de le modifier. Roberto Saviano, dans un article du Monde le 28 février 2016

Qu’un vaincu de Paris, qu’un homme de la réunion dite Commune, que Paris a fort peu élue et que, pour ma part, je n’ai jamais approuvée, qu’un de ces hommes, fût-il mon ennemi personnel, surtout s’il est mon ennemi personnel, frappe à ma porte, j’ouvre. Il est dans ma maison. Il est inviolable. Victor Hugo, dans l’Indépendance Belge