You Can Do It With Either Hand

I made a fist of my right hand -- you can do it with either hand, by the way -- and put my arms around her.

-- Dr Henry J Heimlich, 96, on using the Heimlich maneuver to save an 87-year-old woman who was choking at their senior residence community in Cincinnati, New York Times, 28 May 2016

Perspective

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

-- Alan Kay (17 May 1940 -), computer scientist

Not Equal

All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

-- Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001), English author and satirist, The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Right At The Top

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style.

-- Fred Astaire (1899-1987), dancer, actor, singer, musician, and choreographer, in The Notorious Landlady, written by Blake Edwards and Larry Gelbart (1962)

RIP Morley Safer

It makes me uneasy.  It is not natural to be talking to a piece of machinery.  But the money is very good.

-- Morley Safer (8 November 1931 - 19 May 2016), CBS television correspondent and mainstay of the network's newsmagazine "60 Minutes" for almost five decades, in a recent interview

Faced With The Prospect

Obituaries & In Memoriam

NOLAND, MARY ANNE

NOLAND, Mary Anne Alfriend.  Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God on Sunday, May 15, 2016

-- Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond, VA, 17 May 2016


http://www.richmond.com/obituaries/article_c21b60bc-1153-5abd-b3c8-268cfd32eb57.html

The Last Thing

The last thing a parent teaches a child is how to die.

-- John DeVore, The Moth podcast, May 2016

All Will Be Lost

We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

-- Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (1889-1977), English comic actor and filmmaker, in The Great Dictator (1940)

Easier Than You Think

It's far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant gratification.

-- Anonymous Congressman X, allegedly a sitting congressman, in The Confessions of Congressman X (2016)

Because America

We are embarking on what should be the most patriotic summer that this generation has ever seen, with Copa America Centenario being held on U.S. soil for the first time, Team USA competing at the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

-- Budweiser Vice President Ricardo Marques, announcing that Budweiser is renaming its beer "America" through the presidential election in November, 9 May 2013

A Londoner

I'm a Londoner, I'm European, I'm British, I'm English, I'm of Islamic faith, of Asian origin, of Pakistani heritage, a dad, a husband.

-- Newly-elected London Mayor Sadiq Khan, New York Times, 30 April 2016

It Will Take Them

There are certainly areas within the city which have not been burned, but this fire will look for them, and it will take them.

-- Darby Allen, a regional fire chief in Alberta, Canada, on a rampaging wildfire that forced the evacuation of all 88,000 residents of Fort McMurray, Canada, New York Times, 5 May 2016

The Years Thunder By

The years thunder by,
    The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie
caked in dust on the shelves of patience.
    Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.      

-- Sterling Hayden (1916 - 1986), American actor, writer and seaman, Wanderer (1963) Book I: Man at Bay, Ch. 5

My Results

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.      

-- Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), German mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, quoted in The Mind and the Eye (1954) by A. Arber

Obama Out

And with that I just have two more words to say: Obama out.

-- President Barack Obama ending his final White House Correspondents' Dinner with a mic drop, 30 April 2016

Lucifer In The Flesh

Lucifer in the flesh.  I have Democrat friends and Republican friends.  I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.

-- Former House Speaker John Boehner, when asked his opinion of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, at a recent event at Stanford, Stanford Daily, 28 April 2016

Not Themselves

things explain each other,
Not themselves.

-- George Oppen (1908 - 1984), American poet, This in Which (1965), "A Narrative", 3

It's Moving

It's pure psychological effect.  Your pizza is not going to come any sooner.  But it's moving.

-- Nicholas Goubert, chief of project management at Here, a digital maps company that provides location data to Amazon and other businesses, on location-tracking devices for services including pizza delivery, New York Times, 25 April 2016

Error Will Flourish

We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to enquire. We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.

-- Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904 – 1967), American physicist and scientific director of the Manhattan Project, "Encouragement of Science" (Address at Science Talent Institute, 6 March 1950), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, v.7, #1 (Jan 1951) p. 6-8

It's Going To Get Rougher

It's a hurtful place, the world, in and of itself.  We don't need to add to it.  And we're in a place now where we all need one another, and it's going to get rougher.

-- Prince Rogers Nelson (7 June 1958 – 21 April 2016), funk/rock/pop/R&B singer, songwriter, and actor, Tavis Smiley Show, PBS (27 April 2009)