Daily Quotes

[Tamrin]

Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions


Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a
system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all


The world of the future will be an even more demanding struggle
against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock
in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves


We are swimming upstream against a great torrent of disorganization ... In this, our main
obligation is to establish arbitrary enclaves of order and system... It is the greatest possible
victory to be, to continue to be, and to have been. No defeat can deprive us of the success
of having existed for some moment of time in a universe that seems indifferent to us


The more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall
have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival


The nervous system and the automatic machine are fundamentally alike in that they
are devices, which make decisions on the basis of decisions they made in the past


To live effectively is to live with adequate information


Norbert Wiener
US mathematician (discovered cybernetics)
(Born this day 1894)



What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments
is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead

[Tamrin]

To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world


Guilt is really the reverse side of the coin of pride. Guilt aims at
self-destruction, and pride aims at the destruction of others


Depression is unfocused self-pity


The wars which had been fought, the burnings and chicanery that religious dispute
had facilitated, made me sick. I honestly doubted whether, on balance, the religions
of mankind had done any good. Judging from what I had seen in Europe and since,
the power of God in human affairs was negligible, the Brotherhood of Man a grim
jest. If there was a Devil, he seemed the Boss Universal, and he certainly had me


Years ago I used to commiserate with all people who suffered. Now I commiserate only with
those who suffer in ignorance, who do not understand the purpose and ultimate utility of pain


In God's economy, nothing is wasted. Through failure, we learn
a lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful though it is


The temporary good is enemy to the permanent best


William Griffith Wilson
Co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
(Born this day 1895)



AA is no success story in the ordinary sense of the word. It is a
story of suffering transmuted, under grace, into spiritual progress

[Tamrin]

A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind


It isn't what people think that's important, but the reason they think what they think


I didn't mean you were stupid. It's just that you're not logical,
which isn't the same thing at all


Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose,
bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and
astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us


Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author
because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician


It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question


I've always been suspicious of collective truths


Eugène Ionesco
French-Romanian playwright and dramatist (Theatre of the Absurd)
(Born this day 1909)



Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together

[Tamrin]

You're a good man, Charlie Brown


I love mankind; it's people I can't stand


There's a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker


I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time


There is no problem so big it cannot be run away from


If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation,
it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself


All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt


Charles M Schulz, US cartoonist (Peanuts)
(Born this day 1922)



Don't worry about the world coming to an end today.
It is already tomorrow in Australia

[Tamrin]

I was never coached; I was never told how to hold a bat


When considering the stature of an athlete or for that matter any person, I set great store in
certain qualities which I believe to be essential in addition to skill. They are that the person
conducts his or her life with dignity, with integrity, courage, and perhaps most of all, with
modesty. These virtues are totally compatible with pride, ambition, and competitiveness


A good captain must be a fighter; confident but not arrogant, firm but not obstinate;
able to take criticism without letting it unduly disturb him, for he is sure to get it — and unfairly, too


Bowl faster, bowl faster. When you play test cricket, you don’t give the
Englishmen an inch. Play it tough, all the way. Grind them into the dust


Despite recent sad developments, cricket will survive and remain our most noble game
and I shall always remain proud of the part I played in its history and development


The game of cricket existed long before I was born. It will be played centuries after
my demise. During my career I was privileged to give the public my interpretation
of its character in the same way that a pianist might interpret the works of Beethoven


If it’s difficult I’ll do it now — If it’s impossible I’ll do it presently


Bro. Sir Donald Bradman
Australian cricketing legend
(Initiated this day 1929, Lodge Tarbolton, No. 12, NSW)



I'm very sorry I made a duck, I'd have been glad if I'd made those four extra runs to have
an average of 100. I didn't know it at the time and I don't think the Englishmen knew it
either. I think if they had known it they may have been generous enough to let me get four

[Tamrin]

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self


No education is worth having that does not teach the lesson of concentration on a task, however
unattractive. These lessons, if not learnt early, will be learnt, if at all, with pain and grief in later life


Melancholy and remorse form the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality


Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learnt to walk


A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are
interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, mal-
ignant or ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality. Neurotics are heartless


A stone lies in a river; a piece of wood is jammed against it; dead leaves,
drifting logs, and branches caked with mud collect; weeds settle there, and
soon birds have made a nest and are feeding their young among the blossoming
water plants. Then the river rises and the earth is washed away. The birds depart,
the flowers wither, the branches are dislodged and drift downward; no trace is left
of the floating island but a stone submerged by the water; — such is our personality


Destroy him as you will, the bourgeois always bounces up — execute him,
expropriate him, starve him out en masse, and he reappears in your children


Cyril Connolly
English author, editor and critic
(Died this day 1974)



There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say

[Tamrin]

Wednesday’s Quotes:

We are free to yield to truth


Who then is free? The wise man who can command himself


I teach that all men are mad


While fools shun one set of faults they run into the opposite one


The greatest lesson in life is to
know that even fools are right sometimes


It is your concern when your neighbor's wall is on fire


Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans.
It is lovely to be silly at the right moment


Horace, Latin poet and satirist
(Died this day 8 BCE)



Seize the day, and put the least possible trust in tomorrow

[Tamrin]

Simplicity is a great element of good breeding


A good many causes tend to make good masters and mistresses quite as rare as
good servants ... The large and rapid fortunes by which vulgar and ignorant people
become possessed of splendid houses, splendidly furnished, do not, of course,
give them the feelings and manners of gentle folks, or in any way really raise
them above the servants they employ, who are quite aware of this fact, and that the
possession of wealth is literally the only superiority their employers have over them


But I do not admit the comparison between your slaves and even the lowest
class of European free labourers, for the former are allowed the exercise of
no faculties but those which they enjoy in common with the brutes that perish


Though the Negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved,
naked, and roofless, the bare name of freemen — the lordship over his own person, the power
to choose and will — are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the
want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them


Yet thousands of slaves throughout the southern states are thus handed over
by the masters who own them to masters who do not; and it does not require
much demonstration to prove that their estate is not always the more gracious


In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day
in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live


I have sometimes been haunted with the idea that it was an imperative duty,
knowing what I know, and having seen what I have seen, to do all that lies
in my power to show the dangers and the evils of this frightful institution


Fanny Kemble
British actress, poet and author
(Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839)
(Born this day 1809)



I want to do everything in the world that can be done

[Tamrin]

Natural knowledge has not forgone emotion. It has simply taken for itself new ground
of emotion, under impulsion from and in sacrifice to that one of its 'values', Truth


That our being should consist of two fundamental elements [physical and psychical]
offers I suppose no greater inherent improbability than that it should rest on one only


As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between
thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space


The brain seems a thoroughfare for nerve-action passing its way to the motor animal.
It has been remarked that Life's aim is an act not a thought. To-day the dictum
must be modified to admit that, often, to refrain from an act is no less an act than
to commit one, because inhibition is coequally with excitation a nervous activity


Further study of central nervous action, however, finds central inhibition too extensive and
ubiquitous to make it likely that it is confined solely to the taxis of antagonistic muscles


The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning. It is as if the Milky
Way entered upon some cosmic dance. Swiftly the head mass becomes
an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolv-
ing pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one


Now as the waking body rouses, subpatterns of this great harmony of activity stretch down
into the unlit tracks of the stalk-piece of the scheme. Strings of flashing and travelling sparks
engage the lengths of it. This means that the body is up and rises to meet its waking day


Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, OM GBE PRS
English neurophysiologist, histologist, bacteriologist, pathologist
and Nobel laureate (Physiology or Medicine, 1932)
(Born this day 1857)



The brain is a mystery; it has been and still will be. How does the brain produce thoughts?
That is the central question and we have still no answer to it

[Tamrin]

We forget that when our government was established the principle of majority rule was no-
where to be recognized — that until well along in the nineteenth century the majority of our fore-
fathers did not even have the right to vote … Then a great popular movement swept over the
country, and in the political upheaval which followed, the masses secured the right of suffrage


We used to think in the old-fashioned days when life was very simple that all that government
had to do was to put on a policeman’s uniform, and say, "Now don’t anybody hurt anybody
else." We used to say that the ideal of government was for every man to be left alone and not
interfered with, except when he interfered with somebody else; and that the best government
was the government that did as little governing as possible. That was the idea that obtained
in Jefferson’s time. But we are coming now to realize that life is so complicated that we
are not dealing with the old conditions, and that the law has to step in and create new con-
ditions under which we may live, the conditions which will make it tolerable for us to live


Let us put aside resolutely that great fright, tenderly and without malice, daring
to be wrong in something important rather than right in some meticulous
banality, fearing no evil while the mind is free to search, imagine, and conclude,
inviting our countrymen to try other instruments than coercion and suppression
in the effort to meet destiny with triumph, genially suspecting that no creed yet
calendared in the annals of politics mirrors the doomful possibilities of infinity


I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women
trample themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking
place here amid the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelli-
gence is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail


By tyranny, as we now fight it, we mean control of the law, of legislation and adjudicat-
ion, by organizations which do not represent the people, by means which are private and
selfish. We mean, specifically, the conduct of our affairs and the shaping of our legislat-
ion in the interest of special bodies of capital and those who organize their use. We mean
the alliance, for this purpose, of political machines with selfish business. We mean the
exploitation of the people by legal and political means. We have seen many of our govern-
ments under these influences cease to be representative governments, cease to be govern-
ments representative of the people, and become governments representative of special
interests, controlled by machines, which in their turn are not controlled by the people


You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation
as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases
which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence


It is for us, recipients of their heritage, to inquire constantly and persistently, when
theories of national power or states' rights are propounded: "What interests are behind
them and to whose advantage will changes or the maintenance of old forms accrue?"
By refusing to do this we become victims of history — clay in the hands of its makers


Charles A. Beard
American historian (American Continentalism)
(Born this day 1874)



All the lessons of history in four sentences:
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.
The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars