WIST Quotations

Sagan, Carl -- Cosmos, ch. 11 “The Persistence of Memory” (1980)

Dave — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 22:00:46 +0000

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.

Carl Sagan (1934-1996) American scientist and writer
Cosmos, ch. 11 “The Persistence of Memory” (1980)
(Source)

Jacobs, Jane -- Dark Age Ahead, ch. 1 “The Hazard” (2004)

Dave — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 23:00:58 +0000

Writing, printing, and the Internet give a false sense of security about the permanence of culture. Most of the million details of a complex, living culture are transmitted neither in writing nor pictorially. Instead, cultures live through word of mouth and example. That is why we have cooking classes and cooking demonstrations, as well as cookbooks. That is why we have apprenticeships, internships, student tours, and on-the-job training as well as manuals and textbooks. Every culture takes pains to educate its young so that they, in their turn, can practice and transmit it completely. Educators and mentors, whether they are parents, elders, or schoolmasters, use books and videos if they have them, but they also speak, and when they are most effective, as teachers, parents, or mentors, they also serve as examples.

Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) American-Canadian journalist, author, urban theorist, activist
Dark Age Ahead, ch. 1 “The Hazard” (2004)
(Source)

Steinbeck, John -- Sweet Thursday, ch. 3, sec. 1 (1954)

Dave — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 20:34:34 +0000

Looking back, you can usually find the moment of the birth of new era, whereas, when it happened, it was one day hooked on the tail of another.

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American writer
Sweet Thursday, ch. 3, sec. 1 (1954)
(Source)

Borland, Hal -- “Autumn’s Clutter,” New York Times (11 Nov 1962)

Dave — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 15:08:39 +0000

Man feels the need to rake leaves, clean up the summer’s remnants, proclaim his tenancy by making things neat and tidy. Nature doesn’t bother. The tree thrives on its own trash and the see sprouts in the parent plant’s midden heap. Each new season grows from the leftovers from the past. That is the essence of change, and change is the basic law. Nature hasn’t time to be neat and tidy.

Harold "Hal" Borland (1900-1978) American writer, journalist, naturalist
“Autumn’s Clutter,” New York Times (11 Nov 1962)
(Source)

Reprinted in Sundial of the Seasons (1964).

Maitland, F. W. -- “A Prologue to a History of English Law,” Law Quarterly Review (Jan 1898)

Dave — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 15:41:44 +0000

Such is the unity of all history that any one who endeavors to tell a piece of it must feel that his first sentence tears a seamless web.

F. W. Maitland (1850-1906) English legal historian and jurist [Frederic William Maitland]
“A Prologue to a History of English Law,” Law Quarterly Review (Jan 1898)
(Source)

Prologue to the 2nd ed. of his and Pollock's History of English Law (1898). Frequently mis-paraphrased, "The law is a seamless web."

Hepburn, Audrey -- Quoted in Yann-Brice Dherbier and Pierre-Henri Verlhac, Audrey Hepburn : A Life in Pictures (2007)

Dave — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 18:31:13 +0000

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) Belgian-English actress
Quoted in Yann-Brice Dherbier and Pierre-Henri Verlhac, Audrey Hepburn : A Life in Pictures (2007)