Accounts Quotes - Page 34

• George Kennan and Paul Nitze were the Adams and Jefferson of the Cold War. They were there for the beginning, they witnessed its course over almost half a century, and they argued with each other constantly while it was going on. But they maintained throughout a remarkable friendship, demonstrating-as few others in our time have-that it is possible to differ with civility. Nicholas Thompson's is a fine account of that relationship, carefully researched, beautifully written, and evocatively suggestive of how much we have lost because such civility has become so rare.

  John Lewis Gaddis

  War, Half, Cold

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• Visa for Avalon is a testament to the power of fiction. It illuminates the truth at the heart of what is commonly called reality. This account of lives transformed and ruined by the triumph of a totalitarian rule is a timely reminder of how moral and intellectual laziness and apathy can pave the road to the reign of terror brought on by such a system.

  Azar Nafisi

  Heart, Reality, Intellectual

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• Human-centered design. Meeting people where they are and really taking their needs and feedback into account. When you let people participate in the design process, you find that they often have ingenious ideas about what would really help them. And it’s not a onetime thing; it’s an iterative process.

  Melinda Gates

  Ideas, Design Process, People

  "The Human Element: Melinda Gates and Paul Farmer on Designing Global Health". Interview with Caitlin Roper, www.wired.com. November 12, 2013.

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• BP wants Twitter to shut down a fake BP account that is mocking the oil company. In response, Twitter wants BP to shut down the oil leak that's ruining the ocean.

  Jimmy Fallon

  Ocean, Oil, Fake

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• The moment in the account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is when they realize they're naked and try and cover themselves with fig leaves. That seemed to me a perfect allegory of what happened in the 20th century with regard to literary modernism. Literary modernism grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I'm telling a story! Oh, that can't be the case, because I'm a clever person. I'm a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself?...a lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller.

  Philip Pullman

  Clever, Book, Perfect

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• Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.281, Simon and Schuster

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• This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Dream, Believe

  Henry David Thoreau, Joseph O. Valentine, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Land: Nature's Canvas”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Business, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.121, David M Gross

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• I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Simple, Land

  Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods”, p.1, Courier Corporation

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• A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle... Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account; the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it and we must in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed.

  George Washington

  Sacrifice, Men, Views

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• We have accounts of the deification of men in pagan mythology. But I do not remember any account of a god becoming a man, to help man. Whoever heard of Jupiter or Mars or Minerva coming down and attempting to bear the burdens of men? The gods were willing enough to receive the gifts of men, but Christianity is unique in the fact that our God became a man with human infirmity and emptied Himself of the glory of heaven, in order that He might take upon Himself the sins, diseases and weakness of our humanity.

  A. C. Dixon

  Men, Unique, Order

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• The presentation of mathematics in schools should be psychological and not systematic. The teacher, so to speak, should be a diplomat. He must take account of the psychic processes in the boy in order to grip his interest, and he will succeed only if he presents things in a form intuitively comprehensible. A more abstract presentation is only possible in the upper classes.

  Felix Klein

  Teacher, School, Boys

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• Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.

  Bruce Schneier

  People, Water, Trying

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• For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Men, Civilization

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.163, Graphic Arts Books

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• We might as easily reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Wind, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1502, Delphi Classics

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• Man is a great blunderer going about in the woods, and there is no other except the bear makes so much noise. ... The cunningest hunger is hunted in turn, and what he leaves of his kill is meat for some other. That is the economy of nature, but with it all there is not sufficient account taken of the works of man. There is no scavenger that eats tin cans, and no wild thing leaves a like disfigurement on the forest floor.

  Mary Hunter Austin

  Nature, Taken, Men

  Mary Hunter Austin (2006). “Essential Mary Austin: A Selection of Mary Austin's Best Writing”, Heyday Books

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• State censorship presents itself as a bulwark between society and forces of subversion or moral corruption. To dismiss this account of its own motives by the state as insincere would be a mistake: it is a feature of the paranoid logic of the censoring mentality that virtue ... must be innocent, and therefore, unless protected, vulnerable to the wiles of vice.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Mistake, Vices, Moral Corruption

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• Ordinary people regard a man of a certain force and flexibility of character as they do a lion; they look at him with a sort of wonder, perhaps they admire him; but they will on no account house with him.

  Angela Merkel

  Character, Men, People

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• Though we may not desire to detect fraud, we must not, on that account, endeavor to be insensible of it, for, as cunning is a crime, so is duplicity a fault, and if men dread knaves, they also despise fools.

  Norm MacDonald

  Men, Duplicity, Desire

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• Fresh pitsand, however, in spite of all its excellence in concrete structures, is not equally useful in stucco, the richness of which, when the lime and straw are mixed with such sand, will cause it to crack as it dries on account of the great strength of the mixture. But river sand, though useless in "signinum" on account of its thinness, becomes perfectly solid in stucco when thoroughly worked by means of polishing instruments.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Mean, Rivers, Excellence

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book II, Chapter IV, Section 3,

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• Oak... lasts for an unlimited period when buried in underground structures... when exposed to moisture... it cannot take in liquid on account of its compactness, but, withdrawing from the moisture, it resists it and warps, thus making cracks.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Lasts, Liquid, Cracks

  "De architectura (Ten Books on Architecture)". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Book II, Chapter IX, Section 8), circa 15 BC.

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• Of course, we need not be surprised if artistic excellence goes unrecognized on account of being unknown; but there should be the greatest indignation when, as often, good judges are flattered by the charm of social entertainments into an approbation which is a mere a pretence.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Judging, Excellence, Needs

  "The Ten Books On Architecture". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Book III, Preface, Sec. 1, c. 15 BC.

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• The third order, called Corinthian, is an imitation of the slenderness of a maiden; for the outlines and limbs of maidens, being more slender on account of their tender years, admit of prettier effects in the way of adornment.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Order, Years, Way

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book IV, Chapter I, Section 8,

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• How then can we account for the persistence of the myth that inside the empty nest lives a shattered and depressed shell of a woman--a woman in constant pain because her children no longer live under her roof? Is it possible that a notion so pervasive is, in fact, just a myth?

  Lillian B. Rubin

  Children, Pain, Persistence

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• What small account The All-living seems to take of this thin flame Which we call life. He sends a moment's blast Out of war's nostrils, and a myriad Of these our puny tapers are blown out Forever.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  War, Flames, Forever

  Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, “Looking Death In The Face”

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