Devices Quotes - Page 19

• The piano is the social instrument par excellence... drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of entertainment.

  Jacques Barzun

  Music, Names, Piano

  Jacques Barzun (1984). “Critical Questions: On Music and Letters, Culture and Biography, 1940-1980”, p.54, University of Chicago Press

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• Do you know what religion is, Martin, my friend? -I can barely remember Lord's Prayer. -A beautiful and well-crafted prayer. Poetry aside, a religion is really a moral code that is expressed through legends,myths, or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values , and rules with which to regulate a culture or a society.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Beautiful, Prayer, Order

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• Well, I happen to have a love of vocal reproduction devices.

  Billy West

  Wells, Happens, Vocal

  Interview with David Wolinsky, tv.avclub.com. June 17, 2008.

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• To the Jews, Rome constituted the quintessence of all that was odious and should be swept away from off the face of the earth. They hated Rome and her device, arma et leges, with an inhuman hatred. True, Rome had leges, laws, like the Jews. But in their very resemblance lay their difference; for the Roman laws were merely the practical application of the arma, the arms...but without the arms, the leges were empty formulae.

  Joseph Kastein

  Differences, Rome, Law

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• The Hope, Love & Healing necklace is the perfect embodiment of what we are trying to bring to Haiti through safe and sustainable housing, sanitation solutions, and water filtration devices.

  Patricia Arquette

  Healing, Perfect, Water

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• In the end nobody knows how it's done — how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.

  David Hockney

  Art, Understanding, Magic

  "Hockney and the Secrets of the Old Masters". Interview with Martin Gayford, www.telegraph.co.uk. September 22, 2001.

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• One of the interesting initiatives we've taken in Washington, D.C., is we've got these vampire-busting devices. A vampire is a-a cell deal you can plug in the wall to charge your cell phone.

  George W. Bush

  Wall, Taken, Humor

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• Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.

  Douglas Adams

  People, Work Out, Wish

  Douglas Adams (2005). “The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story”, Gramercy

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• But we know that freedom cannot be served by the devices of the tyrant. As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence. And any who act as if freedoms defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Freedom, Tyrants, America

  "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957". Book by United States Government Printing Office, 1999.

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• The most interesting characteristic of the cube is that it is relatively uninteresting. Compared to any other three-dimensional form, the cube lacks any aggressive force, implies no motion, and is least emotive. Therefore, it is the best form to use as a basic unit for any more elaborate function, the grammatical device from which the work may proceed.

  Sol LeWitt

  Interesting, Three, Use

  Sol LeWitt (1995). “Sol Lewitt: critical texts”, Power House Books

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• It win be a device that will permit communication without any time interval between two points in space. The device will not transmit messages, of course; simultaneity is identity. But to our perceptions, that simultaneity will function as a transmission, a sending. So we will be able to use it to talk between worlds, without the long waiting for the message to go and the reply to return that electromagnetic impulses require. It is really a very simple matter. Like a kind of telephone.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Communication, Winning, Simple

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• Tree of Liberty: A tree set up by the people, hung with flags and devices, and crowned with a cap of liberty. The Americans of the United States planted poplars and other trees during the war of independence, "as symbols of growing freedom." The Jacobins in Paris planted their first tree of liberty in 1790. The symbols used in France to decorate their trees of liberty were tricoloured ribbons, circles to indicate unity, triangles to signify equality, and a cap of liberty. Trees of liberty were planted by the Italians in the revolution of 1848.

  E. Cobham Brewer

  War, Circles, Paris

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• When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in my thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance.

  Nikola Tesla

  Running, Ideas, Imagination

  Nikola Tesla (2016). “My Inventions: And Other Writings”, p.6, Courier Dover Publications

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• Women are extraordinary in lacking the estrus, or period of heat. The females of most other primate species become sexually active, to the point of aggression, only at the time of ovulation. Why has sexual responsiveness become nearly continuous? Unusually frequent sexual activity between males and females served as the principle device for cementing the pair bond.

  E. O. Wilson

  Pairs, Principles, Males

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• Plotting isn't like sex, because you can go back and adjust it afterwards. Whether you plan your story beforehand or not, if the climax turns out to be the revelation that the mad professor's anti-gravity device actually works, you must go back and silently delete all those flying cars buzzing around the city on page one. If you want to reveal something, you need to hide it properly first.

  Colin Greenland

  Sex, Writing, Cities

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• Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Clever, Smart

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• The available worlds looked pretty grim. They had little to offer him because he had little to offer them. He had been extremely chastened to realize that although he originally came from a world which had cars and computers and ballet and Armagnac, he didn't, by himself, know how any of it worked. He couldn't do it. Left to his own devices he couldn't build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.

  Douglas Adams

  Car, Ballet, Toasters

  Douglas Adams (2009). “Mostly Harmless”, p.74, Pan Macmillan

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• If left to their own devices a child will achieve.

  Aimee Mullins

  Children, Achieve, Left

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• Anyone who knew Violet well could tell she was thinking hard, because her long hair was tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. Violet had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so her brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair.

  Daniel Handler

  Real, Eye, Thinking

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• Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business… the public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products.

  Noam Chomsky

  Military, Government, Ignorant Masses

  "Force and Opinion". Article by Noam Chomsky, chomsky.info. July, 1991.

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• This did not annoy Amanda for it had long been her theory that human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another.

  Tom Robbins

  Long, Water, Annoying

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Another Roadside Attraction”, p.12, Bantam

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• A great book is a homing device For navigating paradise. A good book somehow makes you care About the comfort of a chair. A bad book owes to many trees A forest of apologies.

  J. Patrick Lewis

  Book, Apology, Tree

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• A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

  Alan Bennett

  Book, Reading, Imagination

  Alan Bennett (2008). “The Uncommon Reader”, p.15, Faber & Faber

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• Labour-saving devices just make us try to cram more pointless activities into each day, rather than doing the important thing, which is to enjoy our life.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Important, Trying, Each Day

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• Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company.

  Lord Byron

  Writing, Solitude, Letters

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