First Contact Quotes

• No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.

  Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

  Firsts, Force, Operations

  "Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings" by Daniel J. Hughes and Harry Bell, (p. 92), 1993.

  105 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most people have a passive relationship with music and clothes, with culture. But music was my first contact with anything creative. Music is it, as far as I'm concerned.

  Martin Freeman

  Creativity, Clothes, People

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.

  Sarah Zettel

  Life, Stories, Invasion

  53 Copy quote

• So in the sense that we were all dealing with that freer approach, yes, it was certainly one of the first contacts, perhaps the first contact, when Peter came that summer. So it's a very pivotal moment that is documented there.

  Evan Parker

  Summer, Pivotal Moments, Firsts

  52 Copy quote

• Someone once said "Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man, and let history make its own judgements."

  Jonathan Frakes

  Motivational, Men, History

  "Fictional character: Cmdr. William Riker". "Star Trek: First Contact", www.imdb.com. November 18, 1996.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again! The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!

  Patrick Stewart

  Fall, Space, Done

  7 Copy quote

• The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

  David Brin

  Mistake, Literature, Firsts

  "A Contrarian Perspective on Altruism: The Dangers of First Contact". David Brin's remarks at the conference "Encoding Altruism", September 2002.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers

  Steve Blank

  Firsts, Blank, Contact

  Steve Blank (2012). “The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company”, p.70, BookBaby

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even if we never reach the stars by our own efforts, in the millions of years that lie ahead it is almost certain that the stars will come to us. Isolationism is neither a practical policy on the national or cosmic scale. And when the first contact with the outer universe is made, one would like to think that Mankind played an active and not merely a passive role-that we were the discoverers, not the discovered.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Stars, Lying, Thinking

  11 Copy quote

• No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy

  Carl von Clausewitz

  Enemy, Campaigns, Firsts

  12 Copy quote

• It is a written fact that our people had warned of all these consequences of wrongful environmental behavior since our very first contact with the non-Indians. There was a time when our elders used to say to us, "You can't function with one foot in the white man's canoe and one foot in the Indian's canoe." With these extreme environmental concerns taking place on the earth, mankind is all in the same boat. Or better be.

  Leonard Peltier

  Men, White, Feet

  Source: montanapioneer.com

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think everyone agrees First Contact was our best film, and even at that, they're kind of... I don't know, they're sort of movies. But they're kind of really Star Trek movies, if you take my meaning. It's hard for me to say. I was glad to be doing them. Whether they were good isn't really up to me to determine, and it doesn't matter what I think. I thought we had a really nice script on Nemesis, and the audience didn't seem to care for it, so what can you do?

  Brent Spiner

  Stars, Nice, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's nothing wrong with a plan, but remember Von Moltke's famous dictum that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The danger is a plan that seduces us into thinking failure is impossible and adaptation is unnecessary - a kind of ‘Titanic' plan, unsinkable (until it hits the iceberg).

  Tim Harford

  Thinking, Enemy, Firsts

  7 Copy quote

• All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn't know about mouth kissing until their first contact with European explorers. And the attraction was not always immediately apparent. Most considered the act of exchanging saliva revolting.

  Joshua Foer

  Kissing, Culture, Mouths

  4 Copy quote

• [Nietzsche] attributes to himself an extremely vivid and sensitive instinct of cleanliness. At the first contact the filth lying at the base of another's nature is revealed to him. The unclean are therefore ill at ease hi his presence

  Georg Brandes

  Lying, Ease, Vivid

  Georg Brandes (2015). “Friedrich Nietzsche (English Edition)”, p.57, WILLIAM HEINEMANN

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The World's Smallest Political Quiz is responsible for many Americans' first contact with libertarian ideas. While traveling around the country, I have often heard people say, 'I never knew I was a libertarian until I took the Quiz!'

  Ron Paul

  Country, Ideas, People

  4 Copy quote

• Peter Watts has taken the core myths of the First Contact story and shaken them to pieces. The result is a shocking and mesmerizing performance, a tour-de-force of provocative and often alarming ideas. It is a rare novel that has the potential to set science fiction on an entirely new course. Blindsight is such a book.

  Karl Schroeder

  Book, Taken, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• I chose the actors that I was in love with. I cannot work with people that I don't personally like a lot. They can be the best actor in the world, but if the first contact is not good, if I don't fall in love with them, then I don't want to work with them. It's impossible.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Falling In Love, People, Actors

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Civilized man longs for the illusion of barbarism. Either his culture fulfills this need by adopting its outer trappings, or he will be seduced by his first contact with a culture that does.

  C.S. Friedman

  Men, Doe, Needs

  C.S. Friedman (2001). “In Conquest Born”, p.44, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Not when the enemy is me.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Enemy, Battle, Firsts

  "Cetaganda". Book by Lois McMaster Bujold, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source