Lectures Quotes - Page 17

• For the love of ammonites, man! That's just stupid. Why on earth would the Society need to protect unmarried women from bone-dry lectures regarding soil composition? Do your members find themselves whipped into some sort of dusty frenzy, from which no delicate lass would be safe?" Mr. Barrington tugged on his coat. "Sometimes the debate does get heated." Colin turned to her. "Min, Can I just hit him?" "I think that's a bad idea." "run him through with something sharp?

  Tessa Dare

  Running, Stupid, Men

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• The late British-born philosopher Alan Watts, in one of his wonderful lectures on eastern philosophy, used this analogy: "If I draw a circle, most people, when asked what I have drawn, will say I have drawn a circle or a disc, or a ball. Very few people will say I've drawn a hole in the wall, because most people think of the inside first, rather than thinking of the outside. But actually these two sides go together--you cannot have what is 'in here' unless you have what is out there.' " In other words, where we are is vital to who we are.

  Eric Weiner

  Wall, Philosophy, Thinking

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• How sweet is that? I know I'm no boy expert, but I have heard entire lectures on reading body language, and I have to say that assuming that a person will have forgotten your name is way high on my "indicators of humbleness" list (not that I have one, but I totally have a starting point now).

  Ally Carter

  Sweet, Reading, Boys

  Ally Carter (2007). “I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You”, Hyperion

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• Covert Operations Report At approximately 0900 hours on Saturday, October 14, Operative Morgan was given a stern lecture by Agent Townsend, a tracking device by Agent Cameron, and a very scary look from Operative Goode. (She also got a tip that her bra strap was showing from Operative McHenry.) The Operative then undertook a basic reconnaissance mission inside a potentially hostile location. (But it wasn't as hostile as Operative Baxter was going to be if everything didn't go according to plan.)

  Ally Carter

  Scary, Location, October

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• Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn't adopt chemistry as a religion.

  Betty Smith

  People, Firsts, Chemistry

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

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• I regret that it has been necessary for me in this lecture to administer a large dose of four-dimensional geometry. I do not apologize, because I am really not responsible for the fact that nature in its most fundamental aspect is four-dimensional. Things are what they are.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Nature, Regret, Facts

  Alfred North Whitehead (1920). “The Concept of Nature: Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November, 1919”, Cambridge University Press

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• The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion.

  Douglas Hofstadter

  Communication, Long, Example

  "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid". Book by Douglas Hofstadter, 1979.

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• We can no longer communicate with the apes by direct language, nor can we understand, without special study, their modes of communication which we have long since replaced by more elaborate forms. But it is at least presumable that they could still detect in our speech, at least when it is public and elaborate, the underlying tone values with which it began. Thus if we could take a gibbon ape to a college public lecture, he would not understand it, but he would "get a good deal of it." This is all the students get anyway.

  Stephen Leacock

  Communication, College, Long

  Stephen Leacock, Gerald Lynch (2002). “Leacock on Life”, p.60, University of Toronto Press

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• There are great science books that were conceived as books. Feynman's famous introductory lectures in physics, which have a beginning and an end, which are written with style.

  David Gelernter

  Book, Style, Physics

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• I am not fully informed of the practices at Harvard, but there is one from which we shall certainly vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly every college and academy in the United States. That is, the holding the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular vocations to which they are destined. We shall, on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall choose to attend, and require elementary qualification only, and sufficient age.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Education, Reading, Believe

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.294, Rowman & Littlefield

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• The attitude of the true scientist towards the real limits of human understanding was unforgettably impressed on me in early youth by the obviously unpremeditated words of a great biologist; Alfred Kuhn finished a lecture to the Austrian Academy of Science with Goethe 's words, "It is the greatest joy of the man of thought to have explored the explorable and then calmly to revere the inexplorable." After the last word he hesitated, raised his hand in repudiation and cried, above the applause, "No, not calmly, gentlemen; not calmly!

  Konrad Lorenz

  Attitude, Real, Men

  "On Aggression". Book by Konrad Lorenz, Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility, 1963.

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• Human beings are more alike than unalike. Whether in Paris, Texas, or Paris, France, we all want to have good jobs where we are needed and respected and paid just a little more than we deserve. We want healthy children, safe streets, to be loved and have the unmitigated gall to accept love. If we are religious, we want a place to perpetuate God. If not, we want a good lecture every once in a while. And everyone wants someplace to party on Saturday nights.

  Maya Angelou

  Religious, Jobs, Children

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• Even though I had a good income from my lectures, no one would give me a loan. The insanity almost drove me to sympathize with the feminist movement.

  Copyright: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Family Limited Partnership.

  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

  Giving, Feminist, Insanity

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• You are taken sick; you send for a physician; he comes in, stays ten minutes, prescribes for you a healing medicine, and charges you three or four dollars. You call this 'extortionate' - forgetting the medical books he must have waded through, the revolting dissections he must have witnessed and participated in, and the medical lectures he must have digested, to have enabled him to pronounce on your case so summarily and satisfactorily.

  Fanny Fern

  Book, Taken, Healing

  FANNY FERN (1857). “FRESH LEAVES”, p.54

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• A man who has tasted with profound enjoyment the pleasure of agreeable society will eat with a greater appetite than he who rode horseback for two hours. An amusing lecture is as useful for health as the exercise of the body.

  Immanuel Kant

  Exercise, Men, Two

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• the truth and value of a theory does not depend on the number of people who are interested in it - otherwise you might compare the number of people who follow the predictions of astrologers in the daily press with those who attend lectures by Einstein, and conclude that astrology was more valuable and true than physics.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Numbers, Astrology, People

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• A poet or novelist will invent interruptions to avoid long consecutive days at the ordained page; and of these the most pernicious are other kinds of writing -- articles, lectures, reviews, a wide correspondence.

  Shirley Hazzard

  Writing, Long, Novelists

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• Journalism is an immense power, that threatens soon to supersede sermons, lectures, and books.

  Theodore Tilton

  Book, Journalism, Sermons

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• Wounds make better lessons than lectures.

  Brian Herbert

  Hurt, Lessons, Wounds

  Brian Herbert, Kevin Anderson (2003). “Dune: House Harkonnen”, p.424, Spectra

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• I try very hard to tell stories and not lecture. I try to approach things as an amateur and not an expert, so that when I'm doing something, I'm starting out in a place a lot like where my readers start out - which is to say, naïve.

  Michael Pollan

  Trying, Experts, Stories

  "Michael Pollan: The Omnivore’s Dilemma". Interview with Anne E. McBride, leitesculinaria.com. March 20, 2007.

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• At a lecture I am asked to pronounce my name three times. I try to be slow and emphatic, "Anaïs - Anaïs - Anaïs. You just say "Anna" and then add "ees," with the accent on the "ees."

  Anais Nin

  Names, Trying, Add

  "The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume 7 (1966-1974)". Book by Anais Nin, 1981.

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• The philosopher stands at his desk in the lecture hall, and demonstrates away the soul of man, and with exact thought measures out his atoms and resolves him back to gas and air. But the revolutionary, below in the crowd, hears, and only translates what he hears thus to his brethren: 'Let us drink while we may; property is robbery; this life is all; let us kill and eat; there is no God.

  Ouida

  Men, Air, Soul

  Ouida (1890*). “A village commune. Idalia. Silver chimes and golden fetters. "Deadly dash."”

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• After I give lectures-on almost any subject-I am often asked, "Do you believe in UFOs?" I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, "How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?"

  Carl Sagan

  Believe, Giving, Suggestions

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.82, Ballantine Books

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• I would love to lecture to women on men. I'd tell them everything about men: gay, straight, bi, how we're all the same, how we're all bastards.

  John Barrowman

  Gay, Men

  "What I know about men" by Morwenna Ferrier, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2008.

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• The Americans lecture the world on democracy and then won’t let me turn the traction control off!

  Jeremy Clarkson

  Democracy, World, Top Gear

  "Top Gear: Series 5". TV Series, October 24, 2004.

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