Sam > Sam's Quotes

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  • #1
    “Napoléon solved none of the problems of Paris. His energies were too focused upon celebrating his own glory and solidifying his usurped throne, and too often diverted by warfare, which drained away the money needed for urban transformation.”
    David P. Jordan, Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussman

  • #2
    George Carlin
    “I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond!
    I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive.

    Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial!

    I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers.

    I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail.

    But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant.

    I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn.

    I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity.

    I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!”
    George Carlin

  • #3
    Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
    “Please-tame me!' he said.

    'I want to, very much,' the little prince replied. 'But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.'

    'One only understands the things that one tames,' said the fox. 'Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me.'

    'What must I do, to tame you?' asked the little prince.

    'You must be very patient,' replied the fox. 'First you will sit down at a little distance from me-like that-in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day...”
    Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
    tags: love

  • #4
    Robert Frost
    “Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.”
    Robert Frost

  • #5
    Felix Mendelssohn
    “People usually complain that music is so ambiguous, and what they are supposed to think when they hear it is so unclear, while words are understood by everyone. But for me it is exactly the opposite...what the music I love expresses to me are thoughts not to indefinite for words, but rather too definite.”
    Mendelssohn Felix

  • #6
    Italo Calvino
    “Sections in the bookstore

    - Books You Haven't Read
    - Books You Needn't Read
    - Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading
    - Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written
    - Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
    - Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
    - Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered
    - Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
    - Books You Can Borrow from Somebody
    - Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
    - Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages
    - Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success
    - Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment
    - Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case
    - Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer
    - Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves
    - Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
    - Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read
    - Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”
    Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

  • #7
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.

    In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.”
    Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

  • #8
    “Conventionalism is not just rejected by contemporary philosophers, it is vehemently rejected. It is despised and reviled, to the point where anything that hints at conventionalism is immediately and thoughtlessly rejected. Theorists whose views come close to conventionalism often take great pains to distance themselves, lest they too be dubbed heretics. The rejection of conventionalism is now one of the central dogmas of contemporary philosophy.

    What explains this state of affairs? Early in the book... I listed a few of the philosophical reasons for the historical failure of conventionalism. ... I don’t think this can be the entire story. The situation is odd. For example, the master argument [went] almost unchallenged in the literature until very recently. That is extremely rare in philosophy, for any argument.
    ... But philosophical arguments only go so far when it comes to influencing public opinion, no matter their power. There is also a major sociological reason that conventionalism has been widely rejected, one that goes beyond the lingering influence of Quine....

    That reason is that conventionalism seems to make things too easy. I mentioned this in the coda to chapter 3 when I compared unrestricted inferentialism’s ability to slice through philosophical tangles to Alexander’s hack through the Gordian knot. Conventionalism not only solves or dissolves many classical problems, it does so easily. Too easily, perhaps. I suspect that many philosophers harbor worries about this. Perhaps because they don’t really want philosophical problems to be solved. I don’t know. I am not sure how widespread this feeling is, but a number of philosophers have personally expressed to me, either directly or indirectly, a desire for philosophical problems to remain open and difficult, and for theories to be as technical and complicated as possible.

    I don’t share this desire. I am interested in finding out the truth and resolving the issues that have puzzled me for years. For me, this is not a game. It is deeply personal. The nature of logic and mathematics have long troubled me, but they trouble me no longer. The theory presented in this book has cured me, at least of these particular troubles. But this is confession, not argument.”
    Jared Warren, Shadows of Syntax: Revitalizing Logical and Mathematical Conventionalism



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