weirdTangent > weirdTangent 's Quotes

“Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday's code.”
― Dan Salomon

“(It is interesting that the words “cosmos” and “cosmetic” have the same root, the Greek word for “adornment” or “arrangement.”)”
― Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story

“Consistency is the virtue of small minds, and Spinoza had a great mind—he was inconsistent all over the place.”
― Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story

“Without exception, the brave new technologies of the twentieth century—free use of which was originally encouraged, for the sake of further invention and individual expression—eventually evolved into privately controlled industrial behemoths, the “old media” giants of the twenty-first, through which the flow and nature of content would be strictly controlled for reasons of commerce.”
― Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

“In 1915, a federal district court finally ordered the tattered Trust be dissolved.30 The American film industry was, for the first time, an open industry.”
― Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

“To close the loop entirely, AT&T set about designing its own radio sets, presenting President Coolidge with one of its handsomer models.11 In a final stroke, such as to this day inspires heated debate over network neutrality, AT&T’s new radios were engineered to receive only AT&T broadcast frequencies—and, not surprisingly, only AT&T programming.*”
― Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

“Thus did AT&T in deadly earnest go about hushing the Hush-A-Phone. At the two-week trial (technically a hearing), the company showed up with dozens of attorneys, including a top litigator from New York City, and no few expert witnesses. Legal representatives of each of the twenty-one regional Bells came as well, necessitating that extra seats be installed in the hearing room—bleachers for AT&T’s lawyers. On Hush-A-Phone’s side were Harry Tuttle, his lawyer, the acoustics professor Leo Beranek, and one expert witness, a man named J.C.R. Licklider.7”
― Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

“As a result, there’s always another billion-dollar company, and in the B2B space there is room for a few of them. With the waves of Big Data, cloud, mobile, and social setting the stage, it’s not hard to imagine that the next twenty years of information technology will be even more exciting than the last twenty.”
― David Feinleib, Big Data Demystified: How Big Data Is Changing The Way We Live, Love And Learn

“by the FCC’s own reckoning, the cable companies will soon enjoy an uncontested monopoly over broadband Internet in much of the United States beyond the East Coast, and they are also seeking control of more Hollywood studios and television networks.”
― Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

“Warming today is taking place at least ten times faster than it did at the end of the last glaciation, and at the end of all those glaciations that preceded it. To keep up, organisms will have to migrate, or otherwise adapt, at least ten times more quickly.”
― Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. ”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“The world must be all fucked up," he said then, "when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.”
― Gabriel García Márquez

“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“There was a man so wise,
He jumped into
A sandy place
And burnt out both his eyes!
And when he knew his eyes were gone,
He offered no complaint.
He summoned up a vision
And made himself a saint.
-Children's Verse
from History of Muad'dib”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“The first time you share tea, you are a stranger. The second time you share tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share tea, you become family.”
― T.J. Klune, Under the Whispering Door

“The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it - the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and a square showed on the table when a book was moved.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Then you shall judge yourself," answered the king. "That is the most difficult thing of all. It is far more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then indeed you are very wise.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words!”
“Your civilization, perhaps. Ours hides nothing. It is all plain. Queen Teaea wears her own skin, there. We follow one law, only one, the law of human evolution.”
“The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!”
“Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical. You see, we have neither prey nor enemy, on Anarres. We have only one another. There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia