1906 Quotes

“What will make you great today will never make you great tomorrow! The airplane that Wilbur and Orville Wright invented in 1906 would be seen as a scrap today. It becomes valueless with time.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“Wars, wars, wars': reading up on the region I came across one moment when quintessential Englishness had in fact intersected with this darkling plain. In 1906 Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for British colonies, had been honored by an invitation from Kaiser Wilhelm II to attend the annual maneuvers of the Imperial German Army, held at Breslau. The Kaiser was 'resplendent in the uniform of the White Silesian Cuirassiers' and his massed and regimented infantry...

reminded one more of great Atlantic rollers than human formations. Clouds of cavalry, avalanches of field-guns and—at that time a novelty—squadrons of motor-cars (private and military) completed the array. For five hours the immense defilade continued. Yet this was only a twentieth of the armed strength of the regular German Army before mobilization.

Strange to find Winston Churchill and Sylvia Plath both choosing the word 'roller,' in both its juggernaut and wavelike declensions, for that scene.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Our fellowman either may voluntarily reveal to us the truth about himself, or by dissimulation he may deceive us as to the truth. No other object of knowledge can thus of its own initiative, either enlighten us with reference to itself or conceal itself, as a human being can. No other knowable object modifies its conduct from consideration of its being understood or misunderstood.”
― Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies

“Since one never can absolutely know another, as this would mean knowledge of every particular thought and feeling; since we must rather form a conception of a personal unity out of the fragments of another person in which alone he is accessible to us, the unity so formed necessarily depends upon that portion of the Other which our standpoint toward him permits us to see.”
― Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies

“Observatory
n, A place where astronomers conjecture away
the guesses of their predecessors.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Primitive man, living in communities of restricted extent, providing for his needs by his own production or by direct co-operation, limiting his spiritual interests to personal experience or to simple tradition, surveys and controls the material of his existence more easily and completely than the man of higher culture. In the latter case life rests upon a thousand presuppositions which the individual can never trace back to their origins, and verify; but which he must accept upon faith and belief. In a much wider degree than people are accustomed to realize, modern civilized life—from the economic system which is constantly becoming more and more a credit-economy, to the pursuit of science, in which the majority of investigators must use countless results obtained by others, and not directly subject to verification—depends upon faith in the honor of others. We rest our most serious decisions upon a complicated system of conceptions, the majority of which presuppose confidence that we have not been deceived. Hence prevarication in modern circumstances becomes something much more devastating, something placing the foundations of life much more in jeopardy, than was earlier the case.”
― Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies

“There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas before it comes.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Nur die neue Vorstellung erweckt ästhetische Freude, sondern jede Vorstellung, die nicht in die Sphäre des Willens fällt, erweckt ästhetische Freude. Sagt man es aber doch, dann würde es bedeuten, nur eine neue Vorstellung können wir derart aufnehmen, daß unsere Willenssphäre nicht berührt wird. Nun ist es aber sicher, daß es neue Vorstellungen gibt, welche wir nicht ästhetisch werten.”
― Franz Kafka

“The cold tang of the dawn was already in the air and the smell of the earth was keen in our nostrils, when Moleskin Joe and I breasted the steep shoulder of a hill together, and saw the outer line of derricks standing gaunt against the bald cliffs of Kinlochleven. From the crest of the rise we could see the lilac grey vesture of the twilight unfold itself from off the naked peaks that stood out boldly in the ghostly air like carved gargoyles of some mammoth sculpture. A sense of strange remoteness troubled the mind, and in the half-light the far distances seemed vague and unearthly, and we felt like two atoms frozen into a sea of silence amidst the splendour of complete isolation. A long way off a line of hills stood up, high as the winds, and over their storm-scarred ribs we saw or fancied we saw the milky white torrents falling. We could not hear the sound of falling waters; and white frothy torrents were the ghost streams.

The mood or spell was one of a moment. A derrick near at hand clawed out a lean arm, and lifted a bucket of red muck into the air, then turned noisily on its pivot, and was relieved of its burden. The sun burst out suddenly like an opening rose, and the garments of the day were thrown across the world. One rude cabin sent up a grey spiral of smoke into the air, then another and another. We sat on a rock, lit our pipes, and gazed on the Mecca of our hopes.”
― Patrick MacGill, Children of the Dead End