139 quotes found
“It makes Brooke feel strange in her stomach. It is like the feeling when she reads a book like the one about the man with the bomb, or thinks a sentence, just any old sentence like: the girl ran ac...”
“It is almost impossible for contemporaries to judge the true value of discoveries, or to give the proper position to the men of their own time who make these discoveries. The Surgeon-General of the...”
“Always keep in mind that even your most dreadful expectations, are still nothing more than mere assumptions”
“I expected, as I approached the corporate world, to enter a brisk, logical, nonsense-free zone, almost like the military - or a disciplined, up-to-date military anyway - in its focus on concrete re...”
“Learning to be aware of what you unconsciously know may depend on a line of focused effort and specialized knowledge and even some measure of aptitude, but actually learning it may be effortless, a...”
“Gytha Ogg, you wouldnt be a witch if you couldnt jump to conclusions, right? Nanny nodded. Oh, yes. There was no shame in it. Sometimes there wasnt time to do anything else but take a flying leap. ...”
“Familiarity can provide the misguided illusion of understanding. Assume nothing.”
“It had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table. In warming himself at Fren...”
“They have the unique ability to listen to one story and understand another.”
“Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals.”
“That's the way progress works: the more we build up these vast repertoires of scientific and technological understanding, the more we conceal them.”
“Thou shalt make no image, no abstraction, including none of THE American, THE Swiss, THE German.”
“Virulence is the sound of a self-selecting community talking to itself and positively reinforcing itself with no obligation to answer to anyone or look anyone in the eye.”
“People in one of two states in a relationship. The first is what I call positive sentiment override, where positive emotion overrides irritability. It's a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad...”
“TR on using extramarital accusations against Wilson: "It won't work. You can't cast a man as Romeo who looks and acts like an apothecary's clerk.”
“It's sad that we never get trained to leave assumptions behind.”
“It's as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesn't - which, of course, is pretty often - she is surprised and affronted.”
“Washington not only fit the bill physically, he was also almost perfect psychologically, so comfortable with his superiority that he felt no need to explain himself. (As a young man during the Fren...”
“... always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.”
“It has been said already, but bears repeating: no blanket statement can sum up an entire group of people. No book, no chapter, no study, no research report can attempt to do that either. Instead, U...”
