"To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning." - Margaret Thatcher (1980)
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"To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning." - Margaret Thatcher (1980)
"O Isabella Jane! Isabella Jane! Hold your jaw! Don't make such a fuss! Shut up! Here's a pretty row! What's it all about?" --Ebenezer Prout words to fit the subject of the G major fugue from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier I.
"If the answer is 'more politicians,' you are asking the wrong question." - John Major, on a proposed expansion of the House of Lords (2007)
"My name is Talky Tina and I don't think I like you." -- *Twilight Zone*
"The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes." - Tony Blair (1994)
"Note to our American brethren: A metre is about 3 feet 3 inches.
And 'metre' is 'meter' spelt correctly...
Oi Oi, that's yer lot.
Thank you.
Jos Grain. Production"
--Backline Rider contract for Iggy Pop and the Stooges excerpt.
"I have just accepted the invitation of Her Majesty the Queen to form a Government. This will be a new Government, with new priorities, and I have been privileged to have been granted the great opportunity to serve my country and at all times I will be strong in purpose, steadfast in will, resolute in action in the service of what matters to the British people, meeting the concerns and aspirations of our whole country." - Gordon Brown (2007)
"In our case the question would be, 'Is one string less than the other?'" -- Bartosz Milewski, *C++ In Action*
"Over generations, we have built something extraordinary in Britain – a successful multi-racial, multi-faith democracy. It’s open, diverse, welcoming – these characteristics are as British as queuing and talking about the weather. It is here in Britain where different people, from different backgrounds, who follow different religions and different customs don’t just rub alongside each other but are relatives and friends; husbands, wives, cousins, neighbours and colleagues. It is here in Britain where in one or two generations people can come with nothing and rise as high as their talent allows. It is here in Britain where success is achieved not in spite of our diversity, but because of our diversity. As we talk about the threat of extremism and the challenge of integration, we should not do our country down – we are, without a shadow of doubt, a beacon to the world. Every one of the communities that has come to call our country home has made Britain a better place." - David Cameron (2015)
"LORRE -- I understand. I understand very easily. It must be like I've been reading so many times, you know, that every generation the young generation grows soft, that the starch is leaving their spine. MCQUEEN -- You'd better tell that to the Boy Scouts, but I'll tell you one thing, if you go around the old campfire lopping off fingertips, you're going to get thrown out right on your ear. LORRE -- Is that so. MCQUEEN -- That's so." -- bit of dialogue from "The Man from the South," *Alfr. Hitchcock Presents*
"Politics is about public service. Everything we do - in Parliament, in our constituencies, here in Bournemouth - should be motivated by one goal: improving the lives of our fellow citizens. Politicians are seen as untrustworthy and hypocritical. We talk a different language. We live in a different world. We seem to be scoring points, playing games and seeking personal advantage - while homeowners struggle to make ends meet and schoolchildren see years of hard work undermined by the stroke of a bureaucrat's pen. In recent years a number of politicians have behaved disgracefully and then compounded their offences by trying to evade responsibility. We all know who they are... [but] we believe that an active government should focus on doing what it can to help people get on with their lives.This is the true measure of a compassionate government." - Theresa May (2002)
"A.FERRER -- You've grown soft in your old age D. LYNCH -- Not where it counts, old buddy." --*Twin Peaks* ep. 17 of season 3.
"In order to deal justly and equitably with your subjects, be straightforward and firm, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, but always following what is just, and upholding the cause of the poor 'til the truth be made clear." - King Louis IX of France (c. 1226)
"We had fancied our tasks would be different, only to find we were to be trained for heroism as though we were circus-ponies. But we soon accustomed ourselves to it." --Remarque, *All Quiet on the Western Front*
"Every time that I fill a high office, I create a hundred discontented men and an ingrate." - King Louis XIV (1751)
"I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday." --Henri IV, proverbial
"One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel." - Madame de Pompadour
"The gatherings between poets were in fashion. Leconte de L'Isle pontificated and vaticated there. Coppée recited and mimed with gaiety." -- Henri Mondor, *The Life of Mallarmé*
"Whoever did not live in the years neighboring 1789 does not know what the pleasure of living means." - Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
"This crude admonition, imprinted with an eloquence which characterized Mazarin whether he spoke Italian or Spanish, and which he entirely lost when he spoke French, was pronounced with an impenetrable face which only gave suspicion to Gondy, such a habile physiognomist as he was, of a simple advertisement of being more moderated/modulated." --Dumas, *Twenty Years After*
"lf the attribute of popular government in peace is virtue, the attribute of popular government in revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror; virtue without which terror is fatal, terror without which virtue is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue.... We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with it; now in this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror." - Maximilien Robespierre (1794)
"Pretty soon his improvisations had become more frequent. During the Convention he did not intervene less than 300 times until the 9 of Thermidor. He contented himself, most often, with tossing some notes on paper around which he organized his thought." --some guy named Marc Bouloiseau who got the job of writing the *Que sais-je* book on Robespierre, which I don't know why I have a copy. It's a series, sort of like Cliffs' Notes in French about all kinds of little topics supposedly of interest to French undergraduates or high-schoolers, sometimes written by distinguished academic.
"Fifty years of anarchy await you, and you will emerge from it only by the power of some dictator who will arise - a true statesman and patriot. O prating people, if you did but know how to act!" - Jean-Paul Marat (1792)
"There are no stupid questions. Only stupid people."
--some random person on Slashdot
"They wanted me to be another Washington." - Napoleon Bonaparte, on his deathbed (1821)
"The Master, firstly, is his own prophet: He is Saint John the Baptist decapitated by the waters, cap and plume announcing the coming of the messianic number." -- Quentin MEILLASSOUX, *The Number and the Siren* (2011), trans. Mackay
"In politics, evils should be remedied, not revenged." - Napoleon III (1839)
Hmmm...it was a good aphorism, but somehow I don't think the people ended up liking it too much.
"Imagine a brilliant scientist who solves a major theoretical problem. In one scenario he scribbles his theory on a beer mat, sharing it only with his drinking companions. In this scenario, very few scientists will have the ability to incorporate this discovery into their research." -- Katherine Munn, "Introduction," in *Applied Ontology*, eds. Munn and Barry Smith (2008)
"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization." - Georges Clemenceau
"When a law has received a sufficient confirmation from experiment, we may adopt two attitudes: Either we may leave this law in the fray; it will then remain subject to incessant revision, which without any doubt will end by demonstrating that it is only approximate."
--Henri POINCARÉ, from *The Value of Science*
"In war there are none but particular cases. Everything has there an individual nature; nothing ever repeats itself. In the first place, the data of a military problem are but seldom certain; they are never final. Everything is in a constant state of change and reshaping." - Ferdinand Foch (1919)
"Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths." -- Joseph JOFFRE
"My country has been beaten and they are calling me back to make peace and sign an armistice...This is the work of 30 years of Marxism. They're calling me back to take charge of the nation." - Philippe Pétain (1940)
"To the extent that the [boundary] is not tight for any, the hope is that the right hand side still gives useful information...The bound not being tight for the whole chosen family of learning machines gives critics a justifiable target at which to fire their complaints." --Burges, "A Tutorial on Support Vector Machines for Pattern Recognition," in *Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery* 2 (1998)
"How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?" - Charles de Gaulle (attrib.)
"Thus began the great war of statues. It was in the year of the cheval de feu and there was no great immolation. Neither young nor old could hold on to their life."
--Henri Michaux, "Annales," from *Trials, exorcisms 1940-1944*
"There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians." - Georges Pompidou
"The last night of his sojourn in Paris is given up to 'the fucking business.' He has a full program all day -- conferences, cablegrams, interviews, advice to the faithful, etc., etc. At dinner time he decides to lay aside his troubles." -- Henry Miller, *Tropic of Cancer* (1934)
"Europe without Greece is like a child without a birth certificate." - Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
"Given that the only relevant properties are order properties, the raster is not to be read as a implying a pace[sic]. In particular, the referents of the locations on the raster are not requested to be equally spaced in time." --Roberto Casati, of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, "The Structure of Standard Musical Notation," in Zaibert, ed., *The Theory and Practice of Ontology*
"What I demand you is almost impossible, for one has to defeat our history. And nevertheless, if one does not defeat it, one has to know a rule that imposes itself: nationalism, this is war! War is not solely past, it can be our future, and these are you, ladies and gentlemen deputies, who are the guardians of our peace, our security and our future." - François Mitterrand, address to the European Parliament (1995)
"'The silly thing just keeps running,' alleges friend. 'That’s what’s so fascinating. Continuous performances since 1944. Just keeps rolling along.' Tilts head back, laughs theatrically. 'It wasn’t even any good then, for chrissake.'" --Donald Barthelme, "Hiding Man" (1961)
"One can go to war alone, but you can't build peace alone." - Jacques Chirac
""'He got up painfully, looked at the flames, at the sea sparkling round the ship, and black, black as ink farther away; he looked at the stars shining dim through a thin veil of smoke in a sky black, black as Erebus.
'Youngest first,' he said.""
--Conrad, "Youth"
"I want to issue a call to everyone in the world who believes in the values of tolerance, freedom, democracy, humanism, to all those who are persecuted by tyranny, by dictatorships." - Nicolas Sarkozy (2007)
"'Capabilities,' in [Amartya] Sen's sense, are not simply valuable functionings; they are freedoms to enjoy valuable functionings....[And this] room for disagreement is something that Sen regards as valuable rather than disadvantageous." --Putnam, "Fact and Value in the World of Amartya Sen" (delivered 2000, published in the paperback *The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays*)
"The fight against global warming is a humanitarian issue - how the planet can be preserved - and it is also an issue of considerable economic importance, of what we call green growth." - Francois Hollande
"I despise [Borges'] work, and I despise him too. He’s a fascist swine—he was very close to Pinochet, by the way—a loathsome swine who did not ever come out for the Left or anything. I’ve never liked his work because it’s terribly artificial—I just never believed it." -- Chandler Brossard, in "A Conversation With Chandler Brossard" in *The Review of Contemporary Fiction*, 1987
"I come all wreathed in a reputation the press has made for me. Judge me on my actions. That's all that counts." - Emmanuel Macron
"[Peter Madsen's] behaviour seems boundless, with a moody unpredictability. There is a creative dynamic, but also something more destructive. He lacks self-awareness, and knows that he is hard to work with." --Måns Mosesson, "The news that shook the world," *Dagens Nhyeter*, 31-Aug-2017 equally describes Macron's willingness to not take any of Trump's shrink-dick bullshit