Who wants to hear actors talk? -H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927-

So long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend. -Robert Louis Stevenson-

An anthill increases by accumulation. Medicine is consumed by distribution. That which is feared lessens by association. This is the thing to understand. -Siddha Nagarjuna-

How long will it be before … the man sitting in London will see all things passing in Asia, or whenever it pleases him or an agent to turn a mirror on a view? It will be. Or how long before the discovery of cheap and perfect aerial navigation will change society and annihilate national distinctions? That, too, will be. These and a thousand stranger discoveries will during the ensuing century burst upon the world, changing it utterly. -Charles Godfrey Leland, Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling (1891)-

Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard and misapplied words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge. -John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690)-

The trouble with political correctness is not that it leads to totalitarian forms of thought control, as its critics on the right maintain. The trouble with political correctness is that it is too easily learned; it can create a veneer of civility and make us think that things are getting better when, in fact, they are getting worse. -Alan Rutkowski, Toronto “Globe and Mail” 8 February 1995-

Easy divorce does not lessen marriage responsibility. -Anna Garlin Spencer in “The Family and its Members”-

I have traveled the length and breadth of this country, and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year. -The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957-

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere”. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part…. What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. -Richard Feynman-

The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular? -David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s-