1911 Quotes

Eric Steele was strapped in and rubbing a rag over his father's 1911. Demo had brought the pistol with the rest of Steele's
gear on board the C-17. In the cockpit, the pilot pushed the throttle forward, shoving Steele back in his seat. He barely
noticed because he was thinking about the first time his father let him hold the pistol. It had felt so heavy in his hands
back then.


So much I never got to ask him.

He ran his thumb over the spot where the serial number should have been. It was silver and all traces of the file marks were
smoothed out by years of use. The pistol was one of John Moses Browning's masterpieces, the same design that the American
infantryman had carried in the Battle of Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, Korea, and Vietnam. It was the only thing he had to remind
him of the father he never really knew.


Steele had made the pistol his own by modifying it to shoot 9mm, adding a threaded barrel, and installing suppressor sights,
which were taller than the factory ones. It was his gun now, and he slipped it away before taking an amphetamine tablet out
of his pocket and downing it with a sip of water. ~ Sean Parnell

Qinghua was first established as a preparatory school in 1911. In 1928, it became a university. In 1929, my father joined Qinghua as a professor, so that was also the year that I moved to that campus because my father brought the whole family along. ~ Chen-Ning Yang

In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any other century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they see it can be done- then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of these things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts- just mere thoughts- are as powerful as electric batteries- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
1911 ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

It seems quite clear that much of this intense activity for Progressive reform was intended to head off socialism. Easley talked of "the menace of Socialism as evidenced by its growth in the colleges, churches, newspapers." In 1910, Victor Berger became the first member of the Socialist party elected to Congress; in 1911, seventy-three Socialist mayors were elected, and twelve hundred lesser officials in 340 cities and towns. The press spoke of "The Rising Tide of Socialism. ~ Howard Zinn

An unbalanced soul seeks equilibrium. I seek a constitutional form to gather my thoughts. I wish to form a flexible personality. I desire to be gentle and fluid of mind. I wish to summon hidden personal powers, but I lack the knowledge and wisdom to do so. I lack a cohesive unifying spirit. I have yet to claim the authenticity of my life. I failed to accept that what anyone else thinks of me would not stave off an inevitable death. I have not claimed a purpose for living. I have not found a basic truth that I can live and die supporting. I failed to exert the resolute will to become who I aspire to be. I rejected abstract concepts and failed to endorse the systematic reasoning of philosophical studies. I indulged in the type of obsessive excessive self-analysis, which leads to the brink of personal destruction through self-objectification and artificial triumphs. Echoing the words of Romanian philosopher and writer E.M. Cioran (1911-1995), 'I've invented nothing; I've simply been the secretary of my sensations. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The Story Girl was written in 1910 and published in 1911. It was the last book I wrote in my old home by the gable window where I had spent so many happy hours of creation. It is my own favourite among my books, the one that gave me the greatest pleasure to write, the one whose characters and landscape seem to me most real. All the children in the book are purely imaginary. The old "King Orchard" was a compound of our old orchard in Cavendish and the orchard at Park Corner. "Peg Bowen" was suggested by a half-witted, gypsy-like personage who roamed at large for many years over the Island and was the terror of my childhood. ~ L.M. Montgomery

My grandmother got her law degree from Syracuse University in roughly 1911 and later co-founded with her husband an investment banking firm on Wall Street known as Lebenthal & Co. ~ H. G. Bissinger

Eugen Bleuler (who in 1911 coined the word 'schizophrenia') once said that in the end his patients were stranger to him than the birds in his garden. But if they're strangers to us, what are we to them? (26) ~ Michael Greenberg

And lastly, the political revolutions from 1911 to the present time have done more to bring about tremendous social changes everywhere than even the economic and industrial changes and the new schools. ~ Hu Shih

The center console rattled when it hinged open, and after futilely pawing around for a bottle of
aspirin, Steele settled on the FN Five-seven instead.


Most of the time Steele carried a modified Colt 1911. The .45 was an old gun, and the only thing his father left at the house
before he disappeared. It was Steele's most cherished possession, but not the right weapon for what he had planned ~ Sean Parnell

When I learnt, however, that in 1911 there had been twenty-one regular feminist periodicals in Britain, that there was a feminist book shop, a woman's press, and a woman's bank run by and for women, I could no longer accept that the reason I knew almost nothing about women of the past was because there were so few of them, and they had done so little. ~ Dale Spender

A reporter did a human-interest piece on the Texas Rangers. The reporter recognized the Colt Model 1911 the Ranger was carrying and asked him 'Why do you carry a 45?' The Ranger responded, 'Because they don't make a 46.' ~ Clint Smith

It is always easier to deal with things than with men, and no one can direct his life entirely as he would choose. -Wilbur Wright, 1911 ~ David McCullough

The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. ~ Helen Keller

I am just going outside and may be some time. Reportedly the last words of Lawrence Oates according to Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who commanded the ill-fated expedition to the South Pole 1911/12. ~ Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates

In 1911, an "Amazon" meant any woman rebel - which, to a lot of people, meant any girl who left home and went to college. ~ Jill Lepore

The Cubists' belief in progress was by no means complacent. They saw the new products, the new inventions, the new forms of energy, as weapons with which to demolish the old order. Yet at the same time their interest was profound and not simply declamatory. In this they differed fundamentally from the Futurists. The Futurists saw the machine as a savage god with which they identified themselves. Ideologically they were precursors of fascism: artistically they produced a vulgar form of animated naturalism, which was itself only a gloss on what had already been done in films. 35 Carlo Carra. The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli. 1911 The Cubists felt their way, picture by picture, towards a new synthesis which, in terms of painting, was the philosophical equivalent of the revolution that was taking place in scientific thinking: a revolution which was also dependent on the new materials and the new means of production. ~ John Berger

The decision by the British in 1911 to build New Delhi, without integrating the old city with the new, sealed the fate of Shahjahanabad. From then onwards, purani Dilli would live on but only like an ageing courtesan abandoned by her new suitors, waiting to die. ~ Pavan K. Varma

They lied, you know," said Cpl. Allan Richmond. He hugged the
wall next to Owens. Beside him, PFC Bucky Hatton crouched low, a
Browning 1911 semiautomatic gripped tightly in his hand.
"Who?" asked Bart, glad to be out of the wind and rain, even if it
was only for a short time.
"The assholes who said France was beautiful. ~ Brian W. Matthews

The worst thing about Halloween is, of course, candy corn. It's unbelievable to me. Candy corn is the only candy in the history of America that's never been advertised. And there's a reason. All of the candy corn that was ever made was made in 1911. And so, since nobody eats that stuff, every year there's a ton of it left over. ~ Lewis Black

There are indeed all sorts of men/ who visit here: those who want/ nothing but to talk or hear the soft tones/ of a woman's voice; others prefer/ simply to gaze upon me, my face/ turned from them as they touch/ only themselves. And then there are those,/ of course, whose desires I cannot commit/ to paper. ~ Natasha Trethewey

There was a pretext, albeit slender, that might have prompted Hayek to reach out to Keynes: Keynes had succeeded Edgeworth as editor of the Economic Journal in 1911. But ~ Nicholas Wapshott

They (his Street scene paintings and drawings) originated in the years 1911-14, in one of the loneliest times of my life, during which an agonizing restlessness drove me out onto the streets day and night, which were filled with people and cars. ~ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

About 1911 I had the idea of making for my son, who had just been born, a blanket composed of bits of fabric like those I had seen in the houses of Russian peasants. When it was finished, the arrangement of the pieces of material seemed to me to evoke cubist conceptions and we then tried to apply the same process to other objects and paintings. ~ Sonia Delaunay

With the exception of gravitation and radioactivity, all of the phenomena known to physicists and chemists in 1911 have their ultimate explanation in the laws of quantum electrodynamics. ~ Richard P. Feynman

I was born May 31, 1911, in Paris. My parents owned a small cheese shop, and my maternal grandfather was a carpentry worker. I thus came from what is commonly known as the working class. ~ Maurice Allais

Right here in New York, people are struggling in working conditions not much safer or fairer than the sweatshops of 1911. ~ Eric Schneiderman

Ultimately, the salon, Steffens noted, helped change the public perception of Greenwich Village, although hardly in the manner Dodge had hoped. What had been a neighborhood better known for cheap rents and no shortage of decrepit apartments was becoming almost chic, a kind of Latin Quarter in Manhattan. Small theaters and art galleries sprang up, and midtown shoppers and tourists took the time to cruise through the Village for a look at the new trendsetters. Steffens did not recall it as being exceptionally fashionable back in 1911, judging his own lifestyle to be "Bohemian, but not the fake sort." If it was not fake, it was hardly genuine, either. Steffens was not about to starve in Greenwich Village. ~ Peter Hartshorn

Better known as the Secret of the Golden Flower, this is a famous neidan text that the Western world came to know through Richard Wilhelm's 1929 translation. The Chinese text used by Wilhelm was edited by Zhanran Huizhen zi in 1921. Besides this, at least five more versions are available, all of which date to the late Qing dynasty (1644-1911) and are ascribed to Lu Dongbin, who revealed them through spirit writing. ~ Monica Esposito

In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated. ~ Joe Wurzelbacher

U.S. Supreme Court on May 15, 1911, couched its decision in these clear terms: 'Seven men and a corporate machine have conspired against their fellow citizens. For the safety of the Republic we now decree that this dangerous conspiracy must be ended by November 15th. ~ Jim Marrs

To destroy an offender cannot benefit society so much as to redeem him. (The Flying Girl, 1911) ~ L. Frank Baum

Inspired by the punched railway tickets of the time, an inventor by the name of Herman Hollerith devised a system of punched manila cards to store information, and a machine, which he called the Hollerith Machine, to count and sort them. Hollerith was awarded a patent in 1889, and the government adopted the Hollerith Machine for the 1890 census. No one had ever seen anything like it. Wrote one awestruck observer, "The apparatus works as unerringly as the mills of the Gods, but beats them hollow as to speed." Another, however, reasoned that the invention was of limited use: "As no one will ever use it but governments, the inventor will not likely get very rich." This prediction, which Hollerith clipped and saved, would not prove entirely correct. Hollerith's firm merged with several others in 1911 to become the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. A few years later it was renamed - to International Business Machines, or IBM. ~ Brian Christian

One way was Taylorism. Frederick W. Taylor had been a steel company foreman who closely analyzed every job in the mill, and worked out a system of finely detailed division of labor, increased mechanization, and piecework wage systems, to increase production and profits. In 1911, he published a book on "scientific management" that became powerfully influential in the business world. Now management could control every detail of the worker's energy and time in the factory. As Harry Braverman said (Labor and Monopoly Capital), the purpose of Taylorism was to make workers interchangeable, able to do the simple tasks that the new division of labor required - like standard parts divested of individuality and humanity, bought and sold as commodities. ~ Howard Zinn

The New Deal began on March 25th, 1911. The day that the Triangle factory burned. ~ Frances Perkins

The 1911 pistol remains the service pistol of choice in the eyes of those who understand the problem. Back when we audited the FBI academy in 1947, I was told that I ought not to use my pistol in their training program because it was not fair. Maybe the first thing one should demand of his sidearm is that it be unfair. ~ Jeff Cooper

In 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs, having failed at everything else, decided to write a novel. He was then in his mid-thirties, married with two children, barely supporting his family as the agent for a pencil-sharpener business. ~ Michael Dirda

The power of the big fish in general to regroup is hardly restricted to banking. When Standard Oil was broken up in 1911, the immediate effect was to replace a national monopoly with a number of regional monopolies controlled by many of the same Wall Street interests. Ultimately, the regional monopolies regrouped: In 1999 Exxon (formerly Standard Oil Company of New Jersey) and Mobil (formerly Standard Oil Company of New York) reconvened in one of the largest mergers in US history. In 1961 Kyso (formerly Standard Oil of Kentucky) was purchased by Chevron (formerly Standard Oil of California); and in the 1960s and 1970s Sohio (formerly Standard Oil of Ohio) was bought by British Petroleum (BP), which then, in 1998, merged with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana).

The tale of AT&T is similar. As the result of an antitrust settlement with the government, on January 1, 1984, AT&T spun off its local operations so as to create seven so-called Baby Bells. But the Baby Bells quickly began to merge and regroup. By 2006 four of the Baby Bells were reunited with their parent company AT&T, and two others (Bell Atlantic and NYNEX) merged to form Verizon.

So the hope that you can make a banking breakup stick (even if it were to be achieved) flies in the face of some pretty daunting experience. Also, note carefully a major political fact: The time when traditional reformers had enough power to make tough banking regulation really work was the time when ~ Gar Alperovitz

All the candy corn that was ever made was made in 1911. ~ Lewis Black

The intriguing history of American applied toponymy includes a few notoriously unpopular sweeping decisions a year after President Benjamin Harrison created the Board on Geographic Names in 1890. Harrison acted at the behest of several government agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, which was responsible for mapping the nation's coastline, harbors, and coastal waterways. Troubled by inconsistencies in spelling, board members voted to replace centre with center, drop the ugh from names ending in orough, and shorten the suffix burgh to burg. Overnight, Centreview (in Mississippi) became Centerview, Isleborough (in Maine) became Isleboro, and Pittsburgh (in Pennsylvania) lost its final h and a lot of civic pride. The city was chartered in 1816 as Pittsburg, but the Post Office Department added the extra letter sometime later. Although both spellings were used locally and the shorter version had been the official name, many Pittsburghers complained bitterly about the cost of reprinting stationery and repainting signs. Making the spelling consistent with Harrisburg, they argued, was hardly a good reason for truncating the Iron City's moniker--although Harrisburg was the state capital, it was a smaller and economically less important place. Local officials protested that the board had exceeded its authority. The twenty-year crusade to restore the final h bore fruit in 1911, when the board reversed itself--but only for Pittsburgh. In ~ Mark Monmonier

Jerusalem Maiden is a page-turning and thought-provoking novel. Extraordinary sensory detail vividly conjures another time and place; heroine Esther Kaminsky's poignant struggle transcends time and place. The ultimate revelation here: for many women, if not most, 2011 is no different than 1911, but triumph is nonetheless possible. ~ Binnie Kirshenbaum