Historical Fact Quotes

Reading myth as crystallizing historical fact was a common
approach in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But it is an
approach to myth that is fraught with problems. It ignores or
takes insufficient account of how mythic narratives are exploited for political purposes. ~ Helen Morales

Historical fact: People stopped being people in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joy-sticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

But it is a historical fact that the Jews, and no one else, gave the world the Bible. It is a historical fact that the Jews introduced to the pagan world the idea of a God who demanded righteousness......Even most of the books of the New Testament were written by Jews. ~ Harold S. Kushner

Oh, remember that as certain as the historical fact, He died on Calvary; so certain is the prophetic fact, He shall reign, and you and I will stand there. I durst not touch that subject. Take it into your own hearts, and think about it, a kingdom, a judgment-seat, a crown, a gathered universe; separation, decision, execution of the sentence. ~ Alexander MacLaren

It's my own fault, really. For believing in fairy tales. Not that I ever mistook them for actual historical fact, or anything. But I did grow up believing that for every girl, there's a prince out there somewhere. All she has to do is find him. Then it's on with the
happily ever after. So you can only imagine what happened when I found out. That my prince really IS one. A prince. No, I really mean it. He's an actual PRINCE. ~ Meg Cabot

Kant was right; morality did in the eighteenth century, as a matter of historical fact, presuppose something very like the teleological scheme of God, freedom and happiness as the final crown of virtue which Kant propounds. Detach morality from that framework and you will no longer have morality; or, at the very least, you will have radically transformed its character. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

While what I write is always largely consistent with the records that remain I freely admit that where historical fact proves a barrier to invention, I simply move a detail a little one way or another. ~ Sara Sheridan

In the late 1860s, Myra Bradwell petitioned for a law license and argued that the 14th Amendment protected her right to practice. The Illinois Supreme Court rejected her petition, ruling that because she was married she had no legal right to operate on her own. When she challenged the ruling, Justice Joseph Bradley wrote in his decision, "It certainly cannot be affirmed, as a historical fact, that [the right to choose one's profession] has ever been established as one of the fundamental privileges and immunities of the sex." Rather, Bradley argued, "The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother."40 Meanwhile, ~ Rebecca Traister

Jeremy Corbyns actions have led a significant percentage of his followers to believe that his words serve a higher purpose than the complete religious or social indoctrination of the British people. He deliberately disregards the historical fact that multiculturalism only works when both parties are willing to find a compromise they can live with. When multiculturalism becomes a matter of sacrificing your way of life to accommodate mass migration, it paves the way to genocide. ~ Anita B. Sulser PhD

Whether considered as a doctrine, or as an historical fact, or as a movemement, socialism, if it really remains socialism, cannotbe brought into harmony with the dogmas of the Catholic church ... Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are expressions implying a contradiction in terms. ~ Pope Pius XI

Everybody wants to talk about sectarian conflicts of the war in Iraq, but the fact of the matter is, Sunnis have lived with Shias in harmony more in the confines of Iraq, in that land, than they have been in conflict. That's an historical fact. ~ Jack Keane

He judges the present time in virtue of a meta-historical fact, and the incursion of this event into the present is the only force capable of throwing off the dead weight of social and political institutions which are gradually crushing the life out of our present civilization. ~ Jacques Ellul

But we cannot just take this historical fact for granted. We must make it live. ~ Wendell Willkie

Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around. ~ Jean M. Auel

they play fast and loose with both historical fact and traditional religious interpretation in order to understand their past as they believe it must be understood ~ Mary R. Habeck

WARNING
Any Relationship to any historical fact WHATSOEVER is entirely coincidental. You have been WARNED ~ Cressida Cowell

It's like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five ... Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066. ~ David Attenborough

Certainly it is not to invent explanations which dismiss the chief political and historical fact of the matter: that the forgery is being believed. This fact is more important than the (historically speaking, secondary) circumstance that it is forgery. ~ Hannah Arendt

It is a matter of public shame that while we have now commemorated our hundredth anniversary, not one in every ten children attending Public schools throughout the colonies is acquainted with a single historical fact about Australia. ~ Henry Lawson

Did you find anything?"
"Nothing of interest. People fleeing. Poorly trained guards unable to believe an attack would occur within a royal knowe, thus proving that they possess an insufficient grasp of historical fact. ~ Seanan McGuire

I should have known better. Pro-life arguments are now based on scientific evidence and the pro-choice arguments are not. That is a cultural, historical fact. ~ Stanley Fish

In learning general relativity, and then in teaching it to classes at Berkeley and MIT, I became dissatisfied with what seemed to be the usual approach to the subject. I found that in most textbooks geometric ideas were given a starring role, so that a student...would come away with an impression that this had something to do with the fact that space-time is a Riemannian [curved] manifold. Of course, this was Einstein's point of view, and his preeminent genius necessarily shapes our understanding of the theory he created. However, I believe that the geometrical approach has driven a wedge between general relativity and [Quantum Field Theory]. As long as it could be hoped, as Einstein did hope, that matter would eventually be understood in geometrical terms, it made sense to give Riemannian geometry a primary role in describing the theory of gravitation. But now the passage of time has taught us not to expect that the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions can be understood in geometrical terms, and too great an emphasis on geometry can only obscuret he deep connections between gravitation and the rest of physics...[My] book sets out the theory of gravitation according to what I think is its inner logic as a branch of physics, and not according to its historical development. It is certainly a historical fact that when Albert Einstein was working out general relativity, there was at hand a preexisting mathematical formalism, that of Riemannian geometry, that he could an ~ Steven Weinberg

Through its imperialist system Britain brought about untold suffering of millions of people. And this is an historical fact. To be able to admit this would increase the respect, you know, which we have for British institutions. ~ Nelson Mandela

The answer is not to expand Lies My Teacher Told Me to cover every distortion and error in history as traditionally taught, to say nothing of the future lies yet to be developed. That approach would make me the arbitrator - I who surely still unknowingly accept all manner of hoary legends as historical fact. Instead, the answer is for all of us to become, in Postman and Weingartner's vulgar term, 'crap detectors' - independent learners who can sift through arguments and evidence and make reasoned judgements. Then we will have learned how to learn, as Postman and Weingartner put it, and neither a one-sided textbook nor a one-sided critique of textbooks will be able to confuse us. ~ James W. Loewen

Philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values. So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, objective code of ethics could be discovered or defined. The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system on observations of what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the questions of: why they chose to do it and why he evaluated them as noble and wise. Most philosophers took the existence of ethics for granted, as the given, as a historical fact, and were not concerned with discovering its metaphysical cause or objective validation. Many of them attempted to break the traditional monopoly of mysticism in the field of ethics and, allegedly, to define a rational, scientific, nonreligious morality. But their attempts consisted of trying to justify them on social grounds, ~ Ayn Rand

Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed ~ Paulo Freire

In Russia, the land of spectral ideas and disembodied aspirations, many brave minds have turned away at last from the vain and endless conflict to the one great historical fact of the land. They turned to autocracy for the peace of their patriotic conscience as a weary unbeliever, touched by grace, turns to the faith of his fathers for the blessing of spiritual rest. Like other Russians before him, Razumov, in conflict with himself, felt the touch of grace upon his forehead. ~ Joseph Conrad

The depreciation of historical fact is deeply, and probably functionally, ingrained in the ideology of the scientific profession, the same profession that places the highest of all values upon factual details of other sorts. ~ Thomas S. Kuhn

A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set us a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist. Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific text-book, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical fact. ~ George Orwell

Some of you from outside the South may be wondering why we're emphasizing this irrefutable historical fact that everyone should know so strongly already. Well, it's because there has been an unfortunate tendency down here to deflect as much attention as possible away from the atrocities that the South was responsible for before, during, and after the war, and to focus on the glory, the courage, and all that kind of shit instead. We name roads, schools, and parks after Confederate leaders. We erect statues in their honor. We revere them and honor them, all while ignoring the gigantic racist elephant in the room. 4 Look, it ain't nothin' wrong with glory and courage, and it's completely legitimate to acknowledge the military greatness of some of the Confederacy's leaders, but what's not okay is to do so without also acknowledging their complicity in and tacit acceptance of one of the single most reprehensible and inhumane practices in human history. 5 It's disingenuous. It's cheap. It's cowardly. We gotta cut that shit out.

So, yes, we fought a war for slavery, and because sometimes the universe gets some shit right (waterfalls, potatoes, Scarlett Johansson), we lost. Which is another thing we apparently need to remind some of our fellow Southerners of. Not only did we fight a war for slavery, but we got our asses whupped. Until we can all agree to accept this and act accordingly, we're never going to be able to move on. It's nothing to be proud of, y'all - it reall ~ Trae Crowder

Just recognizing and naming that many of the things we treat as historical fact are stories can help erode their power over our sense of identity and thinking. If they are stories rather than "truth," we can write new stories that better represent the country we aspire to be. Our new stories can be about diverse people working together to overcome challenges and make life better for all, about figuring out how to live sustainably on this one planet we share, and on deep respect for cooperation, fairness, and equity instead of promoting hyper-competitive individualism. ~ Annie Leonard

It's a historical fact that the Stasi did horrible things and that they monitored a lot of people in East Germany, but I find it very interesting to think about the importance of the Western secret services back then and still working today. ~ Christian Schwochow

The historical fact is that cinema was constituted as such by becoming narrative, by presenting a story, and by rejecting its other possible directions. The approximation which follows is that, from that point, the sequences of images and even each image, a single shot, are assimilated to propositions or rather oral utterances [ ... ]. ~ Gilles Deleuze

In the U.S., diversity is a politically correct slogan. In India, it is a historical fact. Much as we in the West may resent it, India has a lot to teach us when it comes to religious tolerance. ~ Gary Weiss

Thus, it is a political axiom that power follows property. But it is now a historical fact that the means of production are fast becoming the monopolistic property of Big Business and Big Government. Therefore, if you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible. Or take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you want to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society's merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government. ~ Aldous Huxley

That the apostolic office is temporary, is a plain historical fact. ~ Charles Hodge

The idea of a sandwich as a snack goes back to Roman times. Scandinavians perfected the technique with the Danish open-faced sandwich, or smorroebrod, consisting of thinly sliced, buttered bread and many delectable toppings. ~ DeeDee Stovel

In historical fact, all of history's despots, combined, never managed to get things done as well as this rambunctious, self-critical civilization of free and sovereign citizens, who have finally broken free of worshipping a ruling class and begun thinking for themselves. Democracy can seem frustrating and messy at times, but it delivers. ~ David Brin

The occurrence of successive forms of life upon our globe is an historical fact, which cannot be disputed; and the relation of these successive forms, as stages of evolution of the same type, is established in various cases. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

The claim at the heart of this book has been carefully researched by several generations of scholars and is orthodox in academic circles, if not beyond. Christians under the Roman Empire were neither constantly persecuted nor martyred in huge numbers for their faith. They were prosecuted from time to time for alleged sedition, holding illegal meetings or refusing to sacrifice to the emperor. They were, like other convicts, sometimes tortured and executed in horrible ways. They seem to have been regarded by many Romans with distaste as a particularly silly superstition. But Christian stories of thousands of individual and mass martyrdoms over centuries have at best a limited basis in historical fact, and in many cases are sheer fiction. ~ Teresa Morgan

Mature development - does not come from severing the early infantile sense of unity with the Mother, but from reestablishing it. The holistic point of ancient women's religion was that the Mother is not one's personal maternal parent solely, but the entire community of women, the entire living earth, and beyond this the entire surrounding and ongoing cosmic process. One could not be alienated because one is always within this process, as it is always within the self. Unless, of course, such knowledge is suppressed from the outside, by patriarchal conditioning.
Truly, our very sanity is at stake with continuing patriarchy and the denial of the cosmic self - the Goddess - within us all, and within her.
The Great Mother was the projection of the self-experience of groups of highly aware and productive women who were the founders of much of human culture. In this sense the Great Mother is not simply a mental archetype, but a historical fact. ~ Monica Sjoo Barbara Mor

Spain, for so long a mere geographical expression, was somehow transformed into an historical fact. ~ J.H. Elliott

They waited for the elevator. " Most people love butterflies and hate moth," he said. "But moths are more interesting - more engaging."
"They're destructive."
"Some are, a lot are, but they live in all kinds of ways. Just like we do." Silence for one floor.
"There's a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears," he offered. "That's all they eat or drink."
"What kind of tears? Whose tears?"
"The tears of large land mammals, about our size.
The old definition of moth was, 'anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wages any other thing.'
It was a verb for destruction too ... ~ Thomas Harris

A final point is the fact that discrimination based on presumed inborn and immutable characteristics (race) tends to be stronger and more inflexible than ethnic discrimination which is not based on 'racial' differences. Members of a presumed race cannot change their assumed inherited traits, while ethnic groups can change their culture and, ultimately, ~ Thomas Hylland Eriksen

It is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Our current contempt for poverty stems from information overload--this is the enabler---our over education as privileged people-- perhaps the real culprit--and our secret assurance that we ourselves owe no one anything beyond the exhausting daily round. We will defend our lack of idealism to anyone and be horrifyingly well received in this age. Indeed, many so called financial "philosophies" are in fact nothing more than elaborate justification for one petty selfishness after the next. ~ John Thomas Allen

I'm fascinated by the fact that we can't grasp anything about time. ~ Anthony Hopkins

[The] first postulate of the Principle of Uniformity, namely, that the laws of nature are invariant with time, is not peculiar to that principle or to geology, but is a common denominator of all science. In fact, instead of being an assumption or an ad hoc hypothesis, it is simply a succinct summation of the totality of all experimental and observational evidence. ~ M. King Hubbert

It's weird to talk about these things as if they are fact since they were in a dream, but the fact that everyone experienced it in precisely the same way made it feel concrete. What is reality except for the things that people universally experience the same way? The Dream, in that sense, was very, very real. ~ Hank Green

Stuff and nonsense: you must regard this deviation
from your plan as part of the adventure that you sought
when you decided embark on it in the first place. True
adventure does not follow well-trodden paths. Absence
of certainty is its essence. People, like you and I, who
choose to shun the mundane must not only expect, but
also enjoy and profit from surprises. ~ Adam Yamey

[ ... ] all of the good-intentioners who wanted to 'do something for the common people' were insignificant, because the 'common people' were able to do things for themselves, and highly likely to, as soon as they learned the fact. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Summertime, I think, is a collective unconscious. We all remember the notes that made up the song of the ice cream man; we all know what it feels like to brand our thighs on a playground slide that's heated up like a knife in a fire; we all have lain on our backs with our eyes closed and our hearts beating across the surface of our lids, hoping that this day will stretch just a little longer than the last one, when in fact it's all going in the other direction. ~ Jodi Picoult

She might, in fact, go crazy, as has happened to a lot of people who break rules. Not the people who play at rebellion but really only solidify their already dominant positions in society ... but those who take some larger action that disrupts the social order. Who try to push through the doors that are usually closed to them. They do sometimes go crazy, these people, because the world is telling them not to want the things they want. It can seem saner to give up
but then one goes insane from giving up. ~ E. Lockhart

The real power of this book comes from its documentation from major sources. In fact, you will quickly discover that most of my documents about Jewish Supremacism are from Jewish sources. They argue more convincingly for my point of view than anything I could write. I encourage you to go to the sources that I quote and check them out for yourself. In this book I take you along with me on a fascinating journey of discovery in a forbidden subject. I urge you to courageously keep an open mind while you explore the topics ahead, for that is the only way any of us can find the truth. ~ David Duke

We had enough years in front of us to be serious and grown-up and respectable. Why rush it? But on the other hand we always complained when teachers and other adults treated us as kids. In fact there was nothing that annoyed me more. So it was a frustrating situation. What we needed was a two-sided badge that said 'Mature' on one side and 'Childish' on the other. Then at any moment we could turn it to whatever side we felt like being and the adults could treat us accordingly. ~ John Marsden

If the only effect of these rampant esteem-inflating biases was to make people feel good about themselves, they would not be a problem. In fact, evidence shows that people who hold pervasive positive illusions about themselves, their abilities, and their future prospects are mentally healthier, happier, and better liked than people who lack such illusions.20 But such biases can make people feel that they deserve more than they do, thereby setting the stage for endless disputes with other people who feel equally over-entitled. ~ Jonathan Haidt

The simple fact of the matter is, as I know everyone in this room knows, that the recession that this country faced when this President took office was the worst since the Great Depression. ~ Jay Carney

A man should not glory in what he already knows but in what he has yet to learn. ~ Robert Stephen Parry

There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. ~ William S. Burroughs

Miss Edith Clay brightened the room with her presence. Just from walking through the door, she'd made the room a happier place. This was true despite his having spent the last several months assuring himself his recollection of her had to be incorrect. His recollection was not incorrect. It was appallingly accurate. ~ Carolyn Jewel

The first time I took Reed hunting was when he was six years old. I took him on the last day of duck season, and we pulled right up to the water. I gave him a BB gun, and I had my shotgun. Our property was a haven for wood ducks, so that's what I wanted to shoot so he could see what made this spot so special. Wouldn't you know it? The first two ducks that flew in our sights were a mallard drake and hen. We were on a bank instead of in a blind, which was unusual, but the ducks floated down and lit about ten feet in front of us. More than anything, I showed Reed the power of a duck call, because the water in front of us was only about two inches deep. I couldn't believe the ducks were sitting there.
"I'm going to count to three," I whispered to Reed. "Get your BB gun. When I get to three, you fire.
"One, two, three!" I said.
Reed shot his BB gun, and I fired my shotgun at the same time. The drake never knew what hit him, and Reed immediately looked down at his BB gun. It was like he was thinking, What is this thing? I don't think he even realized I killed the duck with my shotgun. Reed was so excited that I don't believe he realized that I had shot, despite the fact of the booming sound. He looked back at me, and I told him, "Boy, you put a good shot on him, son. ~ Jase Robertson

I had written the sentence, 'You mustn't think that the evolution that gave rise to us was the only evolutionary possibility on this planet ... that cultural developments could be shaped through the mediation of another animal species. If the biological conditions were favorable, some civilization not inferior to our own could arise in the depths of the sea ... Would it do the same stupid things mankind has done? Would it invite the same historical calamities? What would we say if some animal other than man declared that its education and its numbers gave it the sole right to occupy the entire world and hold sway over all creation? ~ Karel Capek

He tried not to hug her too hard, even though she was kind of hugging him too hard. In fact, she was pretty much crushing his rib cage. He didn't mind, though. ~ Cassandra Clare

Human beings have evolved to be extremely good at identifying other individual humans. The race's survival depends on it. A guard lets the wrong person through the gate, and a whole settlement is wiped out. There are a million ways to tell two human beings apart. Not just appearance, either. Gait, odor, pheromones, speech patterns, dialect, nervous habits... even the way people breathe. Even parents of identical twins have little difficulty telling them apart, despite the fact that they are genetically identical and were raised in exactly the same environment, because of tiny differences in appearance and behavior that accrue as the result of differing experiences. The ability of one human to recognize another by appearance is especially acute when it comes to heterosexual males observing nubile females. There is nothing on Earth men pay more attention to than the appearance of sexually attractive young women. ~ Robert Kroese

The true story is that black people need to tell their history. Very few films are made by black people about slavery. That itself is a crime because slavery is a very important historical event that has held our people hostage. Forget white people's role in it. In the end what's important is black people remain and live with the scars and psychological issues. ~ Haile Gerima

But the fact of the matter is that everyone has an explicit or implicit set of ideas and beliefs as to the essential nature of the world. ~ M. Scott Peck

When I played football, I liked being a goalkeeper or a midfielder. I was probably better at cricket. I would be a very good cricketer if I was a professional now. I think I would probably have been the best, in fact. ~ Usain Bolt

She allowed herself to relax and enjoy the wave of applause breaking over them. Marta glanced at her mother, who had tears running down her face, but her smile was the happy one Marta hadn't seen in a long time. She no longer looked drawn and sad, but the pretty Mutti her Vati had adored.
A hand brushed her head. But when she turned to look, no one stood close to that side of her. But she caught a whiff of a familiar scent, cigars- and-Vati smell, and knew in her heart her father had come to listen to her sing. ~ Debra Holland

The poet was, of course, always present to assist the debater. Though the logic of Lewis's Christian apologetics may be fallible, the imagination of the writing with its brilliantly-conceived analogies is itself enough to win a reader to his side. As Austin Farrer expressed it, We think we are listening to an argument; in fact we are presented with a vision; and it is the vision that carries conviction. ~ Humphrey Carpenter

It is a curious fact, but one which all experience owns, that people do not desire so much to appear better, as to appear different from what they really are. ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon

I started with Apple, in a pre-Windows era when PCs seemed to involve more of a learning curve. But the fact that I'm yet to acquire so much as a single virus still seems a very good thing. ~ William Gibson

I would like to register the fact that this fucking sucks," she said.
"Noted," he said, shutting the gate. ~ Alexandra Bracken

Why complain? Does it solve your problems? No. In fact, it attracts problems; compounds them. Complaining attitude carries an unconscious negative charge attached to it. A constantly whining person invariably gets drowned in an ocean of negativity. Complaining can not work as a strategy as we all have finite time and energy and when we complain we lose our valuable time and also our mental peace and happiness. Your attitude defines you; if you are a complainer then you are problem-oriented; you would attract problems, and if you focus on grappling with the problems instead of passive complaining then you are solution-oriented, you would find answers to your problems.

Complaints are akin to the dark clouds that shroud the beaming sun in your life, and the worst part is that these clouds are not capable of even producing a drizzle to wash away your agonies. If you feel like complaining about anything, from your present life situation to any affliction bothering you and making you unhappy, think of your many blessings and rejoice on them. There are countless millions in this world who would sacrifice anything to be in your shoes. ~ Sanjeev Ahluwalia

If you let other people do some of the work that we ask ourselves to do, if you allow for the fact that we are ourselves dependent on and distributed over and in a way made up out of the world and processes around us then we can explain certain questions that we otherwise cannot explain and moreover we discover that we are not aliens in a strange world. ~ Alva Noe

The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets. ~ W. H. Auden

The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it from the moment you are alive you are bound to be concerned with love because love is not just something that happens to you: It is a certain special way of being alive. Love is in fact an intensification of life a completeness a fullness a wholeness of life. ~ Thomas Merton

The fact that your patient gets well does not prove that your diagnosis was correct. ~ Samuel James Meltzer

Hey, he's awesome. A little unstable, but awesome. We got along great." Adrian opened the door to the building we were seeking. "And he's a badass in his way too. I mean, any other guy who wore scarves like that? He'd be laughed out of this school. Not Abe. He'd beat someone almost as badly as you would. In fact ... " Adrian's voice turned nervous. I gave him a surprised look.
"In fact what?"
"Well ... Abe said he liked me. But he also made it clear what he'd do to me if I ever hurt you or did anything bad." Adrian grimaced. "In fact, he described what he'd do in very graphic detail. Then, just like that, he switched to some random, happy topic. I like the guy, but he's scary. ~ Richelle Mead

So what was in this building before historical materialism?'
'Before what?'
'You know, back then, under the old regime?'
'Oh. Under the old regime my master lived here.'
'A bourgeois?'
'You're a bourgeois yourself! He wasn't a bourgeois. He was a marshal of the nobility.'
'So he was a proletarian, then?'
'You're a proletarian yourself! I told you loud and clear, a marshal.'
The conversation with the clever dvornik with a vague understanding of the class structure of society would have lasted god knows how long if the young man hadn't made a decisive move. ~ Ilya Ilf

I'm completely aware of the fact that I'm a control freak. ~ Paul Thomas Anderson

In morals, theosophy builds its teachings on the unity, seeing in each form the expression of a common life, and therefore the fact that what injures one injures all. To do evil i.e., to throw poison into the life-blood of humanity, is a crime against the unity. ~ Annie Besant

After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great. To escape the cognitive mode of experience, to transcend the accident of one's moment of being. There are other advantages, more difficult to speak of, things which ancient sources only hint at and which I myself only understood after the fact. ~ Donna Tartt

What is assumed to be the materialisation of the inner truth of the self is in fact an idealisation of the material - objectified - traces of consumer choices. ~ Zygmunt Bauman

One of the biggest issues with renewables right now is the fact that if the wind isn't blowing, if the sun isn't shining, we don't have energy. Many people are working on storage technology so when the wind isn't blowing, we can use the energy stored in our giant batteries, essentially. But what happens if we don't have enough stored energy? ~ Katharine Hayhoe

Power, after all, is not just military strength. It is the social power that comes from democracy, the cultural power that comes from freedom of expression and research, the personal power that entitles every Arab citizen to feel that he or she is in fact a citizen, and not just a sheep in some great shepherd's flock. ~ Edward Said

An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it's more available to you. ~ Charlie Munger

The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful woman who does not practice dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to attempt it with them. – But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess, together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness, treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

We are deeply conscious of the fact that our north and west must be developed. ~ Lionel Murphy

It is a fact that we are an ancient civilization and that up to the medieval times we were among the most advanced civilizations. The putrefaction of our civilization perhaps set in a good thousand years ago, from which time our contribution to the world went steadily downhill. But then, a glorious past can hardly be a consolation for a sorry present. That the Indus Valley civilization at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa had glorious town planning over 2000 years ago is cold consolation for our wretched present-day cities, towns and villages. While other civilizations have gone on to build upon their past, we are merely living off it and, what is more, we have been doing it for over a thousand years! ~ V. Raghunathan

Kerr found that a spinning black hole would not collapse into a pointlike star, as Schwarzschild assumed, but would collapse into a spinning ring. Anyone unfortunate enough to hit the ring would perish; but someone falling into the ring would not die, but would actually fall through. But instead of winding up on the other side of the ring, he or she would pass through the Einstein-Rosen Bridge and wind up in another universe. In other words, the spinning black hole is the rim of Alice's Looking Glass.

If he or she were to move around the spinning ring a second time, he or she would enter yet another universe. In fact, repeated entry into the spinning ring would put a person in different parallel universes, much like hitting the "up" button on an elevator. In principle, there could be an infinite number of universes, each stacked on top of each other. "Pass through this magic ring and-presto!-you're in a completely different universe where radius and mass are negative!" Kerr wrote.

There is an important catch, however. Black holes are examples of "nontransversable wormholes"; that is, passing through the event horizon is a one-way trip. Once you pass through the event horizon and the Kerr ring, you cannot go backward through the ring and out through the event horizon. ~ Michio Kaku