Vecchietti Device Quotes

... everything may be done in a right way or a wrong; the right way is to do it as well as we can, as in God's sight; the wrong is to do it in a self-seeking spirit, which either leads us to neglect it to follow out some device of our own before and after the doing. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

But the next generation, like this baby in the airport, will never know what life is like without a device. This raises a couple of questions: What does the future hold for this baby? And can she beat me at Candy Crush? ~ Lauren Graham

I'm a plotter. A thinker, a note-maker, a mapper and a flow-charter. I'm up for using any device that will teach me more about the people I'm writing about and their story. ~ Nick Earls

When a printed book - whether a recently published scholarly history or a two-hundred-year-old Victorian novel - is transferred to an electronic device connected to the Internet, it turns into something very like a Web site. Its words become wrapped in all the distractions of the networked computer. Its links and other digital enhancements propel the reader hither and yon. It loses what the late John Updike called its "edges" and dissolves into the vast, rolling waters of the Net. The linearity of the printed book is shattered, along with the calm attentiveness it encourages in the reader. ~ Nicholas Carr

The rivalry of the European states in constantly increasing their forces has reduced them to the necessity of having recourse to universal military service, since by that means the greatest possible number of soldiers is obtained at the least possible expense. Germany first hit on this device. And directly one state adopted it the others were obliged to do the same. And by this means all citizens are under arms to support the iniquities practiced upon them; all citizens have become their own
oppressors. ~ Leo Tolstoy

She had a pocket recorder and was taking all this down: every five seconds, as the law required, the thing went teep. Will you describe the therapy you're employing please, teep and explain the role this device plays in it? Don't tell me how it teep works, that's in your report, but what it does. Teep for instance, how does its use differ from the Elektroson or the trancap? ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Increasingly, people seem to interpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling – the incomprehensible should cause suspicion, not admiration. Possibly this results from the mistaken belief that using a mysterious device confers [extra] power on the user. ~ Niklaus Wirth

It was some kind of cosmic switching device, routing the traffic of the stars through unimaginable dimensions of space and time. He was passing through a Grand Central Station of the galaxy. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

They don't make poles long enough for me want to touch Microsoft products, and I don't want any mass-marketed game-playing device or Windows appliance near my desk or on my network. This is my workbench, dammit, it's not a pretty box to impress people with graphics and sounds. When I work at this system up to 12 hours a day, I'm profoundly uninterested in what user interface a novice user would prefer. ~ Erik Naggum

PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I know that my tendency is to be linear, and I'm trying to find ways to subvert that. And so in 'Bellocq's Ophelia' my device for subverting it was to tell the story and then to tell it again; it always circles back to this one moment, and it's not linear, but it's round in that way, and much of 'Native Guard' is like that. ~ Natasha Trethewey

I'm only asking you to stop every so often and turn off your mobile device, put down the Angry Birds and the Words with Friends and take a moment. Stop to look up and look around. Pause and check in with yourself - and spend a moment there. ~ Maria Shriver

The discovery of the Quantized Hall Effect (QHE) was the result of systematic measurements on silicon field effect transistors - the most important device in microelectronics. ~ Klaus Von Klitzing

An ongoing challenge for Australia is ensuring equity of access to technology. Since the decline in federal funding, many schools are reverting to bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs and this puts the onus back on families to fund devices. ~ Susan Mann

[A living organism] ... feeds upon negative entropy ... Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (= fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment. ~ Erwin Schrodinger

Middle-class Americans might be invited to join a new elite by attacks against the corruption of the established rich. The New Yorker Cadwallader Colden, in his Address to the Freeholders in 1747, attacked the wealthy as tax dodgers unconcerned with the welfare of others (although he himself was wealthy) and spoke for the honesty and dependability of "the midling rank of mankind" in whom citizens could best trust "our liberty & Property." This was to become a critically important rhetorical device for the rule of the few, who would speak to the many of "our" liberty, "our" property, "our" country. ~ Howard Zinn

UNIVAC: a device, which contained 20,000 vacuum tubes, occupied 1,500 square feet and weighed 40 tons; there was also a laptop version weighing 27 tons. ~ Dave Barry

Telephones in 2020 will be archaic, relics of a bygone era-like transistor radios are today. Telephony, which will be entirely IP-based by then, will be a standard communications chip on many devices. We'll probably carry some kind of screen-based reading device that will perform this function, though I assume when we want to communicate verbally, we'll do so through a tiny, earplug-based device. ~ Josh Quittner

the final revelation comes when you look at these City-men on the train; for you realize that for them, the business of escaping is complicated by the fact that they think they are the prison. An astounding situation! Imagine a large castle on an island, with almost inescapable dungeons. The jailor has installed every device to prevent the prisoners escaping, and he has taken one final precaution: that of hypnotizing the prisoners, and then suggesting to them that they and the prison are one. When one of the prisoners awakes to the fact that he would like to be free, and suggests this to his fellow prisoners, they look at him with surprise and say: Tree from what? We are the castle.' What a situation! ~ Colin Wilson

Pierre Eliot Trudeau's gift of an official policy of multiculturalism appeared in our midst in a period of rapid influx of third world immigrants into Canada, as well as in a moment of growing intensity of the old English-French rivalry....In this context the proclamation of multiculturalism could be seen as a diffusing or muting device for francophone national aspirations, as much as a way of coping with the non-European immigrants' arrival. It also sidelined the claims of Canada's aboriginal population, which had displayed a propensity toward armed struggles for land claims, as exemplified by the American Indian Movement (AIM). The reduction of these groups' demands into cultural demands was obviously helpful to the nationhood of Canada with its hegemonic anglo-Canadian national culture....It is not an accident that Bissoondath, who confuses between antiracism and multiculturalism, should fall for a political discourse of assimilation which keeps the so-called immigrants in place through a constantly deferred promise....As the focus shifts from processes of exclusion and marginalization to ethnic identities and their lack of adaptiveness, it is forgotten that these officially multicultural ethnicities, so embraced or rejected, are themselves the constructs of colonial - orientalist and racist - discourses. ~ Himani Bannerji

I have discovered that a screw-shaped device such as this, if it is well made from starched linen, will rise in the air if turned quickly. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Ah, you mean the thing with the brass plate on it saying 'Improved Manicure Device,' Archchancellor? ~ Terry Pratchett

I acknowledge that a wife does (and should) exercise a degree of control in the family and home; but what I present is not a constructive form aimed at supporting a healthy relationship, but a destructive form that - whether intended or not - destroys a relationship through the invocation of fear and flight rather than love and commitment. I also propose that this method or "device" (as I have called it) was learned in part from a very young age from her parents. ~ H. Kirk Rainer

Is he right, about my creating excitement where I can? Even being melodramatic?

You went on a half-baked vengeance quest against Paul using a totally untested experimental device, I think. He might possibly have a point. ~ Claudia Gray

ALL religions of a spiritual nature are inventions of man. He has created an entire system of gods with nothing more than his carnal brain. Just because he has an ego, and cannot accept it, he has to externalize it into some great spiritual device which he calls God. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

The fault, of course, is not in religion, but in the fanatic of every religion. Fanaticism remains the greatest carrier of the spores of fear, and the rhetoric of religion, with the hysteria it so readily generates, is fast becoming the readiest killing device of contemporary times. ~ Wole Soyinka

I've been telling people for 12 years that if you want to get a nuclear device into the United States, just bring it through the port of Miami disguised as cocaine. ~ Tom Clancy

Rachel showed Ulani how to work the camera. Jason explained that the device would capture and preserve the image, along with their souls. ~ Brandon Mull

I've played a Nintendo Wii. I don't see it as a competitor. It's more of an expensive niche game device. We're selling a lot of PlayStation 3s now and it's still the best way to buy a Blu-ray player. ~ Howard Stringer

Liam made a low whistling sound through the device in
Zane's ear. Little touch and go there, lads. Who do I shoot
first if things go to hell? ~ Abigail Roux

Photography is a strong tool, a propaganda device, and a weapon for the defense of the environment ... and therefore for the fostering of a healthy human race and even very likely for its survival. ~ Eliot Porter

Some archeologists believe that Stonehenge - the mysterious arrangement of enormous elongated stones in England - is actually a crude effort by the Druids to build a computing device. ~ Dave Barry

Historically, more media has been consumed sitting in front of the television than any other device. Controlling this screen has been the goal of major technology, consumer electronic, and telecommunications companies. ~ Jay Samit

That's one of our speculations, by the way. That the prior version of history that this one overwrote was horrible. Complete geopolitical mayhem; half of New York City is underwater. The United States is headed toward civil war, or ruled by an artificial-intelligence construct, or some such other thing. Real end-of-days stuff. That the instances of ourselves who existed in that history figured out what we have: that the invention of the causality violation device was the cause. That in that prior version of history, Rebecca did not die in a car accident. That she went back to the past on a mission, as a volunteer, well aware of her sacrifice. ~ Dexter Palmer

Whenever you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do any things well. ~ Martin Cooper

I think the last game console I had was Super Nintendo. I remember once I played the Sega Genesis. But Super Nintendo was my last game device. I played outside more. I liked kickball and baseball. ~ Natalie Martinez

Up until now, I believed the nuclear threat to the U.S. from Iran was limited to the ability of terrorists to penetrate the borders or port security to deliver a device to a major city ... While that threat should continue to be a grave concern for every American, these tests by Iran demonstrate just how devious the fanatical mullahs in Tehran are. We are facing a clever and unscrupulous adversary in Iran that could bring America to its knees. ~ Joseph Farah

An ending is an artificial device; we like endings, they are satisfying, convenient, and a point has been made. But time does not end, and stories march in step with time. ~ Penelope Lively

Lagos was a city that had been turned against itself. There was a bridge that became the perfect trap for crimes, which began with nails being scattered to cause flat tyres. If the driver stopped, the car would be dismantled in 20 minutes and the parts thrown overboard [to people waiting below]. The system had turned into a kind of destructive device that could be used against people. That was the narrative. ~ Rem Koolhaas

Dear Dan,
Do you have general advice for how to approach diffıcult decisions?
D.A.: Luckily the technology you need to solve this problem is already at your disposal. All you need is a coin. Assign each car to a side of the coin, flip it high in the air. At this point, you can wait until the coin lands, and use this random device to make your choice - but my guess is that when the coin is in the air, you will realize which car is the one you really want. ~ Dan Ariely

In the creative industries, there are few things more exciting than a zinger - a thought, idea, line, plot device - anything really, that just totally works in a fundamentally new and fresh way. It's like a uniquely lovely melody or a new taste idea in cooking. Something special, something new, something wonderful. They're also very rare. ~ Jasper Fforde

If your heart is not attuned to God, it will become a catch basin for every device of the devil. Yes, Satan is at work in our world. The Bible is my authority. ~ Billy Graham

It is as if evolution has built a safety device in our nervous system that allows us to experience full happiness only when we are living at 100%-when we are fully using the physical and mental equipment we have been given. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

My Love Is Like To Ice, And I To Fire
My love is like to ice, and I to fire;
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not delay'd by her heart-frozen cold;
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold!
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice;
And ice, which is congeal'd with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device!
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind. ~ Edmund Spenser

There's no doubt: The iPad is a beautiful, extremely well-designed device. ~ Jamais Cascio

I've been careful to keep my life separate because it's important to me to have privacy and for my life not to be a marketing device for a movie or a TV show. I'm worth more than that. ~ Lisa Kudrow

It is interesting to note that poetry, a literary device whose very construct involves the use of words, is itself the word of choice by persons grasping to describe something so beautiful it is marvelously ineffable. ~ Vanna Bonta

A credit card is a convenient device that saves you the trouble of counting your change. ~ Evan Esar