Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.
-John Muir, Naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)
"Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment."
Richard Buckminster Fuller
"Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet."
Stephen Hawkins
I try to live my life by the words of IF by Rudyard Kipling
"The stars are matter, we're matter, but it doesn't matter."
Captain Beefheart
D'oh!
I'm currently finding HK Mencken very apt:
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
As I get older I get the more I like this one from mark twain.
"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before my birth, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it"
I prefer the updated version which starts:
"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs - it's probable that you aren't in full possession of all the facts....."
“I am Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
Lord Krishna
Fitting for hearing such sad news
A quote by Richard E Bryd's taken from the book"Alone"
I first came across this quote in the Cape Wrath walking guide underneath a picture of Sandwood Bay.
"I watched the sky a long time, concluding that such beauty was reserved for distant, dangerous places, and that nature has good reason for exacting her own special sacrifices from those determined to witness them."
This came up a fair bit recently:
"You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity." - Robert A. Heinlein's in Logic of Empire (1941)
Often paraphrased as Hanlon's Razor:
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
"Those stars can wait, when walking on ice and snow in the dark take care and watch your feet." Anon. guide.
Time spent in failing to fathom a blue sky is never spent in vain.
W H Murray
A quote by an Italian climber that I've never found in English, so here goes with my translation:
"I go to the mountains not because I fear death, but because I am afraid of not living life".
One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the mind, and can search the stars with a telescope and not find God.
-J. Gustav White
"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert".
> “I am Death, the destroyer of worlds”.>
Sorry to be pedantic, but it's "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds".
> Sorry to be pedantic, but it's "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds".
As quoted by Oppenheimer .
Not as taken from sanskrit
So it tried to find the source translation .
"some assert that the passage would be better translated "I am become Time, the destroyer of worlds."
I have the Bhagavad Gita , I quoted Krishna
Irene Handel, responding to an ernest young theatre director banging on at length about her characters motivation, mind set etc. "I'm sorry my dear, but you seem to be confusing me with one of those actresses that give a f*ck".
'A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.' Niels Bohr.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan
> I have the Bhagavad Gita
Me too! And the Srimad Bhagavatam and some of the Upanishads. In the 80's I spent a few years hanging out with the Hare Krishna folk, been to Kirtan lots of times, stayed at Bhaktivedanta Manor and Caitanya College. I know people who can read and speak Sanskrit. I suppose with ancient languages it's often down to the translator but most of the people I knew seemed to think the interpretation from Oppenheimer and others was reasonable.
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
Kurt Vonnegut
> Me too! And the Srimad Bhagavatam and some of the Upanishads.
It is or they are very good books , works, or whatever you might want to call them .
They make far more sense to me than the anything in the biblical Christian texts that I've read thus far. They actually helped me understand that I'm not alone in a strange way.
I'm in the process of re-reading the Gita .
Such interesting perspectives and lessons.
Ps: I hope you are well mate .
:-D
"Don't argue with idiots. They'll bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.''
Brian Clough
> I try to live my life by the words of IF by Rudyard Kipling
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
> Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us...
That lost a bit of it's magic for me when I realised he was basically paraphrasing Christiaan Huygens.
“There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten miles’ radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite familiar to you.”
Henry Thoreau
For scientific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get on your knees and pray for Shackleton.
Attributed to Sir Raymond Priestley and also Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Tim Peake, astronaut, very recently, on looking out into the vast, bottomless blackness of space during a space walk, "I'm still processing that."
"You're supposed to sit on your ass and nod at stupid things. Man, that's hard to do. And if you don't, they'll screw you. And if you do, they'll screw you, too." Warren Zevon
Nothing to do with mountains, but here's one from Auden:
“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.”
And my favourite mountaineering quote, from Mummery:
"Happily for us, the great brown slabs bending over into immeasurable space, the lines and curves of the wind-moulded cornices, the delicate undulations of fissured snow, are old and trusted friends, ever luring us to fun and laughter and enabling us to bid a sturdy defiance to all the ills that time and life oppose."
"I don't believe skill was, or ever will be, the result of coaches. It is a result of a love affair between the child and the ball."
Surprisingly a Roy Keane quote. It should under pin the work of every coach who works with kids. So true but also so true for so many other disciplines.
Here is one that all of us contributing to UKC forums can appreciate:
"It is folly to be wise amongst madmen"
Rousseau
"The people you find huddling around a summit cairn in the rain are all optimists. Pessimists never reach the top of anything...."
AW
Damn right too!
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”
- Dorothy Parker
> "The people you find huddling around a summit cairn in the rain are all optimists. Pessimists never reach the top of anything...."
> AW
Hear hear!
Great thread idea TWS.
'No such thing as spare time, no such thing as free time, no such thing as down time. All you got is life time. Go.'
Henry Rollins
"Life passes most people by while they're making grand plans for it."
- George Jung.
I got a really great quote from John Lewis when my car insurance was up for renewal last year... Beat the heck out of Direct Line, who don't seem to understand the concept of customer loyalty, anyhow.
You can’t polish a turd but you can roll it in glitter.
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
- Ferris Bueller
> One of my favorite re the cosmos is:
> "It's turtles all the way down".
Science is now close to proving this:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmj7pw/theres-growing-evidence-that-the-...
Very interesting. Thanks.
James Hutton, father of geology, on deep time - ' no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end'
Flying is about learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Douglas Adams
An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music. The withering leaves no longer quiet, hurried to and fro in search of shelter from its chill pursuit; the labourer unyoked his horses, and with head bent down, trudged briskly home beside them; and from the cottage windows lights began to glance and wink upon the darkening fields.
Then the village forge came out in all its bright importance. The lusty bellows roared Ha ha! to the clear fire, which roared in turn, and bade the shining sparks dance gayly to the merry clinking of the hammers on the anvil. The gleaming iron, in its emulation, sparkled too, and shed its red-hot gems around profusely. The strong smith and his men dealt such strokes upon their work, as made even the melancholy night rejoice, and brought a glow into its dark face as it hovered about the door and windows, peeping curiously in above the shoulders of a dozen loungers. As to this idle company, there they stood, spellbound by the place, and, casting now and then a glance upon the darkness in their rear, settled their lazy elbows more at ease upon the sill, and leaned a little further in: no more disposed to tear themselves away than if they had been born to cluster round the blazing hearth like so many crickets.
Out upon the angry wind! how from sighing, it began to bluster round the merry forge, banging at the wicket, and grumbling in the chimney, as if it bullied the jolly bellows for doing anything to order. And what an impotent swaggerer it was too, for all its noise; for if it had any influence on that hoarse companion, it was but to make him roar his cheerful song the louder, and by consequence to make the fire burn the brighter, and the sparks to dance more gayly yet; at length, they whizzed so madly round and round, that it was too much for such a surly wind to bear; so off it flew with a howl giving the old sign before the ale-house door such a cuff as it went, that the Blue Dragon was more rampant than usual ever afterwards, and indeed, before Christmas, reared clean out of its crazy frame.
It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance on such poor creatures as the fallen leaves, but this wind happening to come up with a great heap of them just after venting its humour on the insulted Dragon, did so disperse and scatter them that they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling over each other, whirling round and round upon their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the air, and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols in the extremity of their distress. Nor was this enough for its malicious fury; for not content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them and hunted them into the wheel wright’s saw-pit, and below the planks and timbers in the yard, and, scattering the sawdust in the air, it looked for them underneath, and when it did meet with any, whew! how it drove them on and followed at their heels!
The scared leaves only flew the faster for all this, and a giddy chase it was; for they got into unfrequented places, where there was no outlet, and where their pursuer kept them eddying round and round at his pleasure; and they crept under the eaves of houses, and clung tightly to the sides of hay-ricks, like bats; and tore in at open chamber windows, and cowered close to hedges; and, in short, went anywhere for safety. But the oddest feat they achieved was, to take advantage of the sudden opening of Mr Pecksniff’s front-door, to dash wildly into his passage; whither the wind following close upon them, and finding the back-door open, incontinently blew out the lighted candle held by Miss Pecksniff, and slammed the front-door against Mr Pecksniff who was at that moment entering, with such violence, that in the twinkling of an eye he lay on his back at the bottom of the steps. Being by this time weary of such trifling performances, the boisterous rover hurried away rejoicing, roaring over moor and meadow, hill and flat, until it got out to sea, where it met with other winds similarly disposed, and made a night of it.
"There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men" - Maurice Herzog
(Never fails to help me get some perspective on just about everything, but certainly on my climbing obsession!)
> Tim Peake, astronaut, very recently, on looking out into the vast, bottomless blackness of space during a space walk, "I'm still processing that."
That's the opposite of a great quote, great quotes get to the heart of something or identify a key feature, they say something that you the reader would not immediately have considered or arrived at. He might as well have said 'dunno'.
Great idea for a thread. UKC had been devoid of any good threads for a while (my opinion obv!)
"He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That clearly points to a political career"
Also
"Democracy is a device that ensures we are governed no better than we deserve"
Both George Bernard Shaw. Playwrite and pithy genius (1856 - 1950)
> Great idea for a thread. UKC had been devoid of any good threads for a while (my opinion obv!)
Thanks
I try 😃.
TWS
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds, and fast cars.
The rest I just squandered.
George Best.
I collect quotes like a magpie shiny things. Other favourites:
"I started at the top and worked down" Orson Welles (1915 -1985)
and:
"I can take any amount of criticism as long as it's unqualified praise" Noel Coward (1888 - 1973)
"Kill All Humans"
- Bender
"Mans best friend outside of a dog is a book. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
Groucho Marx
“The white, twisted clouds and the endless shades of blue in the ocean make the hum of the spacecraft systems, the radio chatter, even your own breathing disappear. There is no wind or cold or smell to tell you that you are connected to Earth. You have an almost dispassionate platform - remote, Olympian - and yet so moving that you can hardly believe how emotionally attached you are to those rough patterns shifting steadily below.”
Thomas Stafford - astronaut
> "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
That didn't end well though did it?
Chris
A couple from the photographer Ansel Adams
"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept."
"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment."
and one attributed to Churchill, but it is not clear if he ever said it
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."
Dave
“In reply to Chive Talkin\':
”One should never hinder inevitability “
> Not all those who wander are lost.
> Tolkien
I always was impressed by this Gandalf quote
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Brilliant.
"Think for yourself and question authority."
"There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third."
Timothy Leary
"My friend, you will come second to me once again"
Jacques Anquetil on his deathbed to "The Eternal Second" Raymond Poulidor who has finished life's race today.
One which explains our current Brexit problems following the referendum;
'The best argument against democracy is to spend a five-minute conversation with the average voter'.
Winston Churchill
Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member
Groucho Marx
In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
-Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.
- Edward Whymper
> Steven Hawkins
> AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!
That sounds more like Screamin' Jay Hawkins. I get them confused too.
Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common people, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.
Primo Levi
> Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common people, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.
> Primo Levi
I'd forgotten this one, so thanks for reminding me of it. A haunting observation if ever there was one.
a cynic was 'a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.'
Oscar Wilde
> 'The best argument against democracy is to spend a five-minute internet conversation with the average voter'.
> Winston Churchill
... had he lived today
"Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place." - the character Thufir Hawat in Frank Herbert's Dune.
> "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
On a similar theme.
"An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind"
Gandhi (I think)
“Well, Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and for your wisdom … but now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”
Leonard Cohen
As a geologist, I have an aversion to the expression "deep" time for geological time. (This term has only crept into the literature in the last ten years or so.) It's all just geological time, or just time. And it's not that extraordinary. The age of the observable universe is only ~10^17 secs. 10^17 is 6 or 7 orders of magnitude less than Avogadro's Number (the number of molecules in one gram molecular weight), i.e., a surprisingly small number.
Nice comparison!
In contrast I might point out that in geophysical time, just 10 seconds is pretty deep (two-way) time by most standards...
(Sorry, couldn't resist! )
> Such interesting perspectives and lessons.
> Ps: I hope you are well mate .
I'm well Scallion, thanks. Definitely interesting stuff in the Vedas. As a young man with psychedelic leanings and an interest in philosophical matters, it was what I needed at the time. The discipline of the small amount of spiritual practice I indulged in gave some structure to a chaotic life. But I just didn't believe the gods were real.
And I can't resist pointing that sonic velocity is very slow. In ten seconds, sound goes several tens of kilometres through rock whereas light goes about 3 million kilometres in a vacuum.
Absolutely, no argument there. Although tens of kilometres on the scale of the earth is a much larger proportion than 3 million km on the scale of the universe.
But if I have to point out the play on "deep" time I guess it was a terrible joke anyway...
So I shall fold up my tent and steal away in disgrace...
This is the best of all possible worlds, but we must tend our garden.
Voltaire
" These are my principles, if you don't like them I can get some others" Groucho Marx or was it Boris?
'One ship sails east, and the other west, on the self same wind which blows. It's the set of the sails which defines the path, and not the highs or the lows. '
I stumbled across it on the internet a long time ago.
Surely the wind direction had a major role to play in defining a path. I am vaguely aware of tacking and other methods of “going against the wind” but this quote that you stumbled across on the Internet seems to casually picture two ships sailing “equally” in opposite directions under the same wind and I struggle to picture this
Sailing boats on beam reaches have a choice of two opposite directions at right angles the wind.
"You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"
Michael Caine as Charlie Croker
> Surely the wind direction had a major role to play in defining a path. I am vaguely aware of tacking and other methods of “going against the wind” but this quote that you stumbled across on the Internet seems to casually picture two ships sailing “equally” in opposite directions under the same wind and I struggle to picture this
I don't recognise this quote, who said it?
Ask Timmd!
"This is a great thread!"
-Me
And actually a Robert Heinlein chapter title:
"...The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail"
which I have tried to use as a paradigm for my life. Without as much success
"Greed is not good. Being greedy does not make you a good capitalist it just makes you a sociopath"
Some dude on a recent TED talk I listened to.
The Gordon Gekko speech in the film “Wall Street” which made the “greed is good” so famous, was never intended to make the viewer agree that “greed is good”. It’s a while since I saw it but wasn’t the overall message that Gordon was in fact a sociopath?
”If the world was flat, cats would push everything off it” - Hugh A. Nus
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity".
AlbertEinstein
"Is that a jug?" (moments before a whipper)
Dave Holmes
"Come on arms, do your stuff"
Big Ron
You are probably right. I'm just not sure that the original message was fully understood by everyone
"You can always rely on the Americans to do the right thing. After they have exhausted all other possibilities."
Winston Churchill
And then things became very clear... we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.
The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.
Ernesto Che Guevara
The late, great Peter Ustinov, quoting a school report:
"He sets himself such pitifully low standards, which he consistently fails to achieve"
"Why is it when we talk to God it's called praying, but if God talks back it's called schizophrenia?"
Jane Wagner.
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time... I think I’ve forgotten this before.
Steven Wright
I don't want to see a ghost, It's a sight I fear the most, I'd rather have a piece of toast
Gabrielle.
> I don't want to see a ghost, It's a sight I fear the most, I'd rather have a piece of toast
> Gabrielle.
I think you will find it's Des'ree
Another I seem to remember from Asimov:
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"
Not sure if this has been done before, but this is often misquoted...
"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."
Bill Shankley
Oh yes
Teach us delight in simply things.
And mirth which has no bitter springs.
Forgiveness free each evil done.
And love for everyone 'neath the sun.
> I try to live my life by the words of IF by Rudyard Kipling
I find this comes to mind, generally when I (re)remember my goals and dreams and what have you.
The Man In The Glass
Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr.
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn’t your father, or mother, or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
He’s the fellow to please – never mind all the rest
For he’s with you, clear to the end
And you’ve passed your most difficult, dangerous test
If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.
“Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.”
Bruce Lee
If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms life offers you.
-T.S. Eliot
Not read that before, love it!
I think I got it from a Chris Eubank documentary of all places, he was coming out with all sorts. I like that it leaves the reader 'nowhere to hide'.
What would the world be once bereft
Of wet and of wildness let them be left
Oh let them be left wildness and wet
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet
Gerard Manley Hopkins
> I always was impressed by this Gandalf quote
> “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
> Brilliant.
Aways thought that was wisdom in spades.
Cracking thread. We’ve got a “quote of the week” on the office whiteboard and I think this thread is going to see me through a fair few weeks of contributions!
“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
Terry Pritchett
“......there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
"It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves."
-Edmund Hillary, mountaineer and explorer (1919-2008)
The second BMC Members Open Forum webinar took place on 20 March. Recently-appointed BMC CEO Paul Ratcliffe, President Andy Syme and Chair Roger Murray shared updates on staff changes, new and ongoing initiatives, insurance policy changes and the current...