Tag: quotes

The Awful German Language, by Mark Twain // Quotes ~ Αποφθέγματα XIV

http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html

A criticism  dated 1880 by Mark Twain on the German language, four years after the unification of Germany and half a century before all discussion and relevant prejudice would be dominated by annoying Nazi undertones of aggressiveness.

[…]I think that a description of any loud, stirring, tumultuous episode must be tamer in German than in English. Our descriptive words of this character have such a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their German equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless. Boom, burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, explosion; howl, cry, shout, yell, groan; battle, hell. These are magnificent words; the have a force and magnitude of sound befitting the things which they describe. But their German equivalents would be ever so nice to sing the children to sleep with, or else my awe-inspiring ears were made for display and not for superior usefulness in analyzing sounds. Would any man want to die in a battle which was called by so tame a term as a Schlacht? Or would not a consumptive feel too much bundled up, who was about to go out, in a shirt-collar and a seal-ring, into a storm which the bird-song word Gewitter was employed to describe? And observe the strongest of the several German equivalents for explosion — Ausbruch. Our word Toothbrush is more powerful than that. It seems to me that the Germans could do worse than import it into their language to describe particularly tremendous explosions with. The German word for hell — Hölle — sounds more like helly than anything else; therefore, how necessary chipper, frivolous, and unimpressive it is. If a man were told in German to go there, could he really rise to thee dignity of feeling insulted?

Having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of this language, I now come to the brief and pleasant task of pointing out its virtues. The capitalizing of the nouns I have already mentioned. But far before this virtue stands another — that of spelling a word according to the sound of it. After one short lesson in the alphabet, the student can tell how any German word is pronounced without having to ask; whereas in our language if a student should inquire of us, “What does B, O, W, spell?” we should be obliged to reply, “Nobody can tell what it spells when you set if off by itself; you can only tell by referring to the context and finding out what it signifies — whether it is a thing to shoot arrows with, or a nod of one’s head, or the forward end of a boat.”

There are some German words which are singularly and powerfully effective. For instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, and affectionate home life; those which deal with love, in any and all forms, from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward the passing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which deal with outdoor Nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects — with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with any and all forms of rest, repose, and peace; those also which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland; and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, is the language surpassingly rich and affective. There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry. That shows that the sound of the words is correct — it interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart. […]

H ύπαρξη μας ως κύτταρα της Γης // Quotes ~ Αποφθέγματα ΧΙΙI

Transcript του παραπάνω απίστευτου βίντεο…

Κι αν είμαστε λοιπόν απλά κύτταρα στον μεγάλο ζωντανό οργανισμό που λέγεται Γη; Θα μπορούσαμε να το ξέρουμε; Τα κύτταρα μας ξέρουν ότι είναι κομμάτια μας; –άσχετα αν πεθαίνουν από μόνα τους, ή εμποδίζουν τον πολλαπλασιασμό τους αν αυτό είναι εις βάρος του οργανισμού. Το να μην εμποδίζουν τον ανεξέλεγχτο πολλαπλασιασμό τους και να μην πεθαίνουν στην ώρα τους για το καλό του οργανισμού το λέμε με μια λέξη ΚΑΡΚΙΝΟ.

Αν είμαστε απλά κύτταρα του οργανισμού που λέγεται Γη, ποιο όργανο της θα μπορούσαμε να είμαστε; Ο εγκέφαλος; Θα μπορούσαμε να σχηματίσουμε μια κοινή ανθρώπινη συνείδηση, ένα όργανο, αντί να δρούμε μονάχα σαν εγωκεντρικά κύτταρα που τα ενδιαφέρει μόνο το DNA τους και τα μιτοχόνδρια τους; (υποσημείωση: όλα τα κύτταρα ενός οργανισμού περιέχουν το DNA του — τι θα μπορούσε να είναι αυτό το οποίο αντίστοιχα ενώνει εμας με όλα τα έμψυχα όντα του πλανήτη αλλά, γιατί όχι, και αυτά τα οποία θα λέγαμε άψυχα;)

Ξεκινώντας από το 19:20 του παραπάνω βίντεο:

Lets look first at why a cell in the body becomes cancerous. In the centre of each cell are the genes. They contain the information that keep you functioning as a single living organism, rather than just a bowl of biological soup. Now if the genes in a cell are disturbed, that cell may become selfish, . . it may no longer support the system as a whole, but instead go off, doing its own thing, at the expense of the body , – – it becomes a cancer.

Now when we consider human beings in a community, we are looking at an organisation of minds. And the parallel to the genes is now to be found in the centre of minds, at our inner cores. Its that deepest level of inner wisdom which many mystics and philosophers have often spoken of. That inner awareness of being much more than we normally experience – a part of something much greater. and when we loose touch with this inner wisdom we also become selfish cells, out of touch with the needs of society as a whole, living at the expense of each other.

The philosopher Alan Watts referred to this selfish isolated way of existence as “the skin encapsulated ego”. What’s inside the skin is me – and what’s outside the skin is not me. Biologically speaking this is, of course, true – we are each separate biological individuals. But it is not the whole truth. We are much more than that . . we are creatures with an inner life – with an existence that stretches beyond our biological identity. We become stuck in this limited way of seeing ourselves because the real self, our deepest sense of ”

I” – what some call the pure self – is actually very hard to grasp. Trying to describe that deeper sense of self is very much like trying to describe a hole in a piece of wood. If you ask people to describe a hole such as this, they may start by saying “Well, its a round hole”, you say “Yes”, they say “It’s a wooden hole, and its red”. But you say “Hang on, the hole isn’t wood, the hole isn’t red. And they say “Ah-ha the hole is black”, “No, that’s the background”. And suddenly they’re stuck – what’s the hole? How do you describe the hole itself, without describing its surroundings?

In a similar way, it is very difficult to grasp and define our own inner sense of self. Instead we tend to describe our selves in terms of what surrounds us. . . our many possessions . . the roles we play, our social status . . our beliefs – both scientific and religious. . .

This limited sense of identity may not in itself seem very dangerous, but it does have some far- reaching consequences. . . It turns out that many of the ways in which we mistreat and abuse the environment stem from our seeing the world as separate from ourselves. We may take fairly good care of what is inside the skin, but we don’t care nearly so well for what is outside the skin.

As the late Gregory Bateson said; “If this, meaning this me versus the world attitude, if this is your estimate of your relationship to nature, and you have advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or simply, of over-population and over-grazing”.

And Bateson went on to say “That if I’m right the whole of our thinking of what we are, what other people are, has got be be restructured. The most important task today is to learn to think in a new way”.

 

Quotes ~ Αποφθέγματα ΧΙΙ

[… ] The principle led to the much later adoption of Avogadro’s Number, a basic unit of measure in chemistry, which was named for Avogadro long after his death. It is the number of molecules found in 2.016 grams of hydrogen gas (or an equal volume of any other gas). Its value is placed at 6.0221367 x 10²³, which is an enormously large number. Chemistry students have long amused themselves by computing just how large a number it is, so I can report that it is equivalent to the number of popcorn kernels needed to cover the United States to a depth of nine miles, or cupfuls of water in the Pacific Ocean, or soft-drink cans that would, evenly stacked, cover the Earth to a depth of two hundred miles. An equivalent number of American pennies would be enough to make every person on Earth a dollar trillionaire. It is a big number.

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, p.93

[…] Η αρχή οδήγησε πολύ αργότερα στην υιοθέτηση του Αριθμού Αβογκάντρο, μιας βασικής χημικής μονάδας μέτρησης η οποία πήρε το όνομα της από τον Αβογκάντρο πολύ μετά τον θάνατο του. Είναι ο αριθμός των μορίων που βρίσκονται μέσα σε 2,016 γραμμάρια αέριου υδρογόνου (ή ενός οποιοδήποτε άλλου αερίου ίσου όγκου). Η τιμή του ορίζεται στα 6.0221367 x 10²³ ο οποίος είναι εξαιρετικά τεράστιος αριθμός. Φοιτητές χημείας καιρό τώρα διασκεδάζουν προσπαθώντας να υπολογίσουν πόσο μεγάλος είναι ο αριθμός αυτός. Μπορώ λοιπόν να αναφέρω ότι είναι ανάλογος του αριθμού των ποπκορν που θα χρειάζονταν για να καλύψουν της ΗΠΑ σε ένα βάθος 9 μιλίων, των φλιτζανιών νερού που περιέχει ο Ειρηνικός Ωκεανός ή από τα κουτάκια αναψυκτικού που, αν τα στιβάζαμε ίσια, θα κάλυπταν την Γη σε ένα βάθος 120 μιλίων. Ένας αντίστοιχος αριθμός από Αμερικάνικες πέννες θα ήταν αρκετός για να κάνει κάθε άνθρωπο στην Γη τρισεκατομμυριούχο. Είναι μεγάλος αριθμός.

Bill Bryson, Μικρή Ιστορία Περί των Πάντων (σχεδόν)

 

 

Review: The Soul of Man under Socialism // Quotes/Aποφθέγματα ΧΙ

The Soul of Man under Socialism
The Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“[…]with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they [altruists] have seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive, or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it[…]”

“[…]the past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.”

“[…]a man is called selfish if he lives in the manner that seems to him most suitable for the full realisation of this own personality, if, in fact, the primary aim of his life is self-development. But this is the way in which everyone should live. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one’s neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.”

Oscar Wilde’s take on Utopia, “the realisation of progress”. In this enjoyable and obviously very quotable essay, he gives his thoughts on how private property does not let people make the best of their potential, to be the perfect artists of themselves. Under Socialism, says Wilde, people would be able to concentrate on being perfect, selfish (in its positive definition, described above) individuals. It is an intriguing but unusual take on things, since Socialism as an ideology has been condemned for its apparent murder of the individual. No, argues the author. That would describe a totalitarian Socialist society, the kind of which wouldn’t appear before several decades after Oscar Wilde had written these words in the late 19th century.

The Soul of Man Under Socialism is an ode to virtue ethics under which each person’s goal, and what makes him or her human, circles around personal excellence and eudaimonia. As an artist himself, Wilde went on a great deal on how artists can be true individuals, but he kind of awkwardly robs this privilege from poor people, whose jobs “more apt for beasts” have little to do with what it really is, or better, what it can mean to be human. For Wilde, Socialism could destroy poverty at its roots, giving people of every class (or what we would today understand it to be) the opportunity to reach their true individualist potential, free of the restraints of posession. After all, “the only people thinking about money more than the rich are the poor” (paraphrase).

There are some very interesting concepts here and I find myself in agreement with most of what I read. However, it’s always clear that Wilde writes from his awesome vantage point of the upper class. His patronising of the less fortunate people among us, however justified and well-argued, just reeks of a kind of superiority complex. Wilde couldn’t decide if he wanted to be an elitist or not and it shows in this piece. He defies his own definition of selfishness by inevitably being selfish himself. Still, as one of the great writers and artists of times past, perhaps we should admit him this privilege to have been able to exercise his full capacity of individualism.

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Quotes ~ Αποφθέγματα VIIΙ

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… and the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”

«Η πολιτική ανυπακοή δεν είναι το προβλημά μας. Το πρόβλημα μας είναι η πολιτική υπακοή. Το πρόβλημα μας είναι πως άνθρωποι σε όλον τον κόσμο έχουν υπακούσε σε προσταγές ηγετών. Το πρόβλημα μας είναι πως άνθρωποι είναι υπάκουοι σε όλοκληρο τον κόσμο ακόμα και όντας αντιμέτωποι με την φτώχεια, την πείνα, την ανοησία, τον πόλεμο, την σκληρότητα. Το πρόβλημα μας είναι πως οι άνθρωποι είναι υπάκουοι όταν οι φυλακές είναι γεμάτες με μικροκλέφτες και οι μεγάλοι και τρανοί κλέφτες διοικούν την χώρα. Αυτό είναι το πρόβλημα μας.»

~Howard Zinn (author of A People’s History of the United States. He died last year…)

~Χάουαρντ Ζιν (συγγραφέας του «Ιστορία του Λαού των ΗΠΑ». Πέθανε πέρσι…)

Atom Heart Mother / Quotes ~ Αποφθέγματα VII

Caught from Wikipedia:

Atom Heart Mother is a good case, I think, for being thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again!… It was pretty kind of pompous, it wasn’t really about anything.

– Roger Waters — Rock Over London Radio Station, 15 March 1985, for broadcast 7 April/14 April 1985.

I think both [Atom Heart Mother and Ummagumma] are pretty horrible. Well, the live disc of Ummagumma might be all right, but even that isn’t recorded well.

– David Gilmour — Der Spiegel No. 23, 5 June 1995

I didn’t have anything, really, to do with the start of Atom Heart Mother, and when I asked them what it was about, they said they didn’t know themselves. It’s a conglomeration of pieces that weren’t related, or didn’t seem to be at the time. The picture isn’t related either; in fact, it was an attempt to do a picture that was unrelated, consciously unrelated.

– Storm Thorgerson — Guitar World, February 1998

[Atom Heart Mother] was a good idea but it was dreadful. I listened to that album recently: God, it’s shit, possibly our lowest point artistically. Atom Heart Mother sounds like we didn’t have any idea between us, but we became much more prolific after it.

– David Gilmour — Mojo Magazine, October 2001[10]

I think Atom Heart Mother was a good thing to have attempted, but I don’t really think the attempt comes off that well.

– David Gilmour — Rolling Stone, November 2001

I wouldn’t dream of performing anything that embarrassed me. If somebody said to me now: “Right…here’s a million pounds, go out and play ‘Atom Heart Mother'”, I’d say: “You must be fucking joking… I’m not playing that rubbish!”. ‘Cause then I really would be embarrassed.

– Roger Waters — interviewed by Richard Skinner on BBC Radio 1, originally broadcast: Saturday 9 June 1984

I like it.

— Richard Wright Saturday 9 June 1984

Quotes ~ Αποφθέγματα VI

“Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.

…

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

John Donne (1572-1631), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII: Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris

Quotes ~ Αποφθέγματα V

‘The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying “This is mine” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society…’ […]

‘From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors or misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to us all, and the Earth itself to nobody.’

Ο πρώτος άνθρωπος που, αφού εσώκλεισε ένα κομμάτι γης, σκέφτηκε να πει «Αυτό είναι δικό μου» και βρήκε άλλους ανθρώπους αρκετά απλόμυαλους ώστε να τον πιστέψουν, ήταν ο θιασωτής την κοινωνίας των πολιτών…» […]

“Από πόσα εγκλήματα, πολέμους και φόνους, πόσες φρικωδίες και δυστυχίες θα μπορούσε ο καθένας να είχε σώσει την ανθρωπότητα αν είχε ξεριζώσει τους πασάλους ή είχε μπαζώσει το χαντάκι και είχε φώναξει στους συντρόφους του: Μην ακούτε αυτόν τον απατεώνα. Θα καταστραφείτε αν έστω μια φορά ξεχάσετε ότι η καρποί της Γης ανήκουν σε όλους μας, και ότι η ίδια η Γη δεν ανήκει σε κανέναν.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754)

Ζαν-Ζακ Ρουσώ, από την Διατριβή για την προέλευση και τις βάσεις της ανισότητας μεταξύ των ανθρώπων (1754)

 

Μονόπολη

Quotes ~ Αποφθέγματα IV

“What is a facebook? A miserable pile of…”

“Τι είναι ένα facebook; Ένας άθλιος σωρός από…”

Dracula, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, together with us!

Add your own end to the above quote in the comments.
Προσθέστε το δικό σας τέλος στο παραπάνω απόφθεγμα στα σχόλια!

 ^^]