WN Stanley Quotes

To be original is to discover the commonplace of a thousand years--to face at first the sneer that no one would have thought of it, and at last the indifference because any one would.

Machinery makes men like itself.

Very few people ever bother to find out what other people really think. They are willing to accept whatever they are told about anyone sufficiently distant.

It was not power that corrupted people, but fools who corrupted power.

Money equals power; power makes the law; and law makes government.

Every moment an epiphany arrives and cleaves the mountain asunder

It's too bad we only had the courage to live our lives fully in dreams.

Reincarnation is a story we tell; then in the end it's the story itself that is the reincarnation.

A lot of scientists act on their beliefs and so do things that look crazy to the rest of us.

It was a mistake to speak one's mind at any time, unless it perfectly matched your political purpose; and it never did.

What kind of Dv would it take to escape history, to escape an inertia that powerful, and carve a new course? The hardest part is leaving Earth behind.

Many of the technologies we've invented are necessary to keep 6.5 billion people alive. We can't go back from that, so we need to decarbonize really rapidly.

The invisible hand never picks up the check.

It would take 2,000 Vietnam Memorials to list the [Twentieth] century's war dead.

A sudden gust: How big the world seems in a wind.

The world operates by number, by physical laws, expressed mathematically. If you know these, you will have a better grasp of things. And some possible job skills.

Keke Rosberg is as calculating as a slot machine.

Perhaps the two most valuable and satisfactory products of American civilization are the librarian on the one hand and the cocktail in the other.

If we're lucky we realize that life is really about family - your children, your family and your friends. Without that, the rest is hollow.

We are still not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame but there are 3,000 Kiss products, a Kiss musical toothbrush, everything from Kiss caskets to Kiss condoms. There are no Radiohead condoms.

I am one of the biggest Laura Nyro fans. I still listen to that stuff incessantly. Laura Nyro does not belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Songwriter Hall of Fame? Absolutely.

I tend to fly a bit under the radar.

In terms of merchandise, you can't force anyone to buy something.

The only thing I can say is consistent in all my paintings is vivid color.

Autobiographies, for the most part, to me, are like writing a love letter to yourself.

Gene sometimes... well, he has his dream list.

I have always wanted some way that you could make a surface in a computer, like you pick up a piece of clay and make sculpture.

I am a man of constant sorrow. I've seen trouble all my days.

I don't - I don't like that style, myself. I never did like Elvis's singing, but there was millions that did.

Speaking of WAMU, [bluegrass and old time music DJ] Ray Davis did a lot of work there. I've know Ray, I guess for 50 years - 40, or 50 years. And, he plays a lot of my records.

My mother played a little bit of the old time clawhammer. She tuned the banjo up and picked one tune for me, and it just become natural to me. When she picked it, I just started and picked it, too.

[Regarding President Obama] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I talked to him. I sorta, I guess, helped him get elected.

I'm a member of the Primitive Baptist Church, and they will buy every CD that I have released, but they don't me just to bring the instruments much into the church.

Our goal is to figure out a therapy for prion diseases.

In science, each new result, sometimes quite surprising, heralds a step forward and allows one to discard some hypotheses, even though one or two of these might have been highly favored.

Concepts are vindicated by the constant accrual of data and independent verification of data. No prize, not even a Nobel Prize, can make something true that is not true.

This country to-day [is] the last stronghold of freedom, standing like a rock in a tide that is threatened to submerge the world.

I wish for many reasons flying had never been invented.

There is a wind of nationalism and freedom blowing round the world, and blowing as strongly in Asia as elsewhere.

Do not fear or misunderstand when the Government say they are looking to our defences. I give you my word that there will be no great armaments.

The die-hard opinions of George III couched in the language of Edmund Burke.

What about passion, dedication, loyalty? Can a robot provide those? No! On the other hand, it's easier to retire a robot when its day is done.

There are now some mountains that my brain can no longer climb.

Reading my way all the way through Sherlock Holmes gave me a lifelong love for crime and detective fiction.

There are no living beings who exert more power over others, pound for pound, than tiny babies and extremely thin moguls.

I would love to have the power to stop waking at 3 a.m. every night to check my e-mail.

I would like to have my consciousness digitally preserved and housed in a pleasant place for later insertion into a fully functional cyborg when that's possible.

I can't think of a comparable level of cultural excitement about something since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in the 1960s.

Philosophy is the education of grown-ups.

When you win a Grammy, it links a certain prestige and importance to you, you know? People want to talk to you.