Martin Lee, of Waterstone's Bookshop, quoted in "The
Times", 31st July 1997:
Almost
nobody believes that the Internet is ever going to account for more than 10 per
cent of sales.
Pieter Dirk Uys, the South African
satirist, speaking on BBC World Service:
Democracy
is all very good and well - but it's TOO good to share with just anyone.
Another from the same:
The
future is certain - it is just the past that is unpredictable.
(hence the need for continual vergangenheitsbewältigung)
From "Man at the Top" by Richard Wolff (page 9)
Not
everyone may be called to be a shining button on the waistcoat of the world....
Sir Winston Churchill's Definition of Success
...the ability to go from
one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
From the French Minitel service Assistances au Décès:
La
mort donne a notre personalité une dimension
nouvelle.
A tryst with Destiny
Long years ago... we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again.
- Pandit Jawaharial Nehru, speaking on the eve of India's Independence 15 August 1947
Instructions to Clergy, from a Bishop
Please
send me a current list of your parishioners
broken down by age and sex
Occupy Till I Come
Inscription on Bishop of Bradwell's residence in
Hordon-on-the-Hill (quoting Luke 19:13)
What is Truth? asks Niels Bohr
The opposite of a correct statement is an inorrect statement, but the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
A MAN may not marry his… GRANDMOTHER
As
a young church choir boy, I was fascinated by many things in the Book of Common
Prayer, which I read avidly during the sermon. As well as learning to compute
the date of Easter from time immemorial until kingdom come, I was intrigued by
the ‘Table of Kindred and Affinity’ which began “a man may
not marry his grandmother”. With weird fascination, I tracked through the
list of forbidden liaisons, and marvelled as to why the church felt compelled
to warn me against such a clearly ridiculous set of unrealistic matches. But I
was judging through the eyes of a child and failed to grasp both the broader
picture and the more subtle details of the legislation.
Under
ecclesiastical law, a marriage within the prohibited degrees was not void ab initio but it was
voidable at the suit of any interested party. Widowers' desires to marry their
sisters-in-law became the focus of much discontent and, after a great deal of
agitation throughout the 19th century, the law was finally changed in 1907,
though widows had to wait until 1921 for freedom to marry their deceased
husband’s brother.
Matthew
Boulton, the innovative eighteenth-century manufacturer, caused quite stir when
he married his deceased wife's sister. When consulted by a friend who found
himself in a similar situation, Boulton recommended Silence, Secrecy, and Scotland.
25 hour city inevitable soon
due to increasing leisure from automation and the need to use expensive
equipment continuously to recoup investment in a few years. But, indeed, why
must we wait another 10 years?
- from the International Times, a 1960's "underground" newspaper
edited by Tom McGrath assisted by David Z Mairowitz,
based at 102 Southampton Row and produced fortnightly; this quotation comes
from issue number 7 which carried the memorable headline "Arrest the Home
Secretary!".
Database interrogation in the 1980s
The communications systems upon which all these services are
based are at best indifferent to your presence, and at times appear even
hostile or dumbly insolent. Requests must be precise: ambiguity is not
tolerated. Terminals will behave strangely: there are just too many designs.
Please seek advice and persevere. Systems will improve with use.
- a prescient observation by Peter Stone, taken from the Directory of
University Library Catalogues on JANET [Joint Academic NETwork]
compiled for SCONUL [Society of COllege,
National and University Libraries) by the University of Sussex Library, September 1986.