Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along.... All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. It works the same in every country.
- Hermann Goering, Nuremberg trials
Good housekeeping tip: Always keep some get well cards on your mantle. That way when unexpected guests show up, they will think you have been sick and unable to clean.
The more stuff you own, the more broken stuff you own.
- Culham's Law as a caveat against buying too much grant-funded equipment (and personal gadgets)
May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to make you human, enough hope to make you happy.
- Anonymous
"Maybe" is the Canadian word for "no."
- Cristiana Cavina Pratesi
A sense of wonder married with a healthy sense of skepticism is the key to being a good researcher.
- Scott Lilienfeld, quoted in the American Psychological Society Observer (August 2004)
No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.
- Helen Fielding, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination
The best thing Lonely Planet Canada could say about London, Ontario:
"quiet, clean, and conservative."
The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.
- Gandhi
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately accounted for by stupidity.
Writing is never done, only due.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein
I had come to understand that anesthetized-perplexed-openly-hostile is just the natural facial expression for college students, sort of how 'startled' is the natural facial expression for squirrels.
- Dan Zevin, The Day I Turned Uncool: Confessions of a Reluctant Grown-Up
The thing I like about academia is its flexibility... I get to choose which 60 hours of the week I'd like to work.
- Anonymous
Research always takes much, much longer than it seems it ought to. The rule of thumb is that any given subtask will take three times as long as you expect. (Some add, "...even after taking this rule into account.")
- How to do Research at the MIT AI Lab
Given what we know about the human brain, two facts stand out as astonishing: (1) We know very little about what distinguishes the human brain from that of other species; and (2) apparently, few neuroscientists regard fact 1 as much of a problem.
- Todd Preuss (2000). What's human about the human brain? In The New Cognitive Neurosciences (M.S. Gazzaniga, Ed.), Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
The brain is a world consisting of a number of unexplored continents and great stretches of unknown territory.
- Santiago Ramon y Cajal
Happiness = Reality/Expectations
(Jody's addedum: If you're unhappy, you should first try to improve your reality and if that doesn't work, lower your expectations)
It's easier to get forgiveness than permission.
I love deadlines - I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
- Douglas Adams
Look, one day I had gone to a little village. An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. "What grandad!" I exclaimed, "Planting an almond tree?" And he, bent as he was, turned round and said: "My son, I carry on as if I should never die." I replied: "And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute." Which of us was right?
- Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
We don't have a global village. We have a global shopping mall.
- Anonymous pundit on TVO Studio 2 discussion on globalization
It was life among the branches that liberated the hand from the servile business of supporting the body weight and set it free to grasp strange objects, to feel them, examine them, weigh them and turn them this way and that so that all aspects could be seen and correlated. It was the liberated hand that carried food to the mouth and so permitted that shortening of the muzzle that was the necessary precursor of the changes in the eyes.
- Wood Jones and Porteous, 1929, cited in Critchley, 1953, The Parietal Lobes
A college education should equip one to entertain three things: a friend, an idea and oneself.
- Anonymous
Change was everywhere. People were gone, or changed, and that was almost like being gone.
- John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday
She had taken up astrology because she found that people who won't take advice from a wise and informed friend will blindly follow the orders of the planets -- which, by all reports are fairly remote and aloof.
- John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday
"Doc, is he nuts?"
"Nuts? Oh yes, I guess so. Nuts about the same amount we are but in a different way."
- John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy.
- Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened.
- Willa Cather
It was just the tourist area, i.e., that part of Bali which has been made almost exactly the same as everywhere else in the world for the sake of people who have come all this way to see Bali.
- Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
[On returning to one's home region:]
...the heart's ease at seeing and taking in the archetypally familiar, over which other familiarities, not organic to our birth, are only superimposed.
- Jill Ker Conway, True North
Some friendships in life sustain themselves only at a particular life stage, products of some mutual developmental problem to be resolved together, or of some external circumstance, like being housed in the same dormitory in boarding school. Others grow out of a deeper spiritual and philosophical affinity, which continues throughout life.
- Jill Ker Conway, True North
One of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.
- Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
Dorothy knew exactly what she was doing buying the dog. ...She bought him because she didn't want her life getting too easy. Complications were important. Without something messing up your plans you became self-centred. Then you became selfish.
- Stuart McLean, Stories from the Vinyl Cafe
How sweet it is to do nothing all day long. And after having done so, to rest.
I thought that perhaps the most creative mix for a society would be nine parts solid worker from institutions like MIT to one part poet from Marrakech, but in spite of the fact that I myself had been trained to be one of the solid workers, which meant that all of my sympathies lay with that group, I would not surrender the poet. The problem was to find him.
- James Michener, The Drifters
South Dakota... is like the world's first drive-through sensory deprivation chamber.
- Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent
To say that it was crappy would be to malign feces.
- Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There
I wonder more and more just where I may have come out if I had never seen Harvard Square.
- Edwin Arlington Robinson
What a lot of things I don't need.
- Socrates, at a marketplace
The cure for anything is salt water -- sweat, tears or the sea.
- Isak Dinesen
Travel makes you wiser but less happy.
- Thomas Jefferson
Life is unfair. Kill yourself or get over it.
- billboard in London UK
The way to do things is to begin.
- billboard, Inman Square, Somerville MA
We don't know who discovered water but it certainly wasn't a fish.
- Marshall McLuhan
At the end of my interview with [neuroscientist] Brenda [Milner], I asked her what is the best thing about being a scientist. She said that if you look at poetry, music or story writing you will notice that it can be all as good a hundred years ago as it is now. But in science, the discoveries made now all always more advanced and better that the ones a hundred years ago. Science is always new and is meant to make our lives more interesting and understandable.
- Veronica Pausova (age 11), Interview with Brenda Milner
It isn't right. It isn't even wrong.
- Wolfgang Pauli
[It is] a loathsome, distended, tumified, bloated, dropsical mass testifying to nothing but two facts. First that there is no such thing as a science of psychology, and second, that W. J. is an incapable.
- William James, describing his classic text, Principles of Psychology
There is nothing so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
- William James
If a solution fails to appear after all of this, and yet we feel success is just around the corner, try resting for a while.... Like the early morning frost, this intellectual refreshment withers the parasitic and nasty vegetation that smothers the good seed. Bursting forth at last is the flower of truth.
- Santiago Ramon Y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator
Given a highball or two even the most reserved of scientists may be persuaded to reveal a tale of serendipity in research, often with some embellishments that add measurably to its telling... I assert however that the following is a true account of my first adventures into the posterior parietal cortex of the waking monkey. Many living witnesses impose constraint.
- Vernon B. Mountcastle (1995). The parietal system and some higher brain functions. Cerebral Cortex, 5, p. 377.
I don't believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don't have any ideas and I'm not getting anywhere, I can say to myself, "At least I'm living; at least I'm doing something. I'm making some contribution." It's just psychological.
- Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman
Physics is like looking for a dark cat in a dark room. Philosophy is like looking for a dark cat in a dark room where there is no cat. Psychology is like looking for a dark cat in a dark room where there is no cat but you find one anyway.
She was so anally retentive she couldn't sit down for fear of sucking up the furniture.
- Absolutely Fabulous
Apparently no one has yet told undergraduates at the University of Western Ontario that vanity is one of the seven deadly sins.
- Linda Frum's Canadian Guide to Universities
A college professor is someone smart enough to get a Ph.D., but too crazy to make a living.
"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brains."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brains."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."
- A. A. Milne
What is thought except a movement that is not connected to a motor neuron.
- Walle Nauta
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
To me old age is 15 years older than I am.
- Bernard Baruch
Normality is the average of deviance.
- Rita Mae Brown
There is no reality, only a best fit.
Create your own reality; just don't let it interfere with mine.
- Susan Timmerman
I rise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savour) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
- E.B. White
Theater is life,
Film is art,
Television is furniture.
Sanity... making your pathology work for you instead of against you.
If you know what you're doing, how long it will take, or how much it will cost, it isn't research.
Science is like being God, only I have time and budget constraints.
- Jane Harrison
If only I had known, I would have become a locksmith.
- Albert Einstein
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
- Howard Aiken
Upon hearing the bagpipes for the first time: "At least there is no smell."
How many Canadians does it take to screw in a light bulb? Four to form a Parliamentary study group to recommend ways to solve the problem, one to complain that Native Canadians have been excluded from the study group, one to complain that this joke wasn't translated into French, one to go cross-border shopping to buy the new light bulb and not declare it at the border, one to collect taxes on the whole process, and a last one to get beer for them all to drink while watching hockey afterwards.
Canadians are generally indistinguishable from the Americans, and the surest way of telling the the two apart is to make the observation to a Canadian.
- Richard Starnes
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
- J. Bartlett Brebner
Canada is like the hole in a Tim Horton's donut: defined more by what it is not than what it is.
- This Hour has 22 Minutes
When your opinions start to coincide with those of the majority, it is time to reconsider your opinions.
- Mark Twain
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
- Pablo Picasso
...like the statistician who drowned in a lake of average depth six inches.
[Humankind] developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.
I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.
Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.
Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.
Why is it when we talk to God we're praying -- but when God talks to us, we're schizophrenic?
I have gained and lost the same ten pounds so many times over and over again that my cellulite must have deja vu.
What if right at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential?
One thing that I have no worry about is whether God exists. It has occurred to me that God has Alzheimer's and has forgotten we exist.
What's the point being a hedonist if you're not having a good time?
Canadians speak French and English, often at the same time. Trayz sophisticated, n'est pah? Known far and wide as master linguists, Canadians excel in particular at translating cereal boxes. Often, when the U.N. needs a cereal box translated, they call in the Canadians, who parachute out of stealth bombers clutching boxes of Capitaine Crounche and K de Special. In a situation unique among the world's nations, English Canadians know what the French is for "riboflavin," "niacin" and "part of a complete breakfast." And vice versa. English Canadians don't know what riboflavin *is* (no one does) but they do sort of know what it looks like in French. And vice versa.
In Canada, the best life possible would be spent like this: you'd be nineteen in Montreal, thirty in Vancouver, fifty in Toronto, and sixty-five in Victoria. (Regina only enters into it after you've died, and then only if you've been very, very bad).
A Canadian is simply an immigrant with seniority.
Poverty jet set: A group of people given to chronic travelling at the expense of long-term job stability or a permanent residence. Tend to have doomed and extremely expensive phone-call relationships with people named Serge or Ilyana. Tend to discuss frequent-flyer programs at parties.
Legislated Nostalgia: To force a body of people to have memories they do not actually possess: "How can I be a part of the 1960s generation when I don't even remember any of it?"
Ultra Short Term Nostalgia: Homesickness for the extremely recent past: "God, things seemed so much better in the world last week."
Teleparablizing: Morals used in everyday life that derive from TV sitcom plots: "That's just like the episode where Jan lost her glasses!"
Option paralysis: The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none.
It doesn't matter where you're from anymore. The malls are all the same.
Ramona [Dave Barry's travel agent] also is good at attempting to explain the airline fare system, which is governed by a powerful state-of-the-art computer that somebody apparently spilled a pitcher of Hawaiian Punch into the brain of, and it has been insane ever since. I base this statement on the fact that if I fly from Miami to, for example, Tampa, the round-trip fare is often hundreds of dollars more than what it costs to fly from Miami to, say, Singapore. This makes no sense. Singapore is in a completely different continent (possibly Africa), whereas Tampa is so close to Miami that our stray bullets frequently land there. And what is worse, there is never just one fare to Tampa. There are dozens of them and the are constantly mutating, and the more Ramona explains them to me, the more disoriented I become.
Me: I need to go to Tampa on Thursday.
Ramona: No, not Thursday.
Me: No?
Ramona: No, because there's a $600 penalty if you fly on a Thursday during a month whose name contains two or more vowels following two straight quarters of increased unemployment unless you are a joint taxpayer filing singly with two or more men on base provided that you spend at least one Saturday night in a hotel room within twelve feet of a malfunctioning ice machine and you undergo a ritual initiation ceremony wherein airline ticket agents dance around you and put honey-roasted peanuts up your nose.
Me: Book me on the Singapore flight.
Most college visits include an orientation session, wherein you sit in a lecture room and a college official tells you impressive statistics about the college, including, almost always, how small the classes are. Class smallness is considered the ultimate measure of how good a college is. Harvard, for example, has zero students per class: The professors just sit alone in their classrooms, filing their nails.
The word user is the word used by the computer professional when they mean idiot.
The other major kind of computer is the "Apple," which I do not recommend, because it is a wuss-o-rama new-age computer that you basically just plug in and use. This means you don't get to participate in the most entertaining aspect of computer owning, which is trying to get the computer to work.
Passengers changing planes in the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport have the right to be provided with some way to travel the average 17 miles to their connecting gates other than walking or taking a "tram" that travels at the speed of fingernail growth and at one point passes through Mexico. Also, the Miami, Atlanta and Detroit airports should be renovated with nuclear weapons. The Denver airport is nice but should be moved to the same state as Denver. The Boston airport should also be moved to the same state as Denver; that way it would be easier to get to it from downtown Boston than it is now.
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
Rules for Living:
...2) People who wear articles of clothing on which the manufacturer's name or logo is prominently displayed must also wear a badge saying, "Yes, I Am an Idiot."
...6) Martha Stewart is, with immediate effect, illegal. Note: Ironically, this was written before Martha did indeed go to prison
...17) That shrill, piercing noise you get when you mistakenly dial someone's fax number is, with immediate effect, extremely illegal. Also, it is illegal to play music, commercials or promises that an agent will be available shortly to anyone you put on hold on a telephone. On second thought, it is illegal to put anyone on hold on a telephone.
...18) Photocopiers will clearly indicate where you are supposed to put the piece of paper you want copied and will provide an immediate refund and spoken apology each time they produce a horizontal photocopy when a vertical one is desired. Any user of a photocopier who instructs the machine to produce a tablecloth-sized photocopy or one hundred copies of a single document, or anything like that, and who then does not reset the machine to its normal settings will be hunted down by the photocopier police and made to drink a cup of toner.
...28) All Americans will appreciate irony. Britons will understand that two ice cubes in a drink is not nearly enough...
It used to be that if you wanted a cup of coffee that's what you asked for and that's what you got. But this place, being a 1990s sort of coffee stand, offered at least twenty choices -- plain, latte, caramel latte, breve, macchiato, mocha, espresso, espresso mocha, black forest mocha, americano and so on -- in a range of sizes. There was also a galaxy of muffins, croissants, bagels, and pastries. All of these could be had in any number of variations, so that every order went something like this: "I'll have a caramel latte combo with decaf mocha and a cinnamon twist, and a low-fat cream cheese sourdough bagel, but I'd like the pimento grated and on the side. Are your poppyseeds roasted in polyunsaturated vegetable oil?"/
For psychophysicists and Harvard Vision Lab alums, a description of life in Hugo Munsterberg's Vision Lab at Harvard ("The more things change, the more they stay the same.")
"Thus each man can act as investigator, conducting perhaps for two days in the week an original research, and at home studying the literature connected with it. On the remaining days, however, be acts as subject in the investigations of his fellow-students, and thus has an opportunity to gain a practical knowledge of investigations in the various fields. Thus at present, by carrying on work simultaneously in different rooms, we have fifteen new investigations already under way selected from almost every region of Experimental Psychology. Some of the lesser tasks will terminate after a few months, and be ripe for publication. Then new themes will be taken up, and so the experimenting will proceed, while all one-sidedness and monotony are avoided."