Alkis > Alkis's Quotes

“Φυσικά κι ονειρεύομαι. Ζει κανείς μόνο μ’ ένα ξερό μισθό;”
― Κική Δημουλά

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Τον έρωτα όχι, όχι εσύ, Ανάγκη, τον έρωτα τον έπλασε ο Θάνατος, από άγρια περιέργεια να εννοήσει τι είναι ζωή.”
― Κική Δημουλά

“When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.”
― Umberto Eco

“Έρχεται μια τραγική στιγμή στη ζωή του ανθρώπου, που το θεωρεί τύχη να
μπορέσει να παρατήσει το έχει του, την πατρίδα του, το παρελθόν του και να φύγει, να φύγει λαχανιασμένος αποζητώντας αλλού τη σιγουριά.”
― Dido Soteriou

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

“An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.”
― Plato

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“So, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
Never enough for both.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

“If one wishes to ‘see’ a travelling wave, one must therefore chart air pressure changes through time. One of the first to attempt this was Alexander Graham Bell, who in 1874 procured an ear from a corpse, impregnated it with oil to keep it flexible, and attached a thin straw to its drum. The other end of the straw was allowed to trace a line on a strip of soot-covered glass which was moved along as the ear was shouted at. This wobbly line was the first recording of a sound wave and the device was called an ear phonautograph. To the relief of those who had to construct them, later versions dispensed with dead ears in favour of metal diaphragms.”
― Mike Goldsmith, Sound: A Very Short Introduction

“The distances over which sound can travel underwater are amazing. It is believed that before the proliferation of engine-powered vessels, Antarctic whales could be heard by their Arctic cousins. Such vast ranges are possible partly because sound waves are absorbed far less in water than in air. At 1 kHz, absorption is about 5 dB/km in air (at 30 per cent humidity) but only 0.06 dB/km in seawater. Also, underwater sound waves are much more confined; a noise made in mid-air spreads in all directions, but in the sea the bed and the surface limit vertical spreading.”
― Mike Goldsmith, Sound: A Very Short Introduction

“The deep sound channel was exploited to set up the SOFAR (sound fixing and ranging) system, which was initiated in 1960 by the Australia-Bermuda Sound Transmission Experiment, in which explosions were set off near Heard Island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia. They were detected in Bermuda, at a distance of 20,000 km. A new, unexpected sound was discovered by the SOFAR researchers, and later identified as the calls of fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus), who long ago discovered the existence and properties of the deep sound channel and regularly visit it to signal their distant kin.”
― Mike Goldsmith, Sound: A Very Short Introduction

“Although South Africa has been a democracy under a single government since 1994, tax payers’ money is still used to pay ten African kings, a ‘Rain Queen’,13 hundreds of chiefs and thousands of headmen who enact laws that run parallel to the official laws of the land.14 South Africa is also one of the most unequal societies in the world. There is an enormous gap between the haves and the have-nots, the legacy of a succession of white-minority governments whose policies of segregation and apartheid15 left the majority of people disadvantaged. Regrettably, even since the fall of the old systems, there has not been much narrowing of the gap between the rich and the poor, and corruption abounds.”
― Gail Nattrass, A Short History of South Africa