taʔaf Avedisian

“Cryptography is a science of deduction and controlled experiment; hypotheses are formed, tested and often discarded. But the residue which passes the test grows until finally there comes a point when the experimenter feels solid ground beneath his feet: his hypotheses cohere, and fragments of sense emerge from their camouflage. The code 'breaks'. Perhaps this is best defined as the point when the likely leads appear faster than they can be followed up. It is like the initiation of a chain-reaction in atomic physics; once the critical threshold is passed, the reaction propagates itself.”
― John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B

“Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“History is made up of fragments and absences. What is left out is as significant as what is included.”
― Walter Benjamin

“If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man.”
― Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism