Start of the Week Quotations

Things continue to be a little slow around here as the World Cup starts to get exciting... an epic Iberian showdown is imminent, and the South American powerhouses are crowding out so much of the competition that they are starting to turn on themselves. Still, I cannot slack off too much - this week should see another chapter from the Cayo Largo trip and I plan to re-open my Computing Intelligence blog. For now, here are the week's quotations.

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher and poet, 1803-82

"The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own." - William Empson, English poet and literary critic, 1906-84

"Everything has two handles, by one of which it ought to be carried and by the other not^*." - Epictetus, Phyrgian Stoic philosopher, c. 50-120

"Without Britain Europe would remain only a torso." - Ludwig Erhard, German statesmen and Chancellor of West Germany from 1963-6, 1897-1977


^*This observation was clearly made before American litigiousness required adequate safety labels to be placed on all product handles.