Temptation

Submitted by cvining on

I can resist anything except temptation.

Quote Author
Citation

Lady Windermere's Fan

Stars in the gutter

Submitted by cvining on

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Quote Author
Citation

Lady Windermere's Fan

Two great tragedies

Submitted by cvining on

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Quote Author

Me Neither

Submitted by cvining on

In 2024, Kamala Harris did worse among Black voters than Joe Biden did in 2020. She did worse among female voters. She did much worse among Latino voters. She did much worse among young voters.

She did manage to outperform Biden among two groups: affluent people and white voters, especially white men. If there is one sentence that captures the surprising results of this election, it is this one from the sociologist Musa al-Gharbi: 'Democrats lost because everyone except for whites moved in the direction of Donald Trump this cycle.'

Going into this campaign, I did not have that one on my bingo card.

Quote Author
Citation

2024114, NYTimes

Science and Poetry

Submitted by cvining on

I do not see how a man can work at the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition. In science you want to say something nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say something that everybody knows already in words that nobody can understand.

Quote Author
Citation

On learning, during the Manhattan Project, that Robert Oppenheimer was wrting poetry

Pigs

Submitted by cvining on

Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig. He just looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.

Quote Author

Kicking an old lady down the stairs

Submitted by cvining on

If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up as an old lady, then kick him down the stairs. If you want to make a comedian laugh, it has to be an actual old lady.

Quote Author
Citation

A variant on this was attributed to Fields by John Cleese in a 2014 interview with Adam Savage. Another attribution appeared in the NY Times 24 Jan 2012