Predecessors Quotes - Page 7

• The scientist has to take 95 per cent of his subject on trust. He has to because he can't possibly do all the experiments, therefore he has to take on trust the experiments all his colleagues and predecessors have done. Whereas a mathematician doesn't have to take anything on trust. Any theorem that's proved, he doesn't believe it, really, until he goes through the proof himself, and therefore he knows his whole subject from scratch. He's absolutely 100 per cent certain of it. And that gives him an extraordinary conviction of certainty, and an arrogance that scientists don't have.

  Christopher Zeeman

  Believe, Science, Giving

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• We do not innovate anything ... How is it that novelties are introduced which were never even thought of by our predecessors?

  Ambrose

  Catholic, Novelty

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• Your eyes, accustomed to semi-darkness, will soon open to more radiant visions of light. The shadows which we shall paint shall be more luminous than the high-lights of our predecessors, and our pictures, next to those of the museums, will shine like blinding daylight, compared with deepest night. We conclude that painting cannot exist today without divisionism... ...Divisionism, for the modern painter, must be an innate complementariness which we declare to be essential and necessary.

  Umberto Boccioni

  Eye, Night, Museums

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• All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.

  Jared Diamond

  Improvement, Invention, Made

  Jared Diamond (2017). “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, p.214, W. W. Norton & Company

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• OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Science, Astronomers, Conjecture

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.151, 谷月社

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• The term "godawful" should be used sparingly in connection with motion pictures. With Angels & Demons, however, it seems oddly appropriate. Not only does this prequel-turned-sequel to The Da Vinci Code make its predecessor seem like a masterwork of pacing and plotting, but it may represent a nadir for director Ron Howard and is probably the worst instance of acting from star Tom Hanks since back in the days when he was struggling out from under the shadow of Bosom Buddies.

  James Berardinelli

  Stars, Struggle, Angel

  "Angels & Demons (United States, 2009)". A movie review, www.reelviews.net. 2009.

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• I don't think JetBlue has a better chance of being profitable than 100 other predecessors with new airplanes, new employees, low fares, all touchy-feely ... all of them are losers. Most of these guys are smoking ragweed.

  Gordon Bethune

  Airplane, Thinking, Smoking

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• It must be a good thing to die conscious of having performed some real good, and to know that by this work one will live, at least in the memory of some, and will have left a good example to those that come after. A work that is good-it may not be eternal, but the thought expressed in it is, and the work itself will certainly remain in existence for a long, long time; and if afterwards others arise, they can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and do their work in the same way.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Memories, Real, Long

  Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem Gogh (1927). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886: With a Memoir by His Sister-in-law, J. Van Gogh-Bonger ...”

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• Every few seconds a new book sees the light of day. Most of them will just be a part of the hum that makes us hard of hearing. Even the book is becoming an instrument of forgetting. A truly literary work comes into being as its creator's cry of protest against the forgetting that looms over him, over his predecessors and his contemporaries alike, and over his time, and the language he speaks. A literary work is something that defies death.

  Ivan Klíma

  Book, Light, Literature

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• I always see other people as predecessors and admire them.

  Judd Apatow

  People, Admire

  "Judd Apatow: 'I still feel like a nerd'" by Hadley Freeman, www.theguardian.com. August 26, 2009.

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• A learned historian declared to me of a contemporary, that the latter had appropriated his researches; he might, indeed, and he had a right to refer to the same originals; but if his predecessor had opened the sources for him, gratitude is not a silent virtue.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Gratitude, Research, Might

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• My dear fellow citizens: For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this day different variations of the same theme: how our country flourished, how many millions of tons of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how we trusted our government, and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us. I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you.

  Vaclav Havel

  Country, War, Lying

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• Every innovation scraps its immediate predecessor and retrieves still older figures – it causes floods of antiques or nostalgic art forms and stimulates the search for museum pieces.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Art, Museums, Innovation

  Marshall McLuhan, W. Terrence Gordon, Barrington Nevitt, Harold Adams Innis (2005). “Marshall McLuhan: The argument: causality in the electric world”

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• Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical means like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.

  Albert Speer

  Country, Mean, Independent

  "Nuremberg: The War Crimes Trial". Book by Richard Norton-Taylor, Nicolas Kent, 1997.

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• The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read. We must not, however, be satisfied with retaining the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go forth to study beautiful nature, let us try to free our mids from them, let us strive to express ourselves according to our personal temperaments. Time and reflection, moreover, little by little modify our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us.

  Paul Cezanne

  Beautiful, Art, Book

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• The potential of any technology is always dissipated by its users involvement in its predecessors...Computer are still serving mainly to sustain precomputer effects.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Technology, Politics, Computer

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• Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.

  Tony Hoare

  Improvement, Language, Programming

  "Hints on Programming Language Design", December 1973.

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• Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the physic predecessor of all real understanding.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Real, Understanding, Avoided

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• Psychological man may be going nowhere, but he aims to achieve a certain speed and certainty in going. Like his predecessor, the man of the market economy, he understands morality as that which is conducive to increased activity. The important thing is to keep going.

  Philip Rieff

  Men, Important, May

  Philip Rieff (1987). “The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud”, p.41, University of Chicago Press

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• Now, some have said I blame too many problems on my predecessor, but let's not forget that's a practice that was initiated by George W. Bush.

  Barack Obama

  Practice, Blame, Problem

  Barak Obama's Remarks at the White House Correspondents Dinner, www.foxnews.com. April 29, 2012.

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• Behind the mask of diplomatic and political cooperation and partnership with the United States and Europe, the current Russian leaders are following the strategy of their predecessors and working towards a 'New World Order'. When the right moment comes the mask will be dropped and the Russians with Chinese help will seek to impose their system on the West on their own terms.

  Anatoliy Golitsyn

  Order, Europe, Leader

  Anatoliy Golitsyn (1995). “The Perestroika Deception: Memoranda to the Central Intelligence Agency”

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• The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Government, Reform, Critical Moments

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2012). “The Old Regime and the French Revolution”, p.214, Courier Corporation

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• Addressing the Columbia crew after winning the intercollegiate regatta: I congratulate you most heartily upon the splendid victory you have won, and the luster you have shed upon the name of Columbia College. I thank you for the Faculty of the College, for the manifest service you have done to this institution. . . . I am convinced that in one day or in one summer, you have done more to make Columbia College known than all your predecessors have done since the foundation of the college by this, your great triumph.

  Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard

  Summer, Winning, College

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• Wars always evolve over time, don't they? Iraq/Afghanistan is different than Vietnam, and Vietnam was different than Korea, and Korea was different than World War One, and so on. Some things remain the same, of course - one side fighting another over ideology or a patch of ground - but there are some aspects of combat life which differ radically than their predecessors.

  Dave Abrams

  War, Fighting, Korea

  Source: therumpus.net

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• It's quite clear that Gore won most of the votes. I think the accurate description for them is a military plutocracy. Having lived and worked in the United States, I must add that I don't want to make too much of the distinction between the Bush regime and its predecessors. I don't see a great deal of difference.

  John Pilger

  Military, Thinking, Differences

  Source: progressive.org

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