In terms of my singing I have sometimes been asked how it all began, and it's usually been a little hard for me to set the story down in any continuous narrative. From the days of my childhood I've been listening to sounds and singers, both colored and white, and absorbing a little bit here and a little bit there. Countless musicians of talent have helped. But it is Billie Holiday, whom I first heard in 52nd Street clubs in the early 1930s, who was and still remains the single greatest musical influence on me. It has been a warm and wonderful influence and I am very proud to acknowledge it. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last 20 years. With a few exceptions, every major pop singer in the U.S., during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius.
Frank SinatraRelated topics
american begin bit childhood colored day early few generation genius hard holiday influence lady last listening major musical narrative pop popular set singing singer single story street talent warm way white remains 1930s years days clubsRelated quotes
This spectrum is of the type known in spectroscopy as a line-spectrum. Its appearance is that of a group of bright lines on a dark background, indicating that the radiation divides itself between a number of clearly defined frequencies, and that there is no radiation in between. Before Bohr's explanation appeared, these frequencies had been supposed to belong to some sort of vibration taking place in the hydrogen atom - like frequencies of the musical note which is heard when a bell or piano wire is made to vibrate. It now became clear that they had an entirely different origin. The energy exhibited in the spectrum was not liberated by a vibration, or any kind of continuous motion, but by the sudden jump of an electron to an orbit of lower energy, and its frequency was determined by the compulsion put upon it to form a single quantum.
James Jeans
Personally, I never met Knut Wicksell. I saw him once when he delivered a lecture in Oslo, but being an unassuming student at the time, I did not have the courage to talk to him. So my knowledge of his theory came only through his writings. That, however, was a very intense and absorbing form of making his acquaintance. Already from my early student days, I read his writings (in German and Swedish) avidly. And I continued to do so later.
When I started my study on Wicksell, I found that his works were not easy reading. Often it was only at the third or fourth reading that I grasped his ideas. Invariably, each new reading made me more and more enthusiastic. Sometimes it happened that I thought I had finally caught him in an inconsistency or in unclear thinking. Every time this happened, it turned out, however, that the error was mine.
Ragnar Frisch
[While her father was a political prisoner in Cuba] I was always singing and dancing and reciting poems -- that was how I used to do my crying over my father. There were a lot of negotiations between the US and Cuban governments over the next couple of years [1961 - 1963]. [Castro proposed an exchange of prisoners for food, medicine and building machinery], and eventually my dad was released. It was wonderful to have him home -- it was probably the happiest time in my life. For once, the whole family was together, living a normal life. That was when my sister, Becky, was born [1964], and it was also when I started guitar lessons. I would lock myself away in my room for days, learning how to play. Even then I was beginning to work out that music was a way to cut throught all the BS.
Gloria Estefan
I know there is profound concern across Europe and the world that America is laying down the mantle of global leadership. I can only speak for myself, but I do not believe that that is the message you will hear from all of the American leaders who cared enough to travel here to Munich this weekend. That's not the message you heard today from Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. That is not the message you will hear from Vice President Mike Pence. That's not the message you will hear from Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. And that is certainly not the message you will hear tomorrow from our bipartisan congressional delegation. I refuse to accept that our values are morally equivalent to those of our adversaries. I am a proud, unapologetic believer in the West, and I believe we must always, always stand up for it. For if we do not, who will?
John McCain
If my history lesson has done nothing else, it should have reminded you that, during any given period in the evolving history of physics, the prevailing, main line, climate of opinion was likely as not to be wrong, as seen in the light of later developments. And yet, in those earlier times, with relatively few individuals involved, change did occur, but slowly... What is fundamentally different in the present day situation in high energy physics is that large numbers of workers are involved, with corresponding pressures to conformity and resistance to any deflection in direction of the main stream, and that the time scale of one scientific generation is much too long for the rapid pace of experimental discovery. I also have a secret fear that new generations may not necessarily have the opportunity to become familiar with dissident ideas.
Julian Schwinger
