Turn Quotes - page 83
It is as useless for a person to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize its existence and letting the rest come of itself. One must learn to know oneself before knowing anything else (gnothi seauton). Not until a person has inwardly understood himself and then sees the course he is to take does his life gain peace and meaning.
Søren Kierkegaard
What is very important to me is two points: A theory should be internally consistent and it should have some contact with observation. Well, I'm told by all the experts that this theory [String theory] is internally consistent, although they think up new interpretations every time I turn my back. But contact with reality? Nobody's given me anything. I just watch. I'm somewhat unhappy that so many people are working on it. To me, as a physicist, it's sort of sad that so many people at the same time work at something that doesn't seem to have any contact with experiment. But that, to some extent, is due to the fact that we don't have any great experimental puzzle to be thinking about. We have to supply the puzzles, and there aren't that many puzzles right now.
Valentine Telegdi
[Regarding politicians]... like any group of people selected for ambition and nothing else, they turn out to be a pretty bad lot. Like mandarins in China, colonial administrators in the British Empire, lawyers in old North America, or the reconstruction agencies after the Slaughter -- individually there are decent people who do some good, but as a class they're amoral, vicious leeches with a good cover story.
John Barnes
When I came here, you seldom saw a black player get together with a white player and go someplace together after a ball game. Now it is more common. Yes, there has been improvement but some things still remain the way they were. I cannot, for example, go up to a white player and say to him, "Are you for real?" or "Are you concerned with me at all?" But now, once in a while, they will come to you and ask you about it. They don't turn their backs on you like they used to.
Roberto Clemente
Look, here is the way I swing. I swing hard. I don't punch the ball. I have bat control, and I don't go for home runs, but I still swing as hard as some fellows who swing for the fences. My back is practically to first base when I finish the swing. I have to turn around before I can start running. Sometimes the ball is in the fielder's hands before I drop the bat.
Roberto Clemente
I tell you, I'd be lucky to hit.280 in New York. There are too many people in New York, and if you don't want to be a bad guy, you must go to all the dinners and meetings. How could I concentrate on baseball? I have so many good friends in New York that it is hard to turn them down. But it is that way every place on the road. I tell the hotel that I will not be disturb, [sic] but people find me anyway.
Roberto Clemente
