Custom Quotes - page 9
Microsoft's new OS, Windows 7, may finally be a worthy successor to XP, eliminating the clutter of Vista and letting users get to what they want to use without the fuss. All this, while remaining compatible with their IT departments' demands for scalability and custom implementations.
Douglas Rushkoff
The rights of individuals to the use of resources (i. e., property rights) in any society are to be construed as supported by the force of etiquette, social custom, ostracism, and formal legally enacted laws supported by the states' power of violence of punishment. Many of the constraints on the use of what we call private property involve the force of etiquette and social ostracism. The level of noise, the kind of clothes we wear, our intrusion on other people's privacy are restricted not merely by laws backed by police force, but by social acceptance, reciprocity, and voluntary social ostracism for violators of accepted codes of conduct.
Armen Alchian
From that place [Mahawan] the Sultan advanced to Mathurah, which is a large city containing many temples' and the Sultan completely destroyed the city and burnt the temples. There was one golden idol which was broken up under the orders of the Sultan... Then in accordance with his custom, he advanced with his army towards Hindustan with the object of the conquest of Somnath' there were many golden idols in the temple in the city, and the largest of these idols was called Manat... When he reached Somnath, the inhabitants shut the gate on his face. After much fighting and great struggles the fort was taken, and vast multitudes were killed and taken prisoners. The temples were pulled down, and destroyed from their very foundations. The gold idol Somnath was broken into pieces, and one piece was sent to Ghaznin, and was placed at the gate of the Jami' Masjid; and for years it remained there.
Mahmud of Ghazni
Now, as in the Latin and other languages, a yawning fellow is synonymous or equivalent to a negligent and sluggish fellow; this idle custom ought certainly to be avoided; being (as was observed) disagreeable to the sight, offensive to the ear, and contrary also to that natural claim, which every one has to respect. For when we indulge ourselves in this listless behaviour, we not only intimate, that the company we are in, does not greatly please us; but also make a discovery, not very advantageous to ourselves; I mean, that we are of a drowsy, lethargic disposition: which must render us by no means amiable or pleasing, to those with whom we converse.
Giovanni della Casa
In Hindustan, especially in the province of Sylhet, which is a dependency of Bengal, it was the custom for the people of those parts to make eunuchs of some of their sons and give them to the governor in place of revenue (mal-wajibi)... This custom by degrees has been adopted in other provinces and every year some children are thus ruined and cut off from procreation. This practice has become common.
Jahangir
The chief innovator of symbolism in algebra was François Viète... an amateur in the sense that his professional life was devoted to the law... John Wallis... says that Viète, in denoting a class of numbers by a letter, followed the custom of lawyers who discussed legal cases by using arbitrary names [for the litigants]... and later the abbreviations... and still more briefly A, B, and C. Actually, letters had been used occasionally by the Greek Diophantus and by the Hindus. However, in these cases letters were confined to designating a fixed unknown number, powers of that number, and some operations. Viète recognized that a more extensive use of letters, and, in particular, the use of letters to denote classes of numbers, would permit the development of a new kind of mathematics; this he called logistica speciosa in distinction from logistica numerosa.
Morris Kline
We may also observe, that, upon these occasions, the female Nimrods dispensed with the method of riding best suited to the modesty of the sex, and sat astride on the saddle like the men; but this indecorous custom, I trust, was never general, nor of long continuance, even with the heroines who were most delighted with these masculine exercises. An author of the seventeenth century speaks of another fashion, adopted by the fair huntresses of the town of Bury in Suffolk. "The Bury ladies," says he, "that used hawking and hunting, were once in a great vaine of wearing breeches," which it seems gave rise to many severe and ludicrous sarcasms. The only argument in favour of this habit, was decency in case of an accident. But in a manner more consistent with the delicacy of the sex, that is, by refraining from those dangerous recreations.
Joseph Strutt
If the opposing of one cock to fight with another may be justly esteemed a national barbarism, what shall be said of a custom more inhuman, which authorised the throwing at them with sticks, and ferociously putting them to a painful and lingering death? I know not at what time this unfortunate animal became the object of such wicked and wanton abuse: the sport, if such a denomination may be given to it, is certainly no recent invention, and perhaps is alluded to by Chaucer...If the poor bird by chance had its legs broken, or was otherwise so lamed as not to be able to stand, the barbarous owners were wont to support it with sticks, in order to prolong the pleasure received from the reiteration of its torment.
Joseph Strutt
The next matter which by God's help I accomplished, was the repetition of names and titles of former sovereigns which had been omitted from the prayers of Sabbaths and Feasts. The names of those sovereigns of Islam, under whose happy fortune and favour infidel countries had been conquered, whose banners had waved over many a land, under whom idol-temples had been demolished, and mosques and pulpits built and exalted, the fragrant creed had been extended, and the people of Islam had waxen strong and warlike, the names of these men had fallen into neglect and oblivion. So I decreed that according to established custom their names and titles should be rehearsed in the khutba and aspirations offered for the remission of their sins.
Firuz Shah Tughlaq
I believe that day [Ras Tafari's victory parade, Addis Ababa, 3 Nov 1916] implanted in me a life-long craving for barbaric splendour, for savagery and colour and the throb of drums, and that it gave me a lasting veneration for long-established custom and ritual, from which would derive later a deep-seated resentment of Western innovations in other lands, and a distaste for the drab uniformity of the modern world.
Wilfred Thesiger
An irresistible cycle seemed to operate, repeating patterns of the ancient world where civil strife and war brought disaster... I surmised that patterned and predictable changes were in turn rooted in the very nature of civilization-the ineluctable breaker of custom and eroder of moral codes, and itself a product and expression of rapid technological and social change.
William H. McNeill
