Simon Winchester Quotes & Sayings

But those who initially went to the West were overtaken by the barbarism of the frontier with astonishing speed - think Lord of the Flies or Heart of Darkness. There was murder, mayhem, robbery, alcoholism, depression, and suicide, and all of it on a positively Homeric scale that still has cultural anthropologists enraptured. — Simon Winchester

The first vehicle was an unmanned two-ton, hundred-thousand-dollar steel-caged contraption named ANGUS (for Acoustically Navigated Geophysical Underwater System), which had powerful strobe lights, a collection of thermometers, and, most critically, high-definition cameras. Late — Simon Winchester

Nothing is eternally stable, and even Kansas isn't really in Kansas anymore. The earth is in a constant state of flux. — Simon Winchester

Was the heroic creation of a legion of interested and enthusiastic men and women of wide general knowledge and interest; and it lives on today, just as lives the language of which it rightly claims to be a portrait. — Simon Winchester

According to an equally lovingly preserved English translation of the prospectus, the purpose of Ibuka's firm was "to establish an ideal factory that stresses a spirit of freedom and open-mindedness, and where engineers with sincere motivation can exercise their technological skills to the highest level." We shall, he pledged, "eliminate any unfair profit-seeking exercises" and "seek expansion not only for the sake of size." Further, "we shall carefully select employees ... we shall avoid to have [sic] formal positions for the mere sake of having them, and shall place emphasis on a person's ability, performance and character, so that each — Simon Winchester

God - who in that part of London society was of course firmly held to be an Englishman - naturally approved the spread of the language as an essential imperial device; — Simon Winchester

The English language was spoken and written - but at the time of Shakespeare it was not defined, not fixed. It was like the air - it was taken for granted, the medium that enveloped and defined all Britons. But as to exactly what it was, what its components were - who knew? — Simon Winchester

Millions upon millions of people came here full of hope and aspiration to this extraordinary land of liberty and opportunity, and helped build the United States. So the Atlantic Ocean was absolutely critical to the story of America. — Simon Winchester

The language should be accorded just the same dignity and respect as those other standards that science was then also defining. — Simon Winchester

I don't hero worship for the sake of hero worship. When I find people who are truly remarkable - and I think Joseph Needham is a classic example - I do value their counsel. — Simon Winchester

In the sixteenth century in England, dictionaries such as we would recognize today simply did not exist. If the language that so inspired Shakespeare had limits, if its words had definable origins, spellings, pronunciations, meanings - then no single book existed that established them, defined them, and set them down. — Simon Winchester

I find the science behind major natural events almost more interesting than the way in which those same events wreak their effects on human society. — Simon Winchester

Without haste, without fear, we conquer the world. — Simon Winchester

Individual can fully exercise his or her abilities and skills. "We shall distribute the company's surplus earnings to all employees in an appropriate manner, and we shall assist them in a practical manner to secure a stable life. In return, all employees shall exert their utmost effort into their job." Finally, his new company would help his country. Its formally stated national intent was to help "reconstruct Japan, and to elevate the nation's culture through dynamic cultural and technological activities." Yet — Simon Winchester

Why do we as a people choose to live in beautiful and risky places? Beautiful places are relatively dangerous; the forces that made them beautiful are the same forces that will ultimately destroy them. — Simon Winchester

One newcomer, asked why he had killed his wife and children, told the superintendent: I don't know why I am telling you all of this. It's none of your business As a matter of fact it was none of the judge's business either. It was a purely family affair. — Simon Winchester

I think they will never really enjoy true democracy in China. — Simon Winchester

All of those broken bones in northern Japan, all of those broken lives and those broken homes prompt us to remember what in calmer times we are invariably minded to forget: the most stern and chilling of mantras, which holds, quite simply, that mankind inhabits this earth subject to geological consent - which can be withdrawn at any time. — Simon Winchester

All of a sudden his books, which had hitherto been merely a fond decoration and a means of letting his mind free itself from the grim routines of Broadmoor life, had become his most precious possession. For the time being at least he could set aside his imaginings about the harm that people were trying to inflict on him and his person: It was instead his hundreds of books that now needed to be kept safe, and away from the predators with whom he believed the asylum to be infested. His books, and his work on the words he found in them, were about to become the defining feature of his newly chosen life. — Simon Winchester

Having been in the newspaper business for a long, long time, I often wonder, Why do we actually need to know about something like a bus crash in Bangladesh that has no effect on us at all? That can be nothing other than voyeurism. — Simon Winchester

Any grand new dictionary ought itself to be a democratic product, a book that demonstrated the primacy of individual freedoms, of the notion that one could use words freely, as one liked, without hard and fast rules of lexical conduct. — Simon Winchester

The very name Impressionism is taken from an Atlantic Ocean painting - that of Monet, of sunrise in the harbor of Le Havre, done in 1872. — Simon Winchester

The northeast trade winds that blow at a steady fifteen knots onto the cliffs and reefs of the islands' lee shores produce endless trains of eminently glidable waves. — Simon Winchester

There is a Sacerdotall dignitie in my native Countrey contiguate to me, where I now contemplate: which your worshipfull benignitie could sone impenetrate for mee, if it would like you to extend your sedules, and collaude me in them to the right honourable lord Chaunceller, or rather Archgrammacian of Englande. — Simon Winchester

I do as much bookish research as I can but when I sit down to write, often I think, 'Wait, I was there.' That is one of the great advantages of having wandered around the world and lived in so many places and met such fascinating people. — Simon Winchester

The cities of the eastern American fall line are well known today - Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Fredericksburg, Philadelphia - even though the part that the very similar accidents of geology and river behavior played in their origins may have been long forgotten. — Simon Winchester

The most difficult task for anyone wandering through a foreign land with the hope of gaining some insight into it is the profound need to come to terms with the lives and thoughts of strangers. — Simon Winchester

Railroads brought about lasting social effects, as well. The companies' ruthless attention to keeping time impelled passengers to carry pocket watches,* and led to the eventual establishment of time zones. — Simon Winchester

To be perfectly honest the old habits, specifically deadlines, still very much inform what I do. I am brutally disciplined about getting manuscripts in on time. — Simon Winchester

The citizens of Buffalo, then a smallish lakeside town, embarked on a brief campaign, led by a local judge named Wilkeson, to clear their own eponymous riverway and so tempt the canal engineers to route the Erie Canal to a terminus nearby. Energetic lobbying, together with the clearance of the creek, evidently worked, for the engineers did eventually end their labors there, and the fact that more than a million people now still brave one of the country's cruelest climates (with roof-topping lake-effect snowfalls drowning the city each winter) to live in and around Buffalo is testimony to the wisdom of Judge Wilkeson and the city fathers of 1825 in doing all the persuading, as well as dredging and prettifying the banks of Buffalo Creek. — Simon Winchester

The nature of catastrophe is, after all, reasonably unvarying in the way it ruins, destroys, wounds and devastates. But if something can be learned from the event - not least something as profound as the theory of plate tectonics - then it somehow puts the ruination into a much more positive light. — Simon Winchester

So research is a terribly imperfect science, and you learn an awful lot more after you've published a book, because people keep writing to you and saying, 'Oh, gosh, I was related to such and such a character and I have a letter in my possession.' — Simon Winchester

And after that, and also for each word, there should be sentences that show the twists and turns of meanings - the way almost every word slips in its silvery, fishlike way, weaving this way and that, adding subtleties of nuance to itself, and then perhaps shedding them as public mood dictates. — Simon Winchester

We should all live in central or southwest Queensland in Australia, which is geologically stable. Or Kansas or Nebraska, because it's relatively geologically stable. I am sure there is no emergency plan for Topeka. — Simon Winchester

I've come to accept who my readers turn out to be, rather than having some sort of demographic target. — Simon Winchester

We associate the North Atlantic with cod. The motto of Newfoundland used to be 'In cod we trust.' It was a joke, but it was essentially true. But there is no cod anymore. And that's extraordinary. It's all because of either greed or politics - Canadian politics. — Simon Winchester

An end to timidity - the replacement of the philologically tentative by the lexicographically decisive. - on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary — Simon Winchester

We kid ourselves that we're trying to be empathetic with the human condition from a distance, but I don't think that is it at all. It's stupid; it's a waste of time. But when the earth flexes its muscles, that's rather different. That's a powerful reminder of where we are. — Simon Winchester

My wife is very interested in fashion. I am absolutely not. I couldn't give a toss. Fashion is a perfectly valid thing to be interested in. I'm just not particularly interested in pop culture. I think I am more interested in things that have a settled permanence about them. — Simon Winchester

Our histories, our novels, our poems, our plays - they are all in this one book. — Simon Winchester

Nature is not evil. The world occasionally shrugs its shoulders, and people get knocked off. The earth, for geological reasons that are well known, is a fairly risky place to live. To be evil, you have to have intent. Any remarkable natural happening in which no human will is employed cannot be regarded as evil. — Simon Winchester

No critic and advocate of immutability has ever once managed properly or even marginally to outwit the English language's capacity for foxy and relentlessly slippery flexibility. For English is a language that simply cannot be fixed, not can its use ever be absolutely laid down. It changes constantly; it grows with an almost exponential joy. It evolves eternally; its words alter their senses and their meanings subtly, slowly, or speedily according to fashion and need. — Simon Winchester