Fullerton Quotes & Sayings

If a person is to be unconventional, he must be amusing or he is intolerable: for, in the nature of the case, he guarantees you nothing but amusement. He does not guarantee you any of the little amenities by which society has assured itself that, if it must go to sleep, it will at least sleep in a comfortable chair. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. - Joseph Campbell — Claire Fullerton

Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

I've got a bunch of circuit-bent boxes and things that are controlled by my Mac through a big breakout box. I want to create this total environment where I can bring all this gear to the show but maybe just use one or two elements, if that's what's called for. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

We put [young children] into kindergarten where their reasoning powers are ruined; or, if we can afford it, we buy Montessori outfits that were invented for semi-imbeciles in Italian slums; or we send them to outdoor schools and give them prizes for sleeping. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Each man's private conscience ought to be a nice little self-registering thermometer: he ought to carry his moral code incorruptibly and explicitly within himself, and not care what the world thinks. The mass of human beings, however, are not made that way; and many people have been saved from crime or sin by the simple dislike of doing things they would not like to confess ... — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Every one knows about the young man who falls in love with the chorus-girl because she can kick his hat off, and his sister's friends can't or won't. But the youth who marries her, expecting that all her departures from convention will be as agile or as delightful to him as that, is still the classic example of folly. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Nothing makes people so worthy of compliments as receiving them. One is more delightful for being told one is delightful-just as one is more angry for being told one is angry. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

I build the individual modules to meet a demand. If I need the music to change direction, I want to have the tools to be able to do that. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

Social distinctions concern themselves ultimately with whom you may and may not marry. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is *good* sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader's mind so that the mind, like the author's, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and it
inspires creativity, which mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best since fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness. — Philip K. Dick

I became this guy that does drum programming, and I don't want to be that guy anymore. I don't want to sit in front of my computer for 18 hours programming 16 bars of music. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

What passes for an original opinion is, generally, merely an original phrase. Old lamps for new - yes; but it is always the same oil in the lamp. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

When the temperamental and unconventional people are not mere plagiarists of dead eccentrics, they lack, in almost every case, thehistoric sense. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

I nearly always find, when I ask a vegetarian if he is a socialist, or a socialist if he is a vegetarian, that the answer is in the affirmative. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

For never doubt that those souls who live least by the flesh feel themselves most defiled by its defilement. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

I use a laptop more as a tool, as sort of the central artery. Everything goes through the digital audio card of my computer, but if I had my druthers I'd do everything in dedicated hardware. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

Funny how people despise platitudes, when they are usually the truest thing going. A thing has to be pretty true before it gets to be a platitude ... — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Successful socialism depends on the perfectibility of man. Unless all, or nearly all, men are high-minded and clear-sighted, it isbound to be a rotten failure in any but a physical sense. Even through it is altruism, socialism means materialism. You can guarantee the things of the body to every one, but you cannot guarantee the things of the spirit to every one; you can guarantee only that the opportunity to seek them shall not be denied to any one who chooses to seek them. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

All violations of essential privacy are brutalizing. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

If we have a dollar to spend on some wild excess, we shall spend it on a book, not on asparagus out of season. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Do you see any majority, anywhere, in this imperfect and irreligious world, admitting that the minority is precious? That any minority is precious? — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

It is not strange that some of our revoltes preach trial marriage: for the only safe way to marry them at all would be on trial. Until you had definitely experienced all the human situations with them, you would have no means of knowing how, in any given situation, they would behave. They might conform about evening-dress, and throw plates between courses; they might be charming to your friends, and ask the waiter to sit down and finish dinner with you. Or they might in all things, little and big, be irreproachable. The point is that you would never know. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

I see someone play, or I listen to a record, and I think, How did they make that sound?' It's not emulation; it's more building a vocabulary that can be called up at a moment's notice. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

I'm not a perfectionist by a long shot, but self-doubt is a large part of my creative process. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

I think Pro Tools is pretty analogous to how people composed music on tape back in the 70s, taking little fragments of things and saying, 'How can we organize these in a sensible way'? — Keith Fullerton Whitman

It is a poor cause which has to be lied for regularly. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

With the mailorder, I wake up in the morning, I check my e-mail, process the orders, and then I just print everything out. And then for the rest of the day it's actually sitting with paper. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

There are many subjects upon which, if we hold an opinion at all, we should hold it tentatively, waiting for more light, and retaining a willingness to be enlightened. Many a bitter and fruitless quarrel might be avoided, if more persons found it possible to maintain this philosophical attitude of mind. Philosophy is, after all, reflection, and the reflective man must realize that he is probably as liable to error as are other men. He is not infallible, nor has the limit of human knowledge been attained in his day and generation. He who realizes this will not assume that his neighbor is always wrong, and he will come to have that wide, conscientious tolerance, which is not indifference, but which is at the farthest remove from the zeal of mere bigotry. — George Stuart Fullerton

Society, by insisting on conventions, has merely insisted on certain convenient signs by which we may know that a man is considering, in daily life, the comfort of other people. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

If you put your mind to it, not as a school lesson but as a practical tool that you've got to master, you may find it a lot easier than you think. — Alexander Fullerton

On the whole, I should say that the person who likes to lie should never, in any circumstances, be allowed to. Leave the lying to the people who hate it. You will not find them indulging often. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

It's funny, because I'm so associated with digital art and computer art, and yet I spend so little time in front of the computer. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

You can be slum-born and slum-bred and still achieve something worth while; but it is a stupid inverted snobbishness to be proud of it. If one had a right to be proud of anything, it would be of a continued decent tradition back of one. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

It is a great mistake to confuse conventionality with simplicity ... it takes a good deal of intelligence and a great many inhibitions to follow a social code. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

When did the word 'temperament' come into fashion with us? Perhaps it came in when we discovered that artists were human beings. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Gratitude is not a band aid and neither is happiness. You can't just slap it on a wound and it will automatically heal, but it is a salve that can help keep it clean, free of infection, and back on the road to recovery. — James Fullerton

Frenchwomen could not dress like Englishwomen without conviction of sin. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

When you make it a moral necessity for the young to dabble in all the subjects that the books on the top shelf are written about, you kill two very large birds with one stone: you satisfy precious curiosities, and you make them believe that they know as much about life as people who really know something. If college boys are solemnly advised to listen to lectures on prostitution, they will listen; and who is to blame if some time, in a less moral moment, they profit by their information? — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

I have always, privately and humbly, thought it a pity that so good a word [as culture] should go out of the best vocabularies; for when you lose an abstract term, you are apt to lose the thing it stands for. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

I think if people have more of an understanding of what I'm doing, then they'll appreciate it and get into it more. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

The principle of fashion is ... the principle of the kaleidoscope. A new year can only bring us a new combination of the same elements; and about once in so often we go back and begin again. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius
a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

No book is written; it's always re-written — Jean Fullerton

You can bear anything if it is not your fault. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Educational legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that their illiteracy is not made a reproach on them. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

The computer does things that can't be done with hardware, like freezing sounds. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

I love collecting; my joy is finding private press American or European home studio electronic music from the 60s and 70s. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

The imagination can be happy in places where the whole man is not. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Individual freedom and individual equality cannot co-exist. I dare say no one since Thomas Jefferson has really believed it. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Records can ruin you. That's why it's important to be as intimately familiar as possible with the history of recorded music, I guess. In a way, it's an argument for record collecting. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

Unfortunately I've gotten more resistance in the last year than I ever have. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

I know exaggerators of both kinds: people whose lies are only picturesque adjectives, and people whose picturesque adjectives are only lies. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

The only glory most of us have to hope for is the glory of being normal. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

I don't want to rewrite history. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

There's a period of uncertainty that comes into play upon meeting someone who interests you. It must be inherent in attraction, for I've never met anybody who hasn't experienced it, it's just a question of to what degree they're going to admit it. — Claire Fullerton

The aristocracy most widely developed in America is that of wealth. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

No fashion has ever been created expressly for the lean purse or for the fat woman: the dressmaker's ideal is the thin millionaires. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

The great mistake of the reformers is to believe that life begins and ends with health, and that happiness begins and ends with a full stomach and the power to enjoy physical pleasures, even of the finer kind. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

The very notion of tabu is one of the rightest notions in the world. Better any old tabu than none, for a man cannot be said to be"on the side of the stars" at all, unless he makes refusals. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

I can only stand to sit in front of my computer for three or four hours a day. Otherwise it can get really soul-sucking. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

The real drawback to the simple life is that it is not simple. If you are living it, you positively can do nothing else. There is not time. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

One of the reasons, surely, why women have been credited with less perfect veracity than men is that the burden of conventional falsehood falls chiefly on them. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

There is no morality by instinct. There is no social salvation in the end without taking thought; without mastery of logic and application of logic to human experience. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

There are some who, believing that all is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and that to-morrow is necessarily better than to-day, may think that if culture is a good thing we shall infallibly be found to have more of it that we had a generation since; and that if we can be shown not to have more of it, it can be shown not to be worth seeking. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

There are only three things worthwhile
fighting, drinking, and making love. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

[Science] has challenged the super-eminence of religion; it has turned all philosophy out of doors except that which clings to its skirts; it has thrown contempt on all learning that does not depend on it; and it has bribed the skeptics by giving us immense material comforts. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

If you are perfectly willing to shock an individual verbally, the next thing you will be doing is to shock him practically. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

There is a feel about Galway you can wear around your shoulders like a cloak. It hangs in the air with its dampness; it walks the cobblestone streets and stands in the doorways of its gray stone buildings. It blows in with the mist from the Atlantic and lingers incessantly at every corner. I have never been able to walk the streets of Galway without feeling some unnamed presence accompanying me. — Claire Fullerton

There are inquiries which are a sort of moral burglary. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

I have looked warily at anthropologists ever since the day when I went to hear a great Greek scholar lecture on the Iliad, and listened for an hour to talk about bull-roarers and leopard-societies. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

The indiscreet questioner - and by indiscreet questions I mean questions which it is not conceivably a man's duty either to the community or to any individual to answer - is a marauder, and there is every excuse for treating him as such. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Culture' means a long receptivity to things of the mind and the spirit. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

It is not permissible to lie merely to save one's face. But it is sometimes permissible to lie to save another person's face ... — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Civilization is merely an advance in taste: accepting, all the time, nicer things, and rejecting nasty ones. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

Democracy always makes for materialism, because the only kind of equality that you can guarantee to a whole people is, broadly speaking, physical. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

There's an energy that hangs between strangers even in a crowd. — Claire Fullerton

I rarely assess live shows after I play them. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

Some of the men and women who will not say in so many words the thing which is not, will deliberately give a false impression. They are not the servants of truth; they are the parasites of truth. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

The insidiousness of science lies in its claim to be not a subject, but a method. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

Conventional manners are a kind of literacy test for the alien who comes among us. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

The past is discredited because it is not modern. Not to be modern is the great sin. So, perhaps, it is. But every one has, in his day, been modern. And surely even modernity is a poor thing beside immortality. Since we must all die, is it not perhaps better to be a dead lion than a living dog? — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

A preacher may proclaim the grace of God with glorious orthodoxy, but if his life contradicts his doctrine he will disgrace the gospel of Christ (1 Tim 3:7). — Ryan Fullerton

Men demand everything and are not satisfied until sex blinds them into thinking they have got it. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

The more we recruit from immigrants who bring no personal traditions with them, the more America is going to ignore the things of the spirit. No one whose consuming desire is either for food or for motor-cars is going to care about culture, or even know what it is. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

My best ideas come when I'm walking the dog or doing the dishes! — Judith Fullerton

Ignorance of what real learning is, and a consequent suspicion of it; materialism, and a consequent intellectual laxity, both of these have done destructive work in the colleges. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

People have a hard time going to a club and seeing this business tool on stage that's wholly indicative of everything that rock is not. Rock is not about sitting in an office setting up documents, yet they see someone on stage doing that. — Keith Fullerton Whitman