Identikit Tab Quotes & Sayings

Many systems require slack in order to work well. Old reel-to-reel tape recorders needed an extra bit of tape fed into the mechanism to ensure that the tape wouldn't rip. Your coffee grinder won't grind if you overstuff it. Roadways operate best below 70 percent capacity; traffic jams are caused by lack of slack. In principle, if a road is 85 percent full and everybody goes at the same speed, all cars can easily fit with some room between them. But if one driver speeds up just a bit and then needs to brake, those behind her must brake as well. Now they've slowed down too much, and, as it turns out, it's easier to reduce a car's speed than to increase it again. This small shock - someone lightly deviating from the right speed and then touching her brakes - has caused the traffic to slow substantially. A few more shocks, and traffic grinds to a halt. At 85 percent there is enough road but not enough slack to absorb the small shocks. — Sendhil Mullainathan

Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species, or - in this place at least - to much of any description. My object here is simply to project the draught of a systematization of cetology. I am the architect, not the builder. (moby dick chap 32 p131) — Herman Melville

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, one journeying to heaven, one that falls; and leave you, not at home in either one, not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses, not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes a star each night, and rises; and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel) your life, with its immensity and fear, so that, now bounded, now immeasurable, it is alternately stone in you and star. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I tasted perfection, like a Lindt chocolate with all that soft and tasty core. I wasn't sure what flavor would be "perfection," but it didn't matter because she wasn't a fucking a chocolate ball. In that moment, she wasn't even Emma, she was mine — Morgan Parker

If a person is in the habit of talking bad about others while around you, that person is more than likely talking bad about you while around others.
Likewise, if a person is in the habit of talking good about others while around you, that person is more than likely talking good about you while around others.
In either case, love and do good to all people. — Calvin W. Allison

It takes some adjusting from a bow to a gun, but by the end of the day, I've got the best score in my class. — Suzanne Collins

I do not criticize religion as such, but I criticize the concept and the definition of "religion" - as I said in Genealogies. — Talal Asad

Venice, that capital city of dream and intrigue, that double city (one above and seemingly solid, one below, wavering and reflected in the waters), which never disappoints ... — Erica Jong

If you have the power to change the world for the better, you should do it. That's why people who do nothing are idiots, but idiots who do nothing are life-savers. — James McGregor

Prison didn't frighten him especially. He had a lot of fans in there. — Joe Hill

I never used to write down all the ideas that occur to me while writing. I believed if I forgot them they were not important, and the ones that really mattered were those I remembered. Now I write them all down. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Angelo is a brilliant jazz talent. His receptivity, seriousness, his ability to execute ideas simple or complex, combined with his love and feel for the substance of jazz reveal why he is an exceptional artist. — Mulgrew Miller

In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. — Dan Brown