Nansen Quotes & Sayings

The late sixties and early seventies were kind of a breeding ground for exciting new sounds because easy listening and folk were kind of taking over the airwaves. I think it was a natural next step to take that blissful, easy-going sound and strangle the life out of it. — Alice Cooper

Have you not succeeded? Continue! Have you succeeded? Continue! — Fridtjof Nansen

Emacs is a nice operating system, but I prefer UNIX. — Tom Christiansen

I like mindless disco ... they say the lyrics are stupid and repetitious. So what's wrong with that? So is lying in the sun. Not everything has to be serious. — Lou Reed

Never stop because you are afraid - you are never so likely to be wrong. — Fridtjof Nansen

Never keep a line of retreat: it is a wretched invention. — Fridtjof Nansen

If nations could overcome the mutual fear and distrust whose sombre shadow is now thrown over the world, and could meet with confidence and good will to settle their possible differences, they would easily be able to establish a lasting peace. — Fridtjof Nansen

Hope is a rickety craft to trust one's self to. I — Fridtjof Nansen

War will cease when men refuse to fight. — Fridtjof Nansen

At this period, too, Leningraders resorted to their most desperate food substitutes, scraping dried glue from the underside of wallpaper and boiling up shoes and belts. (Tannery processes had changed, they discovered, since the days of Amundsen and Nansen, and the leather remained tough and inedible.) — Anna Reid

They've got as much sex appeal as a road accident. — Douglas Adams

Oh no! This is bad. I think my heart was just stolen a little — Atsushi Otani

At 1 o'clock all were assembled for dinner, which generally consisted of three courses - soup, meat, and dessert; or, soup, fish, and meat; or, fish, meat, and dessert; or sometimes only fish and meat. With the meat we always had potatoes, and either green vegetables or macaroni. I think we were all agreed that the fare was good; it would hardly have been better at home; for some of us it would perhaps have been worse. And we looked like fatted pigs; one or two even began to cultivate a double chin and a corporation. As — Fridjtof Nansen

The Warrior Princess Submissive is - at least in my humble opinion - quite possibly destined to be the hope and salvation of the D/s lifestyle from an ever-increasing wave of attacks by a small cadre of radical feminists and misandrists who seek to equate D/s with misogyny. — Michael Makai

Who does not feel that Nansen's account of his search for the Pole rather loses than gains in ideal satisfaction by the pretense of a few trifling acquisitions for science? — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Nansen had moreover introduced a startling new concept into Polar exploration. He had deliberately cut off his lines of retreat. His route was from the desolate east coast to the inhabited west. This was not bravado, but calculated exploitation of the instinct of self-preservation. It drove him on; there was no incentive to look back. — Roland Huntford

It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport. — Fridtjof Nansen

WHAT? YOU AGAIN?' he shouted in capital letters. — Noel Langley

I noticed that people were craving a way of reinterpreting tradition and of being Jewish without joining a synagogue. — Jill Soloway

The whole plan of extermination was nothing less than a cold blooded, calculated political measure, having for its object the annihilation of a superior element in the population, which might prove troublesome, and to this must be added the motive of greed. — Fridtjof Nansen

The first great thing is to find yourself and for that you need solitude and contemplation - at least sometimes. I can tell you deliverance will not come from the rushing noisy centers of civilization. It will come from the lonely places. — Fridtjof Nansen

Now you know about it, and you can do whatever you want to it. — Erin Morgenstern

In the nineteenth century, Fritjof Nansen wrote that skiing washes civilization clean from our minds by dint of its exhilarating physicality. By extension, I believe that snow helps strip away the things that don't matter. It leaves us thinking of little else but the greatness of nature, the place of our souls within it, and the dazzling whiteness that lies ahead. — Charlie English

Webb read fantasy; Jude read realism — Melina Marchetta

Happiness is the struggle towards a summit and, when it is attained, it is happiness to glimpse new summits on the other side. — Fridtjof Nansen

Wonderful. Visions of Aunt Bette McGyvering an explosive with that exposed nail, some lint from her pocket and spit filled my head just as the door opened quickly and shut just as quickly. — Kristen Ashley

Is it not in the struggle to obtain knowledge that happiness exists? I am very ignorant, consequently the conditions of happiness are mine. — Fridtjof Nansen

Ode to Douglas Adams

In the solar system we inhabit, we live on a small planet we all call Earth. Okay, when I say small, I mean it's small compared to say, oh, Jupiter. Earth is something like a dime compared to Jupiter's beach ball. On this Earth is a fairly large country we all call The United States of America. Of course, when I say fairly large, it's like the U.S. is a piece of broccoli next to China's really large cauliflower. Now that I think of it, that may not be a good comparison as it depends on the restaurant you go to. At the place I was at last night it would be a good comparison as the cauliflower was larger than the broccoli. Not that I'd touch either. I had a hamburger with fries and somebody at the next table had those ghastly vegetables.

From the Preface to "Sex and the American Male." I was saddened by the passing of Douglas Adams and wrote the preface to sound a little like his "Hitchhiker's..." books and to honor him. I hope he's smiling. — Jay Williams

Alas! Alas! Life is full of disappointments; as one reaches one ridge there is always another and a higher one beyond which blocks the view. — Fridtjof Nansen

Actions speak louder than meetings. — Lee Clow

Love is life's snow. It falls deepest and softest into the gashes left by the fight - whiter and purer than snow itself. — Fridtjof Nansen

The difficult is what takes a little time. The impossible is what takes a little longer. — Fridtjof Nansen

After a minute I leaned back, elbows on the table, and looked up for the twinkle of the first star in the evening sky. When we were little, it was a ritual Finn and I did on the front porch. He'd make his wish silently, and I would too, but I never could keep a secret; and I'd tell him what I wished every time. He'd always tell me it wouldn't come true, but I didn't believe him. I'd had plenty of them come true, from a new box of crayons showing up out of nowhere to a bag of candy left on my bed. It had been a while, though, and the only thing I'd wish for now was impossible. I found the first star in a patch of burnt-orange sky, above the crinkly purple mountains in the distance, and then I wished my brother back anyway. — Jessi Kirby

The history of the human race is a continual struggle from darkness into light. It is, therefore, to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge; man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, is no longer a man. — Fridtjof Nansen

I demolish my bridges behind me ... then there is no choice but to move forward — Fridtjof Nansen

He took the 101 out to the Valley and then the 405 north to the 118 and west. He got off in Chatsworth and drove into the rocky bluffs at the top corner of the Valley. — Michael Connelly

You are one with your skis and nature. This is something that develops not only the body but the soul as well, and it has a deeper meaning for a people than most of us perceive. — Fridtjof Nansen

Beneath this crust, hundreds of fathoms down, there teems a world of checkered life in all its changing forms, a world of the same composition as ours, with the same instincts, the same sorrows, and also, no doubt, the same joys; everywhere the same struggle for existence. So it ever is. If we penetrate within even the hardest shell we come upon the pulsations of life, however thick the crust may be. — Fridtjof Nansen

Man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, he is no longer a man. — Fridtjof Nansen

After multiple trips to Paris and being accused of participating in 'heinous' activities in regard to the state, I found my Romanian nationality revoked by 'presidential decree' in 1975. Because I hadn't asked for political asylum like everyone else, I had to live and travel with the infamous Nansen Passport from then on. This wasn't easy ... I finally obtained my French citizenship in 1983. — Dumitru Tepeneag