Retroreflectors Quotes & Sayings

Pomeranz, K. (2000) The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. — Jane Pollard

What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline.
Discipline is hard
harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We can't even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at. — Atul Gawande

I had struggled so hard and so long that I had simply exhausted myself, only to find that God had all the time in the world to wait for me to allow Him to free me. — Michelle McKinney Hammond

Solving the value-loading problem is a research challenge worthy of some of the next generation's best mathematical talent. — Nick Bostrom

Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers - and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it. — Margaret Sanger

How many chapters have been written about love verses - and how many more might be written! - might, would, could, should, or ought to be written! - I will venture to say, will be written! — Samuel Lover

Fundamentalism's strident denunciation of its opponents is a sign of its weakness, its dogmatic authoritarianism is a pathological mutation of faith. — Alan Aldridge

My God, thank you for bringing her. It's like a trip into the past. Hannah looks just like her. My sweet little Terri." And Vanni was reminded, not for the first time, that the loss of a child is probably the most brutal loss of all, no matter that child's age. * — Robyn Carr

I didn't want their tears. I didn't want them to think of me. I wanted nothing from them. That asshole Mitch Johnson saved my life today. What a prick. — Tiffany King

You could take the entirety of the common sense of humans and put it in the palm of your hand and still have room for your dick. — Anne Carson

When an object impacts the Moon at high speed, it sets the Moon slightly wobbling. Eventually the vibrations die down but not in so short a period as eight hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo astronauts emplaced in several locales on the Moon special mirrors called laser retroreflectors. When a laser beam from Earth strikes the mirror and bounces back, the round-trip travel time can be measured with remarkable precision. This time multiplied by the speed of light gives us the distance to the Moon at that moment to equally remarkable precision. Such measurements, performed over a period of years, reveal the Moon to be librating, or quivering with a period (about three years) and amplitude (about three meters), consistent with the idea that the crater Giordano Bruno was gouged out less than a thousand years ago. — Carl Sagan

A 'treat' is different from a 'reward,' which must be justified or earned. A treat is a small pleasure or indulgence that we give to ourselves just because we want it. Treats give us greater vitality, which boosts self-control, which helps us maintain our healthy habits. — Gretchen Rubin