Tantalus Myth Quotes & Sayings

For reasons that are both obvious and highly functional, science textbooks (and too many of the older histories of science) refer only to that part of the work of past scientists that can easily be viewed as contributions to the statement and solution of the texts' paradigm problems. Partly by selection and partly by distortion, the scientists of early ages are implicitly represented as having worked upon the same set of fixed problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution in scientific theory and method has made seem scientific. — Thomas S. Kuhn

The average member of the public thinks of 'business' as an impersonal corporate entity owned by the very rich and managed by overpaid executives. There is an almost total failure to appreciate that 'business' actually embraces - in one way or another - most Americans. — Lewis F. Powell Jr.

His copy was full of lofty echoes: Greek Tragedy; Damocle's sword; manna from heaven; the myth of Sisyphus; the last of the Mohicans; hydra-headed and Circe-voiced; experiments with truth; discovery of India; biblical resonance; the lessons of Vedanta; the centre does not hold; the road not taken; the mimic men; for whom the bell tolls; a hundred visions and revisions; the power and the glory; the heart of the matter; the heart of darkness; the agony and the ecstasy; sands of time; riddle of the Sphinx; test of tantalus; murmurs of mortality; Falstaffian figure; Dickensian darkness; ... — Tarun J. Tejpal

A reduction in emissions matters more than what a country pays for it. — Ross Garnaut

We want God to be strong, so that we can be weak. But He wants to be weak so that we can be strong. — William Sloane Coffin

Rule Number Two, Monsignor. Do not show pity. — Gretchen McNeil

It is very remarkable that while the words Eternal, Eternity, Forever, are constantly in our mouths, and applied without hesitation, we yet experience considerable difficulty in contemplating any definite term which bears a very large proportion to the brief cycles of our petty chronicles. There are many minds that would not for an instant doubt the God of Nature to have existed from all Eternity, and would yet reject as preposterous the idea of going back a million of years in the History of His Works. Yet what is a million, or a million million, of solar revolutions to an Eternity? — George Julius Poulett Scrope

Meredith's a big girl. She knows how babies are made, don't you, Mer?"
I nod, numb and weary. "'Course I do. Same guy that taught you taught me. — Laura Wiess

I'm A Queer Poet Too! She stressed queer not because she walked around identifying as a queer poet but so that the youth understood she would fuck her. — Michelle Tea

There is no larger collective-action problem than the environment. The three biggest lies of the environmental movement is that every little bit helps, you can do your part, and together we can do it. — Clay Shirky

It turned out I was pretty good in science. But again, because of the small budget, in science class we couldn't afford to do experiments in order to prove theories. We just believed everything. Actually, I think that class was called Religion. Religion class was always an easy class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you were being taught in all the other classes. — George Carlin