"The sort of thing that pleased the public mind was caricatures of eminent politicians after a course of Boom-feeding, uses of the idea on hoardings, and such edifying exhibitions as the dead wasps that had escaped the fire and the remaining hens. Beyond that the public did not care to look, until very strenuous efforts were made to turn its eyes to the remoter consequences, and even then for a while its enthusiasm for action was partial. "There's always somethin' New," said the public--a public so glutted with novelty that it would hear of the earth being split as one splits an apple without surprise, and, "I wonder what they'll do next.""

"Afrique est coustumiere toujours choses produire nouvelles et monstrueuses."

"Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance that has grown stale, which men of old have spoken."

"Omnivores therefore go through life with two competing motives: neophilia (an attraction to new things) and neophobia (a fear of new things). People vary in terms of which motive is stronger […]: Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as "openness to experience"), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas. Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what's tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders, boundaries, and traditions."

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

"Spick and span new."

"Everything's a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is."

"Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

"The point of academic attacks is not exhibiting practical breaks; the point is that only a trained cryptographer can tell whether a given algorithm is secure or not. The author of an algorithm says: "My cipher is secure, and trust me, I am an expert at this. And to prove that I am a real good expert, I challenge other experts to find even the most impractical, academic flaw in my cipher"."

"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."

"The real work in an attack, at least an attack against a well-designed cipher, is modifying the attack technique so that it works. Knudsen's papers are an excellent example of this; he is a master at making an attack work where others have failed. Differentials work where characteristics don't. Truncated differentials work where normal differentials don't. Even this year's exciting find, impossible differentials, are simply another way at looking at a differential attack. A cryptanalyst with a "menu" would have never found any of those attacks, and would have broken far fewer ciphers."

"The NSA response was, "Well, that was interesting, but there aren't any ciphers like that.""

"Due to the suspicious nature of crypto users I have a feeling DES will be with us forever, we will just keep adding keys and cycles..."

"There is also a side benefit: the difference in strength made by even really subtle changes warns us just how tricky crypto can be..."

"When a cryptanalyst starts out trying to analyze a new algorithm, his first thought is probably: "Yikes. What a mess. I'll never make sense of this". So there are all sorts of tricks to help you start to probe into the convoluted innards of the cipher. One of these is to attack a weakened version. Later, he may be able to extend the attack to the full strength version; or, if this cannot be done, the reason why it can't at least gives some insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the cipher."

"For the computer security community, the moral is obvious: if you are designing a system whose functions include providing evidence, it had better be able to withstand hostile review."

"Feistel and Coppersmith rule. Sixteen rounds and one hell of an avalanche."

"The magic words are squeamish ossifrage"

"The multiple human needs and desires that demand privacy among two or more people in the midst of social life must inevitably lead to cryptology wherever men thrive and wherever they write."

"Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break."

"This method, seemingly very clever, actually played into our hands! And so it often happens that an apparently ingenious idea is in fact a weakness which the scientific cryptographer seizes on for his solution."

"If you think cryptography is the answer to your problem, then you don't know what your problem is."

"We didn't do this with just a pencil and some paper. Lots of our notes are in pen. We didn't need to erase much."

"Just like glue. Commercial ads state that the foobar glue can stick an elephant to the ceiling. Who needs to stick an elephant to the ceiling? But if it can do that, people will trust its sticking strength."

"This is not a transition that will happen from one day to the other . . . . Whole economies and societies are dependent on fossil fuels. Fossil capital will not disappear just because we made a decision here. [But the COP28 final agreement sends] a strong political message that this is the pathway."

"Tripling {global renewable energy capacity} is a monumental change. . . . We don't have any structures that fit 100% with the new system that is coming."

"No, the Cop28 agreement will not enable the world to hold the 1.5C limit, but yes, the result is a pivotal landmark. This agreement delivers on making it clear to all financial institutions, businesses and societies that we are now finally – eight years behind the Paris schedule – at the true "beginning of the end" of the fossil fuel-driven world economy."

"{UNFCCC participant countries should accelerate} zero- and low-emission technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage."

"{UNFCCC participant countries should transition} away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science[; they should also accelerate] efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power[; and triple] renewable energy capacity globally."