People From Nova Scotia

"Nerds do not think they are better than you. Nerds are better than you, in their particular fields, unless you happen to be an even more devoted nerd."

"Anyone taking classics or history for the prestige is either at Oxford or stuck in 1909."

"Why clog your head with tedious facts about the past when you can simply demand an exam review sheet or consult Google or Wikipedia?"

"When we valorize ignorance and debase reason, we diminish man and the humanity that dwells within him, to bum an old fashioned phrase from Kant."

"We are not the adults in the sense that Kant intended, but adolescents. This is a problem, because we are the world's most heavily armed teenagers."

"All we really need to do is learn 'em so they don't frig up the cash register or offend the customers."

"Who teh heLL R u 2 tELL me what 2 reed or how 2 spel?"

"If there is no more market for ancient Greek, there should be no more ancient Greek. If there are no jobs for historians, there should be no history. If there is no money in brains, there should be no brains - except for the brains that make money."

"The panic over public health care is funny and sad, since America has had death panels and sinister bureaucrats for years. They're called Aetna, Humana, and Wellpoint, they make a killing, figuratively and literally."

"Bankers grovelled before the governments they usually revile, like wispy poets whining for grant money. They got billions in bailouts, yet somehow the financial sector still inspires more trust and respect than the government that saved it from itself."

"It's a shame that pantyless party girls get more attention than the real heroes, the nurses and teachers and moms."

"Laughing at the clueless mouthfarts of cute twenty somethings who spent their high-school years with vocal coaches or plastic surgeons is another variation on the theme "Are we getting dumber?""

"I can sculpt a birthday cake out of shit and insist that I obviously mean cake, that my real intent is to wish you a happy birthday, but my intentions and protestations cannot turn crap into a delicious dessert."

"The humanities are despised because they are dangerous. They arm us with the intellectual weapons we need to fight the forces of ignorance and idiocracy, and to free ourselves from freedumb."

"The Nobel Prize in Physics 2009 was divided, one half awarded to Charles Kuen Kao "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication", the other half jointly to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor". He had no friends, and he was a nerd in school."

"A certain ounce of arrogance is not essential in carrying forward an idea. In talking about the device with others, surprising now number of people who either were quite negative and had reasons to suggest it would not function as described or claimed that it would be of little interest and no better than some already existing device."

"Night my banner, and my herald Fear."

"Punctuality [...] is the soul of business."

"Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive."

"Commodore Marlin: My friend, I ask you a plain civil question; will you give me a plain, civil answer?"

"It seems to me, all created critters look down on each other. The British and French look down on the s, and colonists look down upon s and Indians, while we look down upon them all. It's the way of the world, I do suppose; but the road ain't a pleasant one."

"Circumstances alter cases."

"We can do without any article of luxury we have never had; but when once obtained, it is not in human natur’ to surrender it voluntarily."

"I want you to see Peel, Stanley, Graham, Sheil, Russell, Macaulay, Old Joe, and soon. They are all upper-crust here."

"We reckon hours and minutes to be dollars and cents."

"Always judge your fellow passengers to be the opposite of what they strive to appear to be. For instance, a military man is not quarrelsome, for no man doubts his courage; but a snob is. A clergyman is not over strait- laced, for his piety is not questioned; but a cheat is. A lawyer is not apt to be argumentative; but an actor is. A woman that is all smiles and graces is a vixen at heart : snakes fascinate. A stranger that is obsequious and over-civil without apparent cause is treacherous: cats that purr are apt to bite and scratch. Pride is one thing, assumption is another; the latter must always get the cold shoulder, for whoever shews it is no gentleman: men never affect to be what they are, but what they are not. The only man who really is what he appears to be is — a gentleman."

"Everything has altered its dimensions, except the world we live in. The more we know of that, the smaller it seems. Time and distance have been abridged, remote countries have become accessible, and the antipodes are upon visiting terms. There is a reunion of the human race; and the family resemblance now that we begin to think alike, dress alike, and live alike, is very striking. The South Sea Islanders, and the inhabitants of China, import their fashions from Paris, and their fabrics from Manchester, while Rome and London supply missionaries to the ‘ends of the earth,’ to bring its inhabitants into ‘one fold, under one Shepherd.’ Who shall write a book of travels now? Livingstone has exhausted the subject. What field is there left for a future Munchausen? The far West and the far East have shaken hands and pirouetted together, and it is a matter of indifference whether you go to the moors in Scotland to shoot grouse, to South America to ride an alligator, or to Indian jungles to shoot tigers-there are the same facilities for reaching all, and steam will take you to either with the equal ease and rapidity. We have already talked with New York; and as soon as our speaking-trumpet is mended shall converse again. ‘To waft a sigh from Indus to the pole,’ is no longer a poetic phrase, but a plain matter of fact of daily occurrence. Men breakfast at home, and go fifty miles to their counting-houses, and when their work is done, return to dinner. They don’t go from London to the seaside, by way of change, once a year; but they live on the coast, and go to the city daily. The grand tour of our forefathers consisted in visiting the principle cities of Europe. It was a great effort, occupied a vast deal of time, cost a large sum of money, and was oftener attended with danger than advantage. It comprised what was then called, the world: whoever had performed it was said to have ‘seen the world,’ and all that it contained. The Grand Tour now means a voyage round the globe, and he who has not made it has seen nothing."

"I know more than I knew before I didn't rest I didn't stop Did we fight or did we talk."

"Ooh, I'll be the one who'll break my heart I'll be the one to hold the gun."

"The tragedy starts from the very first spark Losing your mind for the sake of your heart The saddest part of a broken heart Isn't the ending so much as the start."

"Don't you wish that we could forget that kiss And see this for what it is That we're not in love"

"I got a man to stick it out And make a home from a rented house And we'll collect the moments one by one I guess that's how the future's done."

"Old dirt road (Mushaboom) Knee deep snow (Mushaboom) Watching the fire as we grow (Mushaboom)"

"It may be years until the day My dreams will match up with my pay."

"Helping the kids out of their coats But wait the babies haven't been born I'm unpacking the bags and setting up And planting lilacs and buttercups But in the meantime I've got it hard Second floor living without a yard."

"I know I'm sane I don't give a care for the crown or the shield I will not protect you or happily yield To the one who makes me come undone"

"Bring all the spaces together And all the silences ever Bring all the spaces together Come close again Be my pause before the end I miss you, oh, like a fading dream And I have a feeling you know what I mean"

"By nature of me being the one singing it and writing it there is always an innate bit of autobiography there ... but I think I learned years ago that you don't get songs that have that long stride and that pivot-hinge ability if it's too much diary entry."

"On tour I'm so invisible to myself, it's just one task after another. In a way as much as I love reading autobiographies, I'm fascinated with them partially because I would have no sense of how to talk about my own life with any perspective. Like half of what I like about autobiographies isn't what happen in their lives, it's ... I'm so curious on how they remember things that happened. Then I think, oh maybe it's not accurate, maybe it's just the way they need to couch an event, they need to remember something that happened 30 years ago as a certain way in the present to make it, you know bearable, and so then half the adventure of reading an autobiography is thinking like, "oh, what does it say about them in the present that they need to think about the past like that," if they sound really altruistic or if they sound really benevolent and kind. Very seldom do you see someone say, "yeah, I was a real asshole," or if they do it's a charming asshole, it's not the mean spirited person, you know?"

"Because there's just so much in a day now, I keep writing in much more abstract terms, like I don't try to write about what happened anymore. It would be impossible."

"Feist's third album of new material, "The Reminder" is ... the album that should transform her from the darling of the indie-rock circuit to a full-fledged star, and do it without compromises. "The Reminder" is a modestly scaled but quietly profound pop gem: sometimes intimate, sometimes exuberant, filled with love songs and hints of mystery. ... In her new love songs Feist apologizes, confesses to longing, hints at betrayals and misunderstandings and wonders what might have been. Her voice is self-possessed yet unguarded, and it hovers in arrangements that are often modest — just a handful of musicians playing together in a room — but can also proffer gleaming instrumental hooks and nonsense syllables that invite singalongs. The songs find equipoise within heartache."

"Apple has really done its job. I thought it was a cute but harmless song (I first heard the song when she performed it on Letterman this past summer, and thought the chorus part was fun. That was about it). But now? I'm at the point where I'm thinking, "the next time I'm on iTunes I should download that song." And there's a reason for that. If I don't hear the entire song, the thirty-second snippet Apple gave us in the ad will rattle around in my cranium for months. So it's either download the song or go out and yell at the college kid who's going to serve me my latte tomorrow morning. You can see that I have no choice."

"Feist comes from an indie-rock world, where it's sacrilege to admit any kind of ambition. But I had 100 percent in my mind the idea that we should have as much material as possible that could be played on the radio or resonate with a huge bunch of people. We already have the built-in reflex not to get behind anything that's going to be hollow. And when you have an artist with this kind of credibility, the idea is to communicate to as many people as possible without doing something ridiculous."

"She really poured it on. She always pours it on. That's Feist."

"I'm a stem now Pushing the drought aside Opening up Fanning my yellow eye On the ferry That's making the waves wave Illumination This is how my heart behaves."

"The cold heart will burst If mistrusted first And a calm heart will break When given a shake"

"One, two, three, four, five, six, nine, and ten Money can't buy you back the love that you had then."

"Sweet heart, bitter heart Now I can't tell you apart Cozy and cold Put the horse before the cartThose teenage hopes Who have tears in their eyes Too scared to own up To one little lie."

"Oh, oh, oh You're changing your heart Oh, oh, oh You know who you are."

"One Two Three Four Tell me that you love me more Sleepless, long nights That was what my youth was for Old teenage hopes are alive at your door Left you with nothing But they want some more."