people-from-geneva

"Love for old men is sun on the snow: it dazzles more than it warms them."

"To protect one's self against the storms of passion, marriage with a good woman is a harbour in the tempest; but with a bad woman, it proves a tempest in the harbour."

"We know the value of a fortune when we have gained it, and that of a friend when we have lost it."

"Happiness is the shadow of man: remembrance of it follows him; hope of it precedes him."

"Let us respect white hair — especially our own."

"Promises retain men better than services. For them, hope is a chain, and gratitude a thread."

"A child becomes for his parents, according to the education he receives, a blessing or a chastisement."

"Beauty and ugliness disappear equally under the wrinkles of age: one is lost in them, the other hidden."

"We like to give in the sunlight, and to receive in the dark."

"We salute more willingly an acquaintance in a carriage than a friend on foot."

"What we gain by experience is not worth what we lose in illusion."

"For one Orpheus who went to Hell to seek his wife, how many widowers who would not even go to Paradise to find theirs!"

"The flavour of detached thoughts depends upon the conciseness of their expression: for thoughts are grains of sugar, or of salt, that must be melted in a drop of water."

"Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance."

"‘Is it not curious, moreover, to see the Aryas of Europe, after a separation of four to five thousand years, finding their way back, via a vast, circuitous route, to their unknown Indian brothers [so as] to dominate them and bring them the elements of a higher civilization and to discover among them the ancient proof of a common origin?’"

"In a prehistoric era lost in the mists of time, a whole race, destined by Providence to reign one day supreme over the entire earth, was slowly growing in the primeval cradle, in which it was preparing for a brilliant future…. Favoured among all others by the beauty of its blood and the gifts of its intelligence, … this was the race of the Aryas, blessed from the beginning with the very qualities which the Hebrews lacked in order to become civilizers of the world…. The religion of Christ was destined to become the torch of humanity: the Greek genius welcomed it; the power of Rome propagated it far end wide, Germanic energy it new strength. Through a thousand battles, the whole race of the European Aryas … came to be the main instrument of God’s designs for the destiny of mankind."

"...the harmonious balance of their faculties and aptitudes, which is already perceivable to a high degree in the formation of their language and which presided, from the earliest times, over their social organization. A happy nature, where energy was tempered by gentleness, a lovely imagination and a powerful reason, an active intelligence and a spirit that was open to impressions of beauty, a genuine sentiment of truth and duty, a healthy morality and elevated religious instincts, such are the qualities which together gave them, along with the consciousness of their own value, the love of freedom and the constant desire for progress.8"

"Newton's Dictionary of Birds, published in four parts by Adam & Charles Black, London, between 1893 and 1896, and as a single bulky volume in 1896 was his magnum opus (Dawson 2008), a monumental work that inspired awe and admiration from all reviewers. ... Newton's main achievements are threefold: (1) helping to initiate the British Ornithologists’ Union and its journal The Ibis, (2) promoting the conservation of birds and (3) his Dictionary of Birds."

"To attempt the taking of an Ornithological Census of these islands was a favourite idea of Mr. John Wolley's; so much so, indeed, that I believe he used to regard its accomplishment as the chief requirement of British ornithology. ... Two of the expressions which have lately become very familiar to the ears of naturalists are the "Struggle for Life," and "Preservation of Favoured Races" therein. Each of these points, as it seems to me, would be greatly elucidated by the carrying-out of Mr. Wolley's idea.""

"Newton's conversatism is evident in everything connected with his life—his views upon most subjects, his personal habits, attire, etc., but curiously enough we find him among the first to adopt the ideas of Darwin and Wallace on evolution and one of their staunch supporters in the stormy discussions which rent the British Association in the early sixties."

"Certainly humans can be destructive and shortsighted; they can also be forward-thinking and altruistic. Time and time again, people have demonstrated that they care about what Rachel Carson called "the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures," and that they're willing to make sacrifices on those creatures' behalf. Alfred Newton described the slaughter that was occurring along the British coast; the result was the Act for the Preservation of Sea Birds..."

"One species, L. excubitor, derives it trivial designation from the use made of it as a sentinel by falconers when catching wild Hawks. The mode employed is well described by Hoy (Mag. Nat. Hist. iv. p. 342), but it can only be briefly described here. The Hawk-catcher lies hidden in a hut, watching through a small hole the Butcher-bird which is tethered some yards off, and by its actions not only gives him notice of the approach of a Bird-of-Prey, but also indicates of what kind the stranger is. Thus the sentinel is but slightly troubled at a passing Kite, Eagle, or Buzzard; but beats itself on its perch with screams at the sight of a Harrier, while on the appearance of a Falcon or Sparrow-Hawk it drops with cries of distress into a retreat that has been been considerately prepared for it. On this the falconer, by pulling long strings, displays first one and then a second tethered Pigeon, and the instant the Hawk clutches this last, draws a bow-net over both, thus securing his prize."

"Here is a zoological anecdote. Mr. G. X. is very ugly and hairy. He went to call at a house a few days ago and found only a little girl in the drawing-room. He began to say something civil to her but she would not answer. At last he said, "You don't know who I am!" "Yes, I do," she replied, "I gave you a bun at the Zoological Gardens last Sunday—and, you naughty man, you had no clothes on!""

"Lacan's most widely quoted maxim is, “The unconscious is structured like a language,” and like that sentence, Lacan's whole oeuvre rests on a certain idea of language. His proclaimed "return to Freud" meant remedying Freud's failure to use "modern" linguistics. "Modern" linguistics for Lacan, however, means turn-of-the-century linguistics---specifically, Ferdinand de Saussure's. The trouble is that very little of Saussure's linguistics stands up today, after nearly a century's work in linguistics. [...] In writing this essay, for example, I had trouble finding linguistic texts that even refer to Saussure. Saussure's views are not held, so far as I know, by modern linguists, only by literary critics, Lacanians, and the occasional philosopher."

"As long as the activity of linguists was limited to comparing one language with another, this general utility cannot have been apparent to most of the general public, and indeed the study was so specialised that there was no real reason to suppose it of possible interest to a wider audience. It is only since linguistics has become more aware of its object of study, i.e. perceives the whole extent of it, that it is evident that this science can make a contribution to a range of studies that will be of interest to almost anyone. It is by no means useless, for instance, to those who have to deal with texts. It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time."

"The subject matter of linguistics comprises all manifestations of human speech, whether that of savages or civilized nations, or of archaic, classical or decadent periods. In each period the linguist must consider not only correct speech and flowery language, but all other forms of expression as well. And that is not all: since he is often unable to observe speech directly, he must consider written texts, for only through them can he reach idioms that are remote in time or space."

"The scope of linguistics should be:"

"Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other."

"Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems."

"Writing obscures language ; it is not a guise for language but a disguise."

"Thus we may found the science for the study of the life of signs against the background of social life; it would form part of social psychology, and consequently of general psychology; we shall call it semiology (from Greek sēmeion — 'sign'). That science would explain to us in what signs consist of and by what laws they are governed. Since it is a science which does not yet exist, we do not know what it will be like; it has, however, a reason for its existence, its place is allocated in advance. Linguistics is only a part of that general science ; the laws which semiology will discover, will be applicable also to linguistics, which in turn will be linked with a domain clearly defined throughout the entirety of human affairs."

"The causes of continuity are a priori within the scope of the observer, but the causes of change in time are not. It is better not to attempt giving an exact account at this point, but to restrict discussion to the shifting of relationships in general. Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law."

"La langue est un systéme dont toutes les parties peuvent et doivent être considérés dans leur solidarité synchronique."

"The aim of general synchronic linguistics is to set up the fundamental principles of any idiosynchronic system, the constituents of any language-state. Many of the items already explained in Part One belong rather to synchrony; for instance, the general properties of the sign are an integral part of synchrony although they were used to prove the necessity of separating the two linguistics."

"The linguistic entity is not accurately defined until it is delimited, i.e. separated from everything that surrounds it on the phonic chain. These delimited entities or units stand in opposition to each other in the mechanism of language."

"Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass. Philosophers and linguists have always agreed in recognizing that without the help of signs we would be unable to make a clear-cut, consistent distinction between two ideas. Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. here are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language."

"The characteristic role of language with respect to thought is not to create a material phonic means for expressing ideas but to serve as a link between thought and sound, under conditions that of necessity bring about the reciprocal delimitations of units. Thought, chaotic by nature, has to become ordered in the process of its decomposition. Neither are thoughts given material form nor are sounds transformed into mental entities; the somewhat mysterious fact is rather that "thought-sound" implies division, and that language works out its units while taking shape between two shapeless masses. Visualize the air in contact with a sheet of water; if the atmospheric pressure changes, the surface of the water will be broken up into a series of divisions, waves; the waves resemble the union or coupling of thought with phonic substance."

"A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass of thought engenders a system of values."

"Language can be compared to a sheet of paper: thought is its recto and sound its verso: one cannot cut the verso without simultaneously cutting the recto. Similarly, in the matter of language, one can separate neither sound from thought nor thought from sound; such separation could be achieved only by abstraction, which would lead either to pure psychology, or to pure phonology."

"With de Saussure, the concept of meaning is inseparably connected with his concepts of sign and language... According to de Saussure, a linguistic sign is a psychic whole with two aspects: sound image and notion. Thus the sign is a specific combination of these two elements. Following from de Saussure's analysis, that two-sided relationship between sound and notion is meaning. This is why de Saussure suggests that the term "sound image" should be replaced by the term "signifiant" (that which means), and the term "notion" by the term "signifié" (that which is the object of meaning). The sign fulfils its function only by virtue of that relationship of meaning, the members of which are connected inseparably. The breaking of that unity would result in the destruction of the sign."

"Saussure took the sign as the organizing concept for linguistic structure, using it to express the conventional nature of language in the phrase "l'arbitraire du signe". This has the effect of highlighting what is, in fact, the one point of arbitrariness in the system, namely the phonological shape of words, and hence allows the non-arbitrariness of the rest to emerge with greater clarity. An example of something that is distinctly non-arbitrary is the way different kinds of meaning in language are expressed by different kinds of grammatical structure, as appears when linguistic structure is interpreted in functional terms."

"Language is no longer regarded as peripheral to our grasp of the world we live in, but as central to it. Words are not mere vocal labels or communicational adjuncts superimposed upon an already given order of things. They are collective products of social interaction, essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world. This typically twentieth-century view of language has profoundly influenced developments throughout the whole range of human sciences. It is particularly marked in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology."

"The West's 'father of structuralism', Ferdinand de Saussure (1857– 1913), spent his academic career in Paris studying and teaching the Sanskrit grammar of Panini. Saussure's PhD was on conjugate verbs in Sanskrit, and he in turn influenced Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), the eminent anthropologist. Lévi-Strauss was only one of many Western thinkers influenced by Saussure's work, though. After Saussure's death, his students published his class notes posthumously but removed all traces and references to Sanskrit, Panini and Indian texts, replacing them with generic and universal principles that could be applied to modern European languages! The philosophical principles contained therein became known as structuralism, revolutionizing European art, sociology, history, philosophy and psychology. Structuralism was the precursor of post-structuralism, the philosophical core of postmodern thought."

"The introduction of the Christian religion into the world has produced an incalculable change in history. There had previously been only a history of nations — there is now a history of mankind; and the idea of an education of human nature as a whole, — an education the work of Jesus Christ Himself — is become like a compass for the historian, the key of history, and the hope of nations."

"You start with an idea, and then you let it grow. I think at the moment, there is a tendency to want to see political change occur in the developing world very rapidly, and I think this notion of consultation and democracy is all excellent, but I simply don't believe that Western forms of democracy are necessarily replicable throughout the developing world that I know, and indeed I would go so far as to say that, at the moment, one of our risks is to see democracies fail. … I think you have to be patient, careful, analytical, thoughtful, prudent, and build step-by-step. I don't think it can be done like mixing a glass of Nescafé."

"The Muslim world, with its history and cultures, and indeed its different interpretations of Islam, is still little known in the West… The two worlds, Muslim and non-Muslim, Eastern and Western, must, as a matter of urgency, make a real effort to get to know one another, for I fear that what we have is not a clash of civilisations, but a clash of ignorance on both sides."

"The search for justice and security, the struggle for equality of opportunity, the quest for tolerance and harmony, the pursuit of human dignity – these are moral imperatives which we must work towards and think about on a daily basis."

"If we judge from Islamic history, there is much to encourage us. For century after century, the Arabs, the Persians, the Turks and many other Islamic societies achieved powerful leadership roles in the world — not only politically and economically but also intellectually... The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time."

"The spirit of the Knowledge Society is the spirit of Pluralism—a readiness to accept the Other, indeed to learn from him, to see difference as an opportunity rather than a threat."

"If our animosities are born out of fear, then confident generosity is born out of hope. One of the central lessons I have learned after a half century of working in the developing world is that the replacement of fear by hope is probably the single most powerful trampoline of progress."