All Quotes

"A Roman emperor sitting at the table surrounded by his bodyguard is a magnificent sight, but when the reason is fear, the magnificence pales. So also when the individual does not dare stand taciturnly by his word, does not stand freely and confidently on the pedestal of a conscious act, but is surrounded by a host of deliberations before and after that render him incapable of getting his eye on the action."

"Magister Adler was deeply moved by something higher, but now when he wants to express his thoughts in words, wants to communicate, he confuses the subjective with the objective, his altered subjective state with an external event, the dawning of a light upon him with the coming into existence of something new outside him, the falling of the veil from his eyes with his having had a revelation. Subjectively his emotion is carried to the extreme; he wants to select the most powerful expression to describe it and by means of a mental deception grasps the objective qualification: having had a revelation."

"This fact, that the opposite of sin is by no means virtue, has been overlooked. The latter is partly a pagan view, which is content with a merely human standard, and which for that very reason does not know what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin is faith."

"Out of love, God becomes man. He says: Here you see what it is to be a human being; but he adds: Take care, for I am also God — blessed is he who takes no offense at me."

"Everyone who knows something about the dangers of reflection and the dangerous walk along the road of reflection also knows that it is dubious when a person, instead of getting out of the tension through resolution and action, becomes productive about his state in tension. Then there is no effort to get out of the state, but reflection fixes the situation for reflection and thereby fixes the man. The more richly thoughts and expressions offer themselves, the more briskly the productivity advances-in the wrong direction-the more dangerous it becomes and the more it hides from the person, concerned that his work, his extremely strenuous work, his very interesting (perhaps also for a third party who has a total view) work, is a work of bogging himself down deeper and deeper. That is, he does not work himself loose but works himself fast and becomes interesting to himself by reflecting on the tension and diverts himself with an utterly piecemeal productivity about detached details, with isolated short articles."

"The believer humanly comprehends how heavy the suffering is, but in faith’s wonder that it is beneficial to him, he devoutly says: It is light. Humanly he says: It is impossible, but he says it again in faith’s wonder that what he humanly cannot understand is beneficial to him. In other words, when sagacity is able to perceive the beneficialness, then faith cannot see God; but when in the dark night of suffering sagacity cannot see a handbreadth ahead of it, then faith can see God, since faith sees best in the dark."

"If it is God who gives the spirit of power and strength, then it is also the same God who gives “the spirt of self-control,” and if ignoble cowardice and fear of people are just as detestable in any age, the excess of eager enthusiasm, “zeal without wisdom,” are no less corrupting and at times are fundamentally just as detestable, just as blasphemous."

"People are scarcely aware that it is a slavery they are creating; they forget this in their zeal to make people free by overthrowing dominions. They are scarcely aware that it is slavery; how could it be possible to be a slave in relation to equals?"

"The future ain't what it used to be."

"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future"

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

"Our similarities are different."

"Sure, his control wasn't perfect, but he didn't make all the mistakes he seemed to make. Berra hit that first home run off his chin. It was two strikes and Newk was just wasting one. I guess you have to hit Yogi to keep him from hitting you. You can't throw it bad enough by him. [...] Man, that Berra is a killer. All Newcombe has to do is get a third strike past him and he's probably pitching yet. Mantle? You saw how big Newk threw those strikes past him. Struck him out twice, didn't he?"

"A remark once attributed to Sam Goldwyn will be attributed to Yogi Berra."

"Well, we heard he was a high-ball hitter. All that means is his strength is a little stronger on high pitches than on low. We knew there wasn't much we could do."

"The Bombers set a home run record and Yogi Berra, a vest-pocket immortal for the future, flailed past Lou Gehrig, a large, economy-size immortal from the past, in the runs-batted-in department. Yogi was the batting hero with the top average of .360 and that has to tickle everybody who knows him because Yogi is a delightful little guy. His ailing mother asked him to hit a couple of homers for her. "I'll try, Mom," said Yogi. He made no rash promises. He merely said he'd do his best and his best was good enough. He's such a sweet fellow that he couldn't even rub it into Don Newcombe when big Newk went to bat after Yogi had clouted his second homer of the finale. "I hit a pretty good pitch, Newk," said Yogi as he crouched behind the plate. Berra was trying to soften the pain. "Yes, you did," agreed Newk glumly."

"Most of the Yankee attack this season came right from Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra. And right there, I think, is the center of this whole debate. You take Mantle, and if Ol' Diz is back a few years he gives him the high fast one on the inside and he strikes out. Oh, he hits the ball a mile during the season—but in a seven-game World Series those strikeouts hurt and that's what I figure that guy will do a lot, especially seeing that he's injured. This leaves the Yankees with Berra, which ain't bad. He is the most dangerous hitter in the American League. A tough game is his particular kind of bear meat. He chews along easy-like, then hits any pitch in the book out of sight."

"Yogi Berra is easily the best and most valuable catcher in baseball today. I know he has already broken a lot of my records, and Yogi's only started. He has been a great kid to work with. First of all, he started with fine natural ability. He has a strong throwing arm and a keen batting eye. And about the nicest disposition that anyone ever knew. No young ballplayer has ever taken the heavy and savage riding that Yogi had to take. But no one ever got his goat. There were ballplayers on the Tigers and other clubs riding Yogi who couldn't tie his shoes. Berra just grinned—and went on driving across winning runs. Far from being dumb, Yogi always has his eyes open and he learns quickly. His reflexes are very good—which means that mind and muscle work together."

"Yogi is the most relaxed hitter I ever saw or faced. What a guy! In spite of all the great things he's accomplished over the years he's lost none of his humility and none of his niceness. He's truly one of nature's noblemen."

"I remember a game I was broadcasting. Yogi was in left and Mickey Mantle was in center. Yogi whistled to Mantle and started moving him around. After the game I asked Yogi why he was giving advice to Mantle, a great center fielder for so many years. You know what he told me? "Joey, Mickey didn't know that the guy hits there with two strikes." Yogi knows baseball. There's no doubt about that."

"Fans have labeled Yogi Berra "Mr. Malaprop," but I don't think that's accurate. He doesn't use the wrong words. He just puts words together in ways nobody else would ever do."

"They made up amusing stories about Berra. He read comic books. It seemed incongruous to see him catching the college-bred Raschi and Reynolds and the chubby little man of the world, Lopat. But they were perfectly content to let the squatty kid from The Hill in St. Louis call the shots. The pitcher has yet to come along who didn't want to throw to Berra. A ballplayer doesn't have to have higher education when he has baseball instinct, and Berra was richly endowed with that. Yogi Berra is a rich man materially now, but there is no more swagger in him than there was when he first showed up, a humble lad not quite sure where he belonged and asking nothing more than the chance. Now, at least, you know he belonged."

"Yogi had the fastest bat I ever saw. he could hit a ball late that was already past him, and take it out of the park. The pitchers were afraid of him because he'd hit anything, so they didn't know what to throw. Yogi had them psyched out and he wasn't even trying to psyche them out."

"If the truth must be told, I'd never even heard of Berra, but I figured that if he was worth fifty grand to Ottie he must be worth fifty grand to me. That's why I turned him down. But one day I'm in my office and the girl comes in to announce that Mr. Berra is outside to see me. "Berra?" I say to myself. "That must be the kid Ottie was trying to buy." So I tell her to show him in. So I waited for my first look at the prize package which was worth $50,000. The instant I saw him my heart sank and I wondered why I had been so foolish as to refuse to sell him. In bustled a stocky little guy in a sailor suit. He had no neck and his muscles were virtually busting the buttons off his uniform. He was one of the most unprepossessing fellows I ever set eyes on in my life. And the sailor suit accentuated every defect. Since then, though, I've never regretted the move."

"Yogi Berra, christened Lawrence, is the Sam Goldwyn of the baseball industry. The late Goldwyn, a highly successful movie executive, was famous for his quaint and curious aberrations in talking: "Gentlemen, include me out." "I can answer that in two words: im-possible!" "Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined." These lapses, known as Goldwynisms, were mainly the creations of the Goldwyn press department. And so it is with Berra — a public relations man, Jackie Farrell, of the New York Yankees, contrived most of the quips and gaffes attributed to the illustrious catcher-turned-manager."

"He ain't much to look at and he looks like he's doing everything wrong, but he can hit. He got two hits off us on wild pitches."

"He hit it off the ground. And in the eighth, off the same pitch—a low, inside fast ball—he hits inside third. Three hits and he didn't hit a good pitch all day. How the hell do you pitch a guy like that?"

"After the seventh inning, when runs count the most, he's the most dangerous hitter who ever lived."

"He's smart, all right. There's no one in baseball smarter than Yogi."

"Poor Yogi. Everybody's picking on him. Whenever he gets a hit and you ask him if it was high or low, he just mumbles: "I dunno. It was a good one.""

"People think Mickey Mantle is the toughest hitter in the league, but I can usually get him out if I don't make a mistake. The real toughest clutch hitter is Berra. As you change speeds and move around, Berra moves right with you. Rosen does the same thing, but fortunately he's playing third behind me so I don't have to pitch to him. Believe me, the two best clutch hitters in the game are Berra and Rosen. Most of us pitchers wish to hell they'd switch to golf."

"Yogi, and all the Yankees, for that matter. But I saw Clemente when I was coaching for the Mets. I believe he was the best I saw."

"Spinoza saw... that if a falling stone could reason, it would think, "I want to fall at the rate of thirty-two feet per second.""

"Maybe his characteristics are recessive. Maybe ours will cancel his out." "I wouldn't lay any money on that," Baines said. "I think I know already which of the two strains is going to turn up dominant." He grinned wryly. "I mean, I'm making a good guess. It won't be us."

"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be."

"There cannot be a greater mistake than that of looking superciliously upon the practical applications of science. The life and soul of science is its practical application; and just as the great advances in mathematics have been made through the desire of discovering the solution of problems which were of a highly practical kind in mathematical science, so in physical science many of the greatest advances that have been made from the beginning of the world to the present time have been made in earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind."

"Quaternions came from Hamilton after his really good work had been done, and though beautifully ingenious, have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way."

"I am afraid I am not in the flight for “aerial navigation”. I was greatly interested in your work with kites; but I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the aëronautical Society."

"Symmetrical equations are good in their place, but 'vector' is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature."

"Mathematics is the only true metaphysics."

"Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense."

"I need scarcely say that the beginning and maintenance of life on earth is absolutely and infinitely beyond the range of sound speculation in dynamical science."

"It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect . . . .The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms."

"Tesla has contributed more to electrical science than any man up to his time."

"To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness."

"Every boy... should be able by the age of 12 to write his own language with accuracy and some elegance; he should have a reading knowledge of French, and be able to translate Latin and easy Greek authors, and have some acquaintance with German. Having learned thus the meaning of words... a boy should study Logic, so as to be able to apply his words sensibly."

"Now I think hydrodynamics is to be the root of all physical science, and is at present second to none in the beauty of its mathematics."

"It is impossible by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest of the surrounding objects. [Footnote: ] If this axiom be denied for all temperatures, it would have to be admitted that a self-acting machine might be set to work and produce mechanical effect by cooling the sea or earth, with no limit but the total loss of heat from the earth and sea, or in reality, from the whole material world."

"1. There is at present in the material world a universal tendency to the dissipation of mechanical energy. 2. Any restoration of mechanical energy, without more than an equivalent of dissipation, is impossible in inanimate material processes, and is probably never effected by means of organized matter, either endowed with vegetable life or subjected to the will of an animated creature. 3. Within a finite period of time past, the earth must have been, and within a finite period of time to come the earth must again be, unfit for the habitation of man as at present constituted, unless operations have been, or are to be performed, which are impossible under the laws to which the known operations going on at present in the material world are subject."