“Basic would never have surfaced because there was always a language better than Basic for that purpose. That language was Joss, which predated Basic and was beautiful. But Basic happened to be on a GE timesharing system that was done by Dartmouth, and when GE decided to franchise that, it started spreading Basic around just because it was there, not because it had any intrinsic merits whatsoever.” DoneBeautifulPurposeLanguageHappenedDecidedMeritDartmouth Author:Alan Kay
“Seldom can two such epoch-making events have occurred in successive years as happened then. In 1453 the Turks stormed Constantinople and finally destroyed the Greek Empire, driving out Greek scholars, who carried the knowledge of Greek language and literature to the western world; and in 1454 the first document known to us appeared from the printing press at Mainz.” WorldYearsFirstsTwoLiteratureLanguageKnownHappenedEventsPressesWesternDrivingDestroyedGreekEmpiresScholarDocumentsPrintingWestern WorldEpochPrinting PressConstantinople Author:Frederic G. Kenyon
“Time in China has no immediacy as in America. Here I find the swift passage of our few earthly years accepted as naturally as the fall of flower and leaf. ... I hear and speak a language in which grammar has no tense. Both scholars and illiterates, in ordinary daily speech, tell an event of centuries ago as casually as an incident of the hour. Only as my knowledge has accumulated have I been able to know whether something related happened just then or in some past dynasty.” KnowsYearsAbleAmericaPastTimeFallSpeakLanguageHoursHappenedCenturyEventsFlowerSpeechOrdinaryChinaAcceptedRelatedPassagesScholarLeafsGrammarIncidentsTenseDynastyImmediacy Author:Nora Waln
“If prose can cast a spell, we will listen to it no matter what it's saying. If a narrative uses language in a magical and enlivening way, we will listen to the story. But if the language doesn't cast a spell, we will listen to it only if it is telling us something that actually happened.” IfsWayMatterStoriesUseLanguageHappenedNo Matter WhatCastsNarrativeProseSpells Author:Lorrie Moore
“Puerto Rico is an island separated by an ocean, a language, a culture. All of that put it in a position where it's like, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," but what happened in Puerto Rico never happened at all. It's not like there was a decades-long conspiracy. It's just the aggregation of all these historical forces made it difficult for this information to exist in one place.” LongMadeHappensCultureLanguageForceDifficultHappenedInformationPositionOceanHistoricalDecadesMade ItIslandsConspiracyVegasPuerto RicoRico Author:Nelson Antonio Denis
“Though representatives of many ethnic groups came together in the United States, English became their common language. Apparently, this was a natural choice. One can imagine what would have happened if members of each nation moving to the U.S. had spoken only their own tongues and refused to learn English.” IfsStatesTogetherMovingChoicesLanguageNationsNaturalUnitedCommonUnited StatesImagineHappenedGroupsMembersTongueRepresentativesEthnic GroupsCommon Language Author:Mikhail Gorbachev
“Now, part of the problem with the climate debate is that so much gas board language like that [the IPCC's language] has been used and there's been too little plain, scientific, and economic thinking. And so, the entire political class has been captured by an idea, which as always with the best bad ideas has a grain of truth in it, which is then exaggerated beyond all reason. This has happened before - one thinks of the Dreyfus case, for instance.” ThinkingLittlesHas BeensIdeasReasonProblemPoliticalUsedLanguageClassCasesHappenedEconomicClimateDebateInstanceBoardsGasGrainCapturedExaggeratedBad Ideas Author:Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
“I work from the body - I try to develop a language of the body. I've invented a term I call "corporeal writing" around that idea. I love teaching and collaborating around this idea, because no new breakthrough in literature ever happened because everyone was doing what was already there.” WritingTryingIdeasBodyLiteratureLanguageTermHappenedTeachingBreakthroughCollaboratingLove Teaching Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“There are people who will be wanting to apply "Win" to their own, personal life. If you remember only one thing, and I'm going to do it right here, right now because I just happened to come to it, that phrase - if you remember only one thing - there are 125 specific language recommendations in "Win" that can make a difference in your day-to-day lives.” PeopleIfsRememberWinningLanguageDifferencesHappenedOne ThingRight NowPhrasesMaking A DifferenceDay To DayPersonal LifeRecommendationsDay LifeDay To Day Life Author:Frank Luntz
“Not that I ever felt the necessity of proving that all human beings suffer the same way, feel joy the same way, but it happened on my way - when I get close to these people, just by the simple intervention of translation I can actually reach them and ask them something, and their reaction is as I expected. I see that the relationship goes so smoothly, and I realize that cultural languages and specificities are nothing but simple obstacles that you can easily overcome. It's obvious that human beings are the same wherever they are.” PeopleWayFeelsHumansI CanJoySufferingAsksLanguageFeltRealizingHuman BeingsSimpleHappenedProveOvercomingObviousObstaclesExpectedReactionsMy WayInterventionTranslationsSpecificity Author:Abbas Kiarostami