“Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been fate. People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events -- the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there -- that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.” PeopleIfsMeanLittlesHas BeensHappensCertainCoursesCasesNiceFateEventsStrangeBrokenCircumstancesMiracleSafetyOilSavedChainsConfusedFreakFenceMiraculousWhatever HappensDiscworldInteresting TimesCertain DeathChain Of Events Author:Terry Pratchett
“A lot of fantasy names are too much. They’re too difficult to pronounce. I wanted the flavour of medieval England. I took actual names we still use today, like ‘Robert’, and in some case I tweaked them a little bit. I made ‘Edward’ into ‘Eddard’. If you look back at medieval times, no one knew how to spell their own names. There are a lot of variations that we’ve lost.” IfsLooksLittlesMadeStillsUseTodayWantedNamesLostBitsDifficultCasesFantasyToo MuchLittle BitEnglandSpellsVariationMedievalFlavourMedieval Times Author:George R. R. Martin
“I always travel with my bike and it has become a little more difficult to do it nowadays, but I stick it in 3,5 by 6-foot case and wheel that thing in.” LittlesDifficultCasesFeetSticksWheelsBike Author:Donny Robinson
“I think there is a part of me that's always a little bit like, "Why would I torture myself? Just in case you forgot how big the shoes are you're walking in, take a look again"” ThinkingLooksLittlesBigsBitsCasesWalkingLittle BitShoesTorture Author:Charlize Theron
“This is a little off subject, but I'm interested in those cases where someone is barking up the wrong tree, or misapplying their talent.” LittlesCasesTreeSubjectsTalentBarking Up The Wrong Tree Author:David Salle
“Futurism is almost like a vaccination. You inject a little bit of a denatured pathogen to prepare your body in case you encounter it for real.” LittlesRealBodyBitsCasesLittle BitYour BodyEncountersVaccinationsFuturismPathogens Author:Jamais Cascio
“The beautiful exists just as little as the true. In every case it is a question of the conditions of preservation of a certain type of man: thus the herd-man will experience the value feeling of the true in different things than will the overman.” MenLittlesDifferentFeelingsBeautifulCertainValuesCasesConditionsTypeDifferent ThingsPreservationHerds Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
“Evolving life must experience a vast range of possibilities, based on environmental histories so unpredictable that no realized route - the pathway to consciousness in the form of Homo sapiens or Little Green Men, for example - can be construed as a highway to heaven, but must be viewed as a tortuous track rutted with uncountable obstacles and festooned with innumerable alternative branches. Any reasonably precise repetition of our earthly route on another planet therefore becomes wildly improbable even in a trillion cases.” MenLittlesFormHeavenConsciousnessCasesExamplePossibilityPlanetsGreenEnvironmentalTrackObstaclesAlternativesEvolveRangeBranchesRoutesPreciseRepetitionUnpredictableHighwaysPathwaysHomo SapiensImprobableEnvironmental History Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“I’m feeling great. Well, pretty great, unless I’ve forgotten to take a couple of Tylenols in the past four or five hours, in which case I’ve begun to feel some jagged little pains shooting down my left forearm and into the base of the thumb.” FeelsWellsLittlesFeelingsPainPastLeftHoursCasesFiveFourCoupleForgottenShootingThumbsFeeling GreatTylenol Author:Roger Angell
“The purest case of an intelligence explosion would be an Artificial Intelligence rewriting its own source code. The key idea is that if you can improve intelligence even a little, the process accelerates. It's a tipping point. Like trying to balance a pen on one end - as soon as it tilts even a little, it quickly falls the rest of the way.” IfsWayTryingLittlesIdeasEndsWould BeFallProcessCasesSourceKeysBalanceCodePensArtificial IntelligenceArtificialExplosionsAccelerateRewritingTippingTiltTipping Point Author:Eliezer Yudkowsky
“We are masters of our actions from the beginning up to the very end. But, in the case of our habits, we are only masters of their commencement - each particular little increase being as imperceptible as in the case of bodily infirmities. But yet our habits are voluntary, in that it was once in our power to adopt or not to adopt such or such a course of conduct.” LittlesEndsActionCoursesCasesParticularMastersHabitIncreaseOur ActionsInfirmityCommencement Book:The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle Source: The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle
“When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every case, no matter how little elevated the object may be? Certainly, it is its presentness .” MindFirstsMayLittlesMatterCharacterCasesObjectsSimplest Book:Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce Source: Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce
“I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren't prepared to occupy a position. I've seen such pitiful cases in the South barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister's husband or brother's wife! stuck away in some little mouse-trap of a room encouraged by one in-law to visit another little birdlike women without any nest eating the crust of humility all their life! Is that the future that we've mapped out for ourselves?” KnowsWellsLittlesLawLife IsRoomsCasesWifePositionHumilityBrotherHusbandEatingPreparedSouthStuckTrapsMiceNestsIn-lawsPitifulUnmarriedMarried WomenPatronageSpinstersMouse Traps Book:The Glass Menagerie Source: The Glass Menagerie