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Pennsylvania Quotes

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Pennsylvania Quotes

“Once a state has completely withered away, it is an extremely difficult task to re-create it, as Blackwell quickly discovered. If Blackwell had been under any illusions that the Quakers were a meek and passive people, he was in for a rude surprise. He was to find very quickly that devotion to peace, to liberty, and to individualism in no sense implies passive resignation to tyranny. Quite the contrary.”

“Then, one sunny September morning, the illusion of a personal God that I tried so hard to believe in, exploded over the skies of Manhattan. Even as the ashes and ruin of this horrific act of blind faith settled over New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, I watched people across the country scrambling to that same irrational altar for their answers. In the fierce storm of emotion that rolled across this country, one realization rose to the surface of my mind with blinding clarity: certainly this mechanism of unassailable blind faith is one of the greatest risks mankind faces today.”

“The refreshing serenity of mountains, streams and more forests in Pennsylvania gave way to small communities and the more thickly-settled towns of New Jersey. And finally, New York City. It took us six days to get there, and as I crossed the George Washington Bridge I remember thinking how amazing this was. I was back in New York. A city that takes no crap. I was back amongst Carefree Scamps who I could trust with my life”

“My friends,” he began with good cheer, “how do you like this way of coming back into the Union?” He went on to explain that he and his fellow soldiers had felt the need of a summer outing, “and thought we would take it at the North.” They might be conquerors, he said—“this part of Pennsylvania is ours today; we’ve got it, we hold it, we can destroy it, or do what we please with it”—but they were also Christian gentlemen and would act accordingly. “You are quite welcome to remain here and to make yourselves entirely at home—so long as you behave yourselves pleasantly and agreeably as you are doing now. Are we not a fine set of fellows?” With his honeyed words he had the crowd in the palm of his hand, only to be interrupted by a querulous, impatient Jubal Early. Old Jube forced his way through the onlookers to confront Extra Billy and snarled, “General Smith, what the devil are you about? Stopping the head of this column in this cursed town!” Not the least taken aback, Extra Billy replied, “Having a little fun, General, which is good for all of us, and at the same time teaching these people something that will be good for them and won’t do us any harm.”

“A locomotive whistle was a matter of some personal importance to a railroad engineer. It was tuned and worked (even "played") according to his own personal choosing. The whistle was part of the make-up of the man; he was known for it as much as he was known for the engine he drove. And aside from its utilitarian functions, it could also be an instrument of no little amusement. Many an engineer could get a simple tune out of his whistle, and for those less musical it could be used to aggravate a cranky preacher in the middle of his Sunday sermon or to signal hello through the night to a wife or lady friend. But there was no horseplay about tying down the cord. A locomotive whistle going without letup meant one thing on the railroad, and to everyone who lived near the railroad. It meant there was something very wrong. The whistle of John Hess' engine had been going now for maybe five minutes at most. It was not on long, but it was the only warning anyone was to hear, and nearly everyone in East Conemaugh heard it and understood almost instantly what it meant.”

“The Underground Railroad has several stations in the [Welsh] Mountains, and secrecy was not just a buzzword, as breaking the code of silence could mean death. The justice meted out in the Mountains was sure and swift, making it different from that in the surrounding community. The laws were meant to protect the security of the community, and not just the individual person.”

“Captain Frank Sterbing believed that the majority of the soldiers of the 121st Pennsylvania were lying on the ground by this point, and the remainder would be soon enough if they remained in their position for another minute. Biddle reached the same conclusion and ordered the broken regiment back to Seminary Ridge. The speed with which the troops crossed back to the seminary was, according to one of the men who made the dash, "remarkable, probably the best on record." (page 102)”

“Stretch of I-95 has already had one brush with disaster. In 2008 two contractors from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation stopped to get a sausage sandwich, and parked their cars under this bridge. And fortunately they wanted that sausage sandwich because they saw one of these piers with an eight foot gash in it about five inches wide. And oh, they knew automatically that this bridge was in deep trouble.”

“The Pennsylvania Game Commission has charged a man with going deer hunting with a handgun in a Wal-Mart parking lot. He is being charged with reckless endangerment, but may plead guilty to the lesser charge of being a redneck.... Hunting in a Wal-Mart parking lot. That's got to be some good eating — a deer that lives on leftover Twizzlers and Mountain Dew.”

“The term "informatics" was first defined by Saul Gorn of University of Pennsylvania in 1983 (Gorn, 1983) as computer science plus information science used in conjunction with the name of a discipline such as business administration or biology. It denotes an application of computer science and information science to the management and processing of data, information and knowledge in the named discipline.”

“Trout fisherman often give away their presence to the fish by the equipment they are wearing. The yo-yo hanging on the fly fishing vest that attaches to the hemostats or line clippers is often plated with chrome, giving off flashes of light. Some fly boxes that you wear on the chest are also bright aluminum-not a good idea. I recently fished with a fellow who wore a bright yellow hat on a meadow stream in Pennsylvania. From 100 yards away you could see his every movement,-I'm sure that trout near him could, too.”

“Five states - Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois and North Carolina - have been identified by the EPA as contributing significantly to Rhode Island pollution. As of 2010, 284 tall smokestacks - stacks over 500 feet - were operating in the United States: needles injecting poison into the atmosphere.”

“The attacks of September 11, 2001, were spectacular, riveting, grim, costly and searing. The shock that they caused reverberated throughout the world. What happened in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania ended the lives of thousands of people and changed the lives of many more. But they did not change the world.”