"Once or twice a day, I am enveloped inside what I like to call the Impenetrable Shield of Melancholy. This shield, it is impenetrable. Hence the name. I cannot speak. And while I can feel myself freeze up, I can't do anything about it."

-- Sarah Vowell

#Names Quotes #Shields Quotes #Speak Quotes

“We may as well face the fact, and face it squarely, that we are too much governed. The agencies of government have multiplied, their ramifications extended, their powers enlarged, and their sphere widened, until the whole system is top-heavy. We are drifting into dangerous and insidious paternalism, submerging the self-reliance of the citizen, and weakening the responsibility and stifling the initiative of the individual. We suffer not from too little legislation but from too much. We need fewer enactments and more repeals.”
“I'm a federalist. I believe in the Italy of municipalities, of the Renaissance, not in Mussolini's centralization.”
“First drafts are for learning what your story is about.”
“The early days of the end of the Clintonian control of the Democratic Party will be times when there are many opportunities for people and organizations to jump into the openings in the power hierarchy that is forming.”
“If I'm signing autographs and I see one hundred people in a line I've got to remind myself, "That person is one one-hundredth of my day, but to them I'm their day." You know what I mean? Unless they meet J.Lo later on.”
“Can you feel the steam heat coming from my undercarriage?”
“There is no clear-cut distinction between example and theory”

Source : Michael Atiyah (2014). “Michael Atiyah Collected Works: Volume 7: 2002-2013”, p.370, OUP Oxford
“We each have a finite number of heartbeats, a finite amount of time. But we have enough heartbeats and enough time to do what is important.”

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