"Music is like a language: you cannot understand it unless you learn it, or more accurately, are born into it."

Jack Vance Literature See all quotes by Jack Vance →

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“Evidently you do not trust me. This does not predispose me to trust you.”

“My fees are not too high. Your wage scale may simply be too low.”

“My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.”

““Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?” asked Shimrod. “Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.”

“I suspect that the word was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.”

“Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists.”

Resonant Thoughts

"I don't have any desire to learn. I feel it's like a voodoo, that it would spoil things if I actually learnt how things are done."

— Paul McCartney

Music1942

#knowledge

"More than the topography and cartography of organization would be necessary to understand the executive functions; a knowledge of the kinds and qualities of the forces at work and the manner of their …"

— Chester Barnard

Business1886–1961

#knowledge

"The Bernie ones were — they had a lot more spirit. I think we're going to get a lot of Bernie voters, if you want to know the truth. Because they do understand that trade is killing us. Trade."

— Donald Trump

Politics1945

#knowledge

"But through the 1990's I developed signatures, somewhat radical and unmistakably mine. Francis Picabia remains my hero. The more you dive into his work, the wilder it becomes. He painted the skewed Cu…"

— Per Kirkeby

Art1938–2018

#knowledge