Vitruvius Quotes

A tool is usually more simple than a machine; it is generally used with the hand, whilst a machine is frequently moved by animal or steam power.

Simple mechanisms do not love.

The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

He kisses me again, more insistent this time, his hands squeezing my waist. His breaths, his body, my body, we are so close there is no difference.

So is there a difference between Democrats and Republicans? Sure. The Democrats say one thing ("Save the planet!") and then do another--quietly holding hands behind the scenes with the bastards who make this world a dirtier, meaner place. The Republicans just come right out and give the bastards a corner office in the West Wing. That's the difference.

My friends, we did it. We weren't just marking time, we made a difference. We made (America) stronger - we made (America) freer - and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad. Not bad at all. And so, goodbye. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

I just know that sameness, repetition, and conceptualizing are the acting craft's adversaries, and it seems more intelligent to start off within a framework where those things are, to some degree, taken out of your hands.

The difference between a politician and a pickpocket is that a pickpocket doesn't always get indignant when you tell him to keep his hands to himself.

Human beings thought with their hands. It was their hands that were the answer of curiosity, that felt and pinched and turned and lifted and hefted. There were animals that had brains of respectable size, but they had no hands and that made all the difference.

I'm called an oral historian, which is something of a joke. Oral history was here long before the pen, long before Gutenberg and the printing press. The difference is I have a tape recorder in my hand.

President Roosevelt and President Truman and President Eisenhower had the same experience, they all made the effort to get along with the Russians. But every time, finally it failed. And the reason it failed was because the Communists are determined to destroy us, and regardless of what hand of friendship we may hold out or what arguments we may put up, the only thing that will make that decisive difference is the strength of the United States.

Everybody wrings their hands about Fox News. You know, "fair and balanced? Why, that's snide!" Yeah, okay, maybe they're not fair and balanced, but CNN used to have the slogan "You Can Depend on CNN". Guess what? I watch it, no you can't. So what's the difference?

We are operating at an overall mechanical efficiency of only four percent... Therefore, we find that if we increase the overall mechanical efficiency to only twelve percent we can take care of everybody. That three-fold increase in the overall efficiency can only be accomplished by redesign.

That the Devil finds work for idle hands to do is probably true. But there is a profound difference between leisure and idleness.

She was all the things I wasn't. And i was all the things she wasn't. she could paint circles around anyone; I couldn't even draw a straight line. She was never into sports; I've always been. Her hand, it fit mine.

The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.

There is some conflict between religion and science in my world, but that's nothing new. Science, at its root, is a rational discipline. Religion, on the other hand, is fundamentally trans-rational. Both of them attempt to solve problems, but since their methodology is vastly different, they can't help but come into conflict.

There'd been studies over the years supporting the proposition that groups composed exclusively of women usually made intelligent decisions, that exclusively male groups did a bit less well, and that mixed groups did most poorly of all, by a substantial margin. It appeared that, when women were present, testosterone got the upper hand and men took greater risks than they might otherwise. Correspondingly, women in the mixed group tended to revert to roles, becoming more passive, and going along with whatever misjudgment the males might perpetrate.

Euler calculated the force of the wheels necessary to raise the water in a reservoir ... My mill was carried out geometrically and could not raise a drop of water fifty yards from the reservoir. Vanity of vanities! Vanity of geometry!

The further a device is removed from human control, the more authentically mechanical it seems, and the whole trend in technology has been to devise machines that are less and less under direct human control and more and more under their own apparent will.

When someone like Steven Soderbergh asks you to do a film you know you're in good hands. You know it's going to be slick, and it's going to be intelligent, and it's going to have a kind of style to it, and I would probably have done anything to be really honest.

Our vulnerability [to ressentiment] is unavoidable (and probably incurable) in a kind of society in which relative equality of political and other rights and formally acknowledged social equality go hand in hand with enormous differences in genuine power, possessions and education; a society in which everyone "has the right" to consider himself equal to everybody else, while in fact being unequal to them.

There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.

[G]overnment can, instead of extending freedom, restrict freedom. And note ... that the 'can' quickly becomes 'will' the moment the holders of government power are left to their own devices. This is because of the corrupting influence of power, the natural tendency of men who possess some power to take unto themselves more power. The tendency leads eventually to the acquisition of all power - whether in the hands of one or many makes little difference to the freedom of those left on the outside.

I find it hard to understand why those who demand Unitary Education by the State do not also demand a Unitary Press by the State... Either the State is infallible, in which case we could not do better than to submit to it the entire domain of intelligent thought, or it is not, in which case it is no more rational to hand over education to it than the press.