What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls or the crisp October nights. Our loyalty is not to the memories of what William Richardson Davie did 200 years ago . . . No, our love for this place is based upon the fact that it is as it was meant to be The University of the People. Two hundred years to the day since the founding of the First State University, we can read again the words on its seal--"light and liberty"-- and say the The University of North Carolina has lived by those two short noble words and say that in all of the American story there is no other place like this.
-- Charles Kuralt '55 on the occasion of UNC-CH's bicentennial celebration in Kenan Stadium, 1993
"That was one of the innate aspects of her personality that had taken her to Battle School in the first place--that she had no particular interest in competition because she always started from the assumption that, if it mattered, she would find a way to win."
--from Shadow of the Hegemon, by Orson Scott Card
"You're always 42 in some number base."
--Alan Hoyle
"You can be serious without a suit."
-- Number 9 on Craig Silverstein's list of 10 Things Google Has Found to Be True, shown during his October 27, 2006 talk on the UNC campus
"Tcha," Tibor said. "You're too limited in your scholarship. There is real religion, which is about our relationship to God, which is important. But there is another kind of religion, and that is the religion that is about identity. It is about banding together in a group and defending ourselves against what we fear, when what we fear is each other. It is about not wanting to live in a world where we are a minority, because it is uncomfortable to be a minority. That kind of religion talks about God sometimes, but it doesn't have to. It can call itself Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Communist or Libertarian or Green. I like real religion, Krekor. It's been of enormous importance and value in my life. This other stuff, I look at it and I fear for the survival of civilization."
-- from Hardscrabble Road by Jane Haddam
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
--Unknown
"I've known Libby a long time, and I'd have to say she's a pathological optimist."
-- Todd Lewis, ATN colleague, after a spiel about why I love working at UNC-CH
"There is a time when panic is the appropriate response."
--Eugene Kleiner
"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."
--Alexander Graham Bell
Re: the snowfall in Chapel Hill on 23 January 1995:
"Even a good-for-nuthin' snowstorm contributes to the charm of the Chapel Hill and Carrboro community. But one must pause and look and, if the clouds are still spitting a few flakes, one should raise one's face to the sky, open one's mouth, and stick out one's tongue."
-- Chapel Hill News, 25 January 1995
"Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery."
-- Calvin and Hobbes
From a Rhoda TV episode on the difficulties of relationships:
Rhoda's boss squirts ketchup into Rhoda's hand. "What did I just do?" he asks her. "You did something very mean," she replies. "No," he says. "I'm going to order some fries, and I know you love ketchup on them. One incident; two views."
"There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go."
-- Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever
"Everytime I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."
-- H.G. Wells
"The cure for anything is salt water -- sweat, tears, or the sea"
--Isak Dinesen
"With new technologies we've tended to do the same things more efficiently, when what we need is to do different things more effectively."
--Christopher Dede, Professor, Harvard School of Education
"How do we use the power of technology without adapting to it so completely that we ourselves behave like machines lost in the levers and cogs, lonesome for the love of life, hungry for the thrill of directly experiencing the vivid intensity of the ever-changing moment?
--Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, 1992
Love consists of this: that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
Some people see things as they are and say why. I see things that never were and say why not.
--Geo. Bernard Shaw
I can't tweet that with one finger.
--Samantha Earp, Duke University (muttered during AcademiX 2009 while using an iPhone to take notes)
Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like.
-- Mark Twain
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
-- Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
-- Charles Darwin
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president ... is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-- Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
The Fox from The Little Prince
Quotes from my office (These are quotes that I once had posted around my office.)