Keith Devlin Quotes
The human brain finds it extremely hard to cope with a new level of abstraction. This is why it was well into the eighteenth century before mathematicians felt comfortable dealing with zero and with negative numbers, and why even today many people cannot accept the square root of minus-one as a genuine number.

Quotes to Explore
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The world is too violent right now.
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The problem of the world today is the people talk on and on about democracy, freedom, justice. But I don't give a damn about democracy if I am worried about survival.
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What you want to do is you want to own as little sort of hard infrastructure as possible, and your real value is your name and how you build that up.
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As the years go by, I've added a few pounds on, and I like it. I like it that I look a little softer.
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I started out a die-hard New Yorker but really grew to love working in Los Angeles. Even though I originally wanted to do theater, TV presented more opportunities for me, which led me out west.
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I love the Royal Family. The Queen, she's fabulous.
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If the colonists hadn't rejected British militarism and the massive financial burden of maintaining the British military, America wouldn't exist.
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Like most struggling writers trying to get their scripts commissioned, I had to do something odd to pay the rent. So, aged 21, I started up my own small cheesecake company in Philadelphia.
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The acting came about because of a girl. I was 19 and met a girl who wanted to go to the premiere drama school in Australia, the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, where Mel Gibson, Cate Blanchett and many others went. She had an audition, and I went with her for moral support - to cheer her on. I did an audition my way, and it kept going.
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I'm for people bettering themselves, no matter who they are and where they are, doing all they can to be all they can be.
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My parents, Gary and Patricia, let me be in my world. They never told me what I couldn't do. It helped me adapt in a positive way.
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There is no age, height, or weight requirement to skate. It is good exercise no matter what your age is. If you want to be competitive, most start young. But, I practice with many adult competitors.
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In the music world, concerts unfold strictly according to plan. But, as I'd been finding out, in the book world, things keep changing by the second.
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Education is the development of power and ideal.
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The characters are trapped within the lifestyle. It's about what goes on before the movie starts.
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You want somebody who's capable of being diverse in the characters they play, and you want a big name that's going to bring attention to the filmmakers and to the project.
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The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
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To produce foie gras, ducks and geese are force-fed enormous amounts of grain and fat, which causes their livers to swell to many times the normal size.
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I am here to accept responsibility for that which I did. I will not accept responsibility for that which I did not do.
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The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.
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It's not just enough to swing at the ball. You've got to loosen your girdle and really let the ball have it.
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There's no difference between me and you. You need something, a glove, a place to live, you let me know.
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I've no idea where ideas come from and I hope I never find out; it would spoil the excitement for me if it turned out I just have a funny little wrinkle on the surface of my brain which makes me think about invisible train platforms.
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The human brain finds it extremely hard to cope with a new level of abstraction. This is why it was well into the eighteenth century before mathematicians felt comfortable dealing with zero and with negative numbers, and why even today many people cannot accept the square root of minus-one as a genuine number.