Dinosaur Party Quotes

In this convoluted world where sex has become a party favor rather than a solemn, beautiful part of love between two people, I think virginity is sexy. I don't like promiscuity. Oddly, at the turn of the 20th century, even men were expected to wait until marriage to indulge. I think that's sexy, too. Okay, I'm a dinosaur, I admit it. I don't belong in the modern world.

In 1991, Disney forced a group of New Zealand parents in a remote country town to remove their amateur renditions of Pluto and Donald Duck from a playground mural; and Barney has been breaking up children's birthday parties across the U.S., claiming that any parent caught dressed in a purple dinosaur suit is violating its trademark. The Lyons Group, which owns the Barney character, "has sent 1,000 letters to shop owners" renting or selling the offending costumes. "They can have a dinosaur costume. It's when it's a purple dinosaur that it's illegal, and it doesn't matter what shade of purple, either," says Susan Elsner Furman, Lyons' spokesperson.

So in theory someone might have shouted “Dinosaur!” many centuries before the 1800s. But that’s unlikely, because discovering is not merely finding something; discovering is finding and understanding that you’ve found something.

Only one story—the story of the dinosaurs themselves—had a happy ending. Happy in comparison, at any rate. Dinosaurs will be famous forever, first of all, and, what is more important, they were granted an enviable finale. Dinosaurs reigned unchallenged for an unimaginable one hundred million years. Then, in a cataclysm that reverberated around the globe, with no warning, no foreboding, no lingering, they vanished.

Had we not decided to perform this as gracefully as a dancer’s leap? But we turned it into a dinosaur’s dance party!

Spread your arms out to your sides, like a plane. Your wingspan is a timeline. Your left fingertip represents the time of the first single-celled life on earth. And your right fingertip is right this minute. Between the two is 3.7 billion years of time, the history of life on earth. From your left fingertip, all the way up your arm, past your left shoulder, across your chest, and past your right shoulder, life on earth is nothing but bacteria. By the time you reach your right wrist, the most impressive form of life on earth, the king of beasts, is the worm. In the middle of your right palm you finally get your dinosaurs, and they're extinct by your last finger joint. Run your eyes along that history again so far. All that history, all that life, and still no appearance by the Main Attraction, the species for whom everything is supposedly made - humankind. So when do humans finally show up at the party? Well it's more than fashionably late. Homo sapiens fits in one fingernail clipping.

Mary Anning, sister of the above, Who died March the 9th, 1847, Aged 47 years.” The grave perches at the edge of the sea, nestled near the cliffs that Anning knew so well. Visitors leave flowers and seashells, and, sometimes, a toy dinosaur or two.

Ready for what?” Just then, Jonah came bouncing over, wearing a blue-and-red dinosaur costume. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” he yelled louder than necessary. My mom put her hand on his shoulder and he stopped bouncing. She continued to look at me, waiting for an answer. “I’m going out with Isabel,” I said. “You didn’t tell me that,” Mom said. I panicked, my mind rewinding through the week to try to pick out the conversation I could’ve sworn I had with my mom so I could reference it now. It didn’t exist. “You said you’d take us trick-or-treating,” Jonah whined. “Ashley can take you,” I said. My sister shook her head. “Nope. I’m going to a Halloween party tonight.” “Can’t Mom take you?” I asked Jonah, desperate now because I knew how he got when he had his mind set on something. Mom gave me her disappointed look but to Jonah said, “Yes, I’ll take you.” The dinosaur head tipped forward as he looked at the ground in a pout. It was a really pathetic sight. As I clung to my stained shirt, I knew neither

I ended up choosing her preschool party based on the fact that it was the closest to our house and would cause me the least amount of inconvenience when dropping her off and picking her up. I'm a busy person, what with all the laundry. It's not that I don't care about her education. I do. But I can't be convinced, especially at her age, that it's important for her to be the first one to read. Or do equations. Or identify lots of different kinds of dinosaurs. A lot of other moms I know seem to be concerned about this and are, in my opinion, unduly delighted with their children's progress in these areas. I'm secretly annoyed by that kind of precocious learning in the case of five-year-olds.

Never play the princess when you can be the queen: rule the kingdom, swing a scepter, wear a crown of gold. Don’t dance in glass slippers, crystal carving up your toes -- be a barefoot Amazon instead, for those shoes will surely shatter on your feet. Never wear only pink when you can strut in crimson red, sweat in heather grey, and shimmer in sky blue, claim the golden sun upon your hair. Colors are for everyone, boys and girls, men and women -- be a verdant garden, the landscape of Versailles, not a pale primrose blindly pushed aside. Chase green dragons and one-eyed zombies, fierce and fiery toothy monsters, not merely lazy butterflies, sweet and slow on summer days. For you can tame the most brutish beasts with your wily wits and charm, and lizard scales feel just as smooth as gossamer insect wings. Tramp muddy through the house in a purple tutu and cowboy boots. Have a tea party in your overalls. Build a fort of birch branches, a zoo of Legos, a rocketship of Queen Anne chairs and coverlets, first stop on the moon. Dream of dinosaurs and baby dolls, bold brontosaurus and bookish Belle, not Barbie on the runway or Disney damsels in distress -- you are much too strong to play the simpering waif. Don a baseball cap, dance with Daddy, paint your toenails, climb a cottonwood. Learn to speak with both your mind and heart. For the ground beneath will hold you, dear -- know that you are free. And never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.

… The most important contribution you can make now is taking pride in your treasured home state. Because nobody else is. Study and cherish her history, even if you have to do it on your own time. I did. Don’t know what they’re teaching today, but when I was a kid, American history was the exact same every year: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims, Thomas Paine, John Hancock, Sons of Liberty, tea party. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, we have to start somewhere— we’ll get to Florida soon enough.’…Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks, Paul Revere, the North Church, ‘Redcoats are coming,’ one if by land, two if by sea, three makes a crowd, and I’m sitting in a tiny desk, rolling my eyes at the ceiling. Hello! Did we order the wrong books? Were these supposed to go to Massachusetts?…Then things showed hope, moving south now: Washington crosses the Delaware, down through original colonies, Carolinas, Georgia. Finally! Here we go! Florida’s next! Wait. What’s this? No more pages in the book. School’s out? Then I had to wait all summer, and the first day back the next grade: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock…Know who the first modern Floridians were? Seminoles! Only unconquered group in the country! These are your peeps, the rugged stock you come from. Not genetically descended, but bound by geographical experience like a subtropical Ellis Island. Because who’s really from Florida? Not the flamingos, or even the Seminoles for that matter. They arrived when the government began rounding up tribes, but the Seminoles said, ‘Naw, we prefer waterfront,’ and the white man chased them but got freaked out in the Everglades and let ’em have slot machines…I see you glancing over at the cupcakes and ice cream, so I’ll limit my remaining remarks to distilled wisdom: “Respect your parents. And respect them even more after you find out they were wrong about a bunch of stuff. Their love and hard work got you to the point where you could realize this. “Don’t make fun of people who are different. Unless they have more money and influence. Then you must. “If someone isn’t kind to animals, ignore anything they have to say. “Your best teachers are sacrificing their comfort to ensure yours; show gratitude. Your worst are jealous of your future; rub it in. “Don’t talk to strangers, don’t play with matches, don’t eat the yellow snow, don’t pull your uncle’s finger. “Skip down the street when you’re happy. It’s one of those carefree little things we lose as we get older. If you skip as an adult, people talk, but I don’t mind. “Don’t follow the leader. “Don’t try to be different—that will make you different. “Don’t try to be popular. If you’re already popular, you’ve peaked too soon. “Always walk away from a fight. Then ambush. “Read everything. Doubt everything. Appreciate everything. “When you’re feeling down, make a silly noise. “Go fly a kite—seriously. “Always say ‘thank you,’ don’t forget to floss, put the lime in the coconut. “Each new year of school, look for the kid nobody’s talking to— and talk to him. “Look forward to the wonderment of growing up, raising a family and driving by the gas station where the popular kids now work. “Cherish freedom of religion: Protect it from religion. “Remember that a smile is your umbrella. It’s also your sixteen-in-one reversible ratchet set. “ ‘I am rubber, you are glue’ carries no weight in a knife fight. “Hang on to your dreams with everything you’ve got. Because the best life is when your dreams come true. The second-best is when they don’t but you never stop chasing them. So never let the authority jade your youthful enthusiasm. Stay excited about dinosaurs, keep looking up at the stars, become an archaeologist, classical pianist, police officer or veterinarian. And, above all else, question everything I’ve just said. Now get out there, class of 2020, and take back our state!

To me campaigning is about persuading, but this campaign was about models and data. I knew data was important. I had used it in campaigns I led, but my focus on energy, enthusiasm, and emotion had made me feel like a dinosaur. What electrified young people for Bernie was not data. It was the old-fashioned kind of politics that I knew, and that the party needed to know again.

Even Churchill, who will support any peabrained drooling dinosaur bitch who calls herself the King of Transylvania, understands that Tito is fighting the Germans and our man Mihajlović mainly fighting Tito. I’ve been with both parties, jaunting about the mountains of that misbegotten country where everybody speaks his own language. My dear, I’m something of a linguist, but a country the size of Pennsylvania with five different languages? It reduced your poor battered lover to pointing and grimacing like the duchess who sat on an anthill.

there was an irony built into Anning’s fossil hunting. “Her faith let her do this dangerous work—and it was dangerous work,” the historian Thomas Goodhue observes. “She survived several very close calls with death. She did this work because of her faith, and the things that she found upset the faith of millions of people, across the nation and around the world.

A modern-day historian of science rattles off questions that the Victorians found newly urgent. “If, as the Bible claimed, this planet had been made as a habitation for humanity,” asks Jim Endersby, “why had its creator taken so long to get the tenants in? And if God was such a great designer, why was almost everything he’d designed now extinct?

Fossils, which had turned up occasionally through the centuries (and never been understood),

The shift from God as mathematician to God as artist opened a door. Science grew more inviting.

This was, at the time, a bold and controversial claim. In the eyes of biblical literalists, any mention of extinction was a rebuke of the divine plan, a slap in the Creator’s face.

Anning would continue on for another two decades, racking up more coups along the way. In 1828, for instance, she found the first flying reptile ever discovered in Britain,

In 2010, the Royal Society, the world’s best-known scientific organization, put together a list of the ten most influential women in the history of British science. Anning turns up there, along with such notables as Rosalind Franklin, of DNA fame.

many puzzle pieces had been picked up, admired for their handsome appearance, and then put to one side because no one recognized that they had any special significance. (A clue is not a clue until someone sees a mystery.)

The word dinosaur would not be coined until 1842.

For religious believers—and the nineteenth century was a devout age—everything to do with dinosaurs and the depths of time spurred anxiety and confusion. It seemed nearly impossible to reconcile these new notions with biblical teachings. How to make sense of eons of time when Genesis fit all of creation into a mere six days?

Nineteenth-century scientists found themselves in the predicament of the mayor of Amity in Jaws. As the decades passed and the evidence piled up—as it grew ever harder to deny that time stretched back into an endless past, and that countless species had vanished from Earth, and that humans were latecomers to the story—

And dinosaurs had an unfathomably long run; they reigned for over one hundred million years. (Some scientists believe the true figure is closer to one hundred eighty-six million years.) Modern humans have been around for perhaps a hundred thousand years. If humans manage to survive ten times as long as we have so far, we will have made it 1 percent as long as the dinosaurs did.

There were, in fact, two problems with fossils. First, they were made of the wrong thing—rock rather than bone or shell or wood. (The dinosaur “bones” in museums around the world are rock, not bone.) Second, they showed up in the wrong places—fossilized fish turned up inside solid rock; fossilized seashells turned up atop mountain peaks.

Museums happily put Anning’s fossils on display, for instance, and they made a point of citing the name of the donor responsible for those handsome gifts. Mary Anning’s name went unrecorded.

The unlikely beast would later be hailed as the first dinosaur ever identified, though in 1824 the notion of “dinosaur” was still more than a decade off. Dickens nonchalantly placed a megalosaurus into the opening scene of Bleak House, in 1852. “London,” he began. “… Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful [i.e., astonishing] to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.

A clue is not a clue until someone sees a mystery.

putting religion and science into one basket was risky, though no one at the time seemed to see the danger. Lynn Barber, a historian and the great authority on Victorian attitudes toward nature, spelled it out. “The Victorians saw nothing glorious in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake,” she wrote in a groundbreaking book called The Heyday of Natural History. “It was only religion, in the shape of natural theology, that made the study of natural history worthwhile.

In one historian’s summary, “Rome in the first century AD was a far cleaner place than London eighteen hundred years later.

To this day, we have not sorted out how to think of dinosaurs. Time drains many discoveries and inventions of their wonder. Who today marvels at a lightbulb? But as the success of the Jurassic Park franchise demonstrates, dinosaurs retain their power to frighten and to fascinate.

For the first generations to confront the reality of dinosaurs, much of the fascination with the towering creatures had the same tangled roots that it does for six-year-olds today. These were the ideal sort of monsters—big, scary, and, best of all, dead.

It was a cosmic fluke that did in the dinosaurs, not a dead-end design.

The dinosaur discoveries came out of nowhere, like the asteroid, and the public in the nineteenth century was scarcely better prepared than the dinosaurs had been. It was not just that such things as monstrous skeletons were contrary to experience. The shock was that they were contrary to reason. Such things could not be, because they had no place in a world that was, everyone knew, under divine supervision. Why would God have indulged in such follies?

The upshot is that the huge majority of fossils—99 percent of all the fossils ever found—come from sea creatures like sharks and shellfish. But the other 1 percent includes many of the creatures we care about the most. Dinosaurs were the most conspicuous one-percenters. They lived on land, which means that we’ve lost nearly all evidence that they ever lived at all. Out of every eighty million Tyrannosaurus rexes, scientists calculate, only one was ever fossilized. (The total number of T. rexes in museums around the world is around three dozen.)

the study of nature took off. “If there had been any hint, at that stage, that it could lead to irreligious or anti-religious views,” Barber writes, “nobody would have dreamed of taking it up.” Instead, both professional scientists and eager amateurs spent their lives in the happy belief that they were building a cathedral, never knowing that in fact they were erecting a tomb that would encase all that they held most dear.

In 1802 no one had ever heard of dinosaurs. These were, as far as anyone knew, the first dinosaur tracks ever found.

In 1802 no one had ever heard of dinosaurs. These were, as far as anyone knew, the first dinosaur tracks ever found. That find was as strange and unexpected as any discovery in human history. A series of similar discoveries followed, in rapid succession and across the globe. The finds were giant bones and enormous footprints in stone and, soon, immense skeletons.

Darwin detonated his bombshell, On the Origin of Species, in 1859. The basic idea was simple. There are not enough seats at the table.

The dinosaur discoveries came in a rush in the early 1800s, partly because the Industrial Revolution brought a frenzy of digging of all sorts. As armies of workmen tore up the ground with picks and shovels, their canals and mines and tunnels and quarries offered never-before-seen peeks beneath Earth’s surface.

the Geological Society would be closed to women for almost another century, until 1919. At the time of the talk, only two plesiosaurs had ever been found. Mary Anning had found both of them. Conybeare never mentioned her name.

By the early 1850s, scientists were in an exultant mood. Geologists and paleontologists could point to half a century of accomplishment. Starting from nowhere—the word geology did not even exist until 1795, and paleontology not until 1833—scientists had racked up triumph after triumph. They had discovered reams of fossils, they had resurrected creatures beyond counting, they had flung open the gates of time, they had fought down their own religious doubts and dispatched their fundamentalist rivals. The time had come to celebrate.

That was in 1743. Almost exactly two centuries later, in 1942, an eminent American paleontologist grudgingly acknowledged Catesby’s account. “It appears that Negro slaves made the first technical identification of an American fossil vertebrate,” wrote George Gaylord Simpson, “a lowly beginning for a pursuit that was to be graced by some of the most eminent men in American and scientific history.

The bottom line is stark. Ninety-nine percent of all the animal species that ever lived—not individuals but species—leave no trace whatever. The biologist Jerry Coyne once observed that paleontology is one of the few fields—theology is another—“ in which the students far outnumber the objects of study.

Buckland’s first thought was that he had found proof of the truth of the Bible story of Noah and the flood. For a great many thinkers of this era, not just Buckland, the flood was the go-to explanation for many of the world’s strange features. When travelers found fossilized seashells high atop mountains or when skeletons from elephant-like mammoths turned up in places where elephants did not belong, like Siberia, no one was much puzzled: it was the flood that had done it.

One day, I spent a long time with Isaac drawing a tea party for dinosaurs. On a huge piece of brown packaging paper we drew allosaurs and tyrannosaurs sitting on little chairs, with hind legs politely crossed

There's a beep. And, in that fraction of a second, I see it all → . . Me in bed, covered in lipstick and talcum powder; falling down the coach aisle; smashing into a hat-stall; climbing under a table; thirty hands in the air; spinning under a spotlight; jumping in the snow; a ponytail, cut off; sitting on a catwalk; standing on a doorstep; my first kiss, on a television set. I see a Japanese fish market and an octopus; a sumo stage; a glass box and a hundred dolls; a shining lake; a zebra crossing; a brand-new sister. I see New York and a governess; a fairground ride; a planetarium; a party; Brooklyn Bridge. Toilet paper and Icarus; dinosaur biscuits; posters; Marrakesh and a monkey; parties of stars. Picnics and coffee; an advertising agency; a doppelganger; an Indian elephant and firework clouds of paint; a cafe, filled with pink. I see Sydney and diving and a fashion show that glittered with gold. In short: I see a whole world, opening behind me. And a new world, opening in front. A world that I fit into perfectly.

You do know scones are not donuts, right?" Nina wasn't one to pass up any baked goods, but a donut was a donut. No scone would do. "This is not your white, British-royals high tea, my friend. This is Highland Park high tea. It opened a month ago, and I think we're about to have our whole world rocked." The Jam's exterior was black-and-white---- if you blinked you'd miss it. But when they went inside Nina immediately spotted a colorful mural of dinosaurs seated on velvet cushions, eating donuts and drinking out of porcelain cups. A pristine glass display case on the opposite wall featured rows and rows of endless donuts--- a happy welcoming committee of frosting and dough. "We'll be having tea for two," Jasmine said at the counter. "And for my donut, could I get the Swirly Rosewater, please?" As soon as she saw the names and flavors of the donuts, she instantly knew two things: one, she was going to love these, and two, Leo would absolutely hate them. Nina suddenly felt sympathy for Leo any time a contestant created a unique flavor pairing on the show. She raced to find the donut her friend had ordered in the case, and landed on a frosted pink cake donut that had a lemon rosewater glaze topped with roasted pistachios. "You live your life in pink, Jas." "No better color. So from what I read online, the deal is that instead of scones, they do vegan donuts---" Nina's eyes narrowed, and Jasmine glared right back. "Don't judge. What are you going to get?" "I need chocolate," Nina said. She scanned the rows in search of the perfect solution. "May I recommend our Chocolate from the Crypt donut?" the saleswoman suggested from behind the display. Her sharp bangs and blunt ponytail bobbed as she explained, "It's our fall-themed donut--- chocolate cake with a chocolate glaze, and it's got a kick from the cayenne pepper and cinnamon we add in." "Oh, my donut," Nina said. In the case was an absolutely gorgeous chocolate confection--- the cayenne and cinnamon flakes on the outside created a black-and-orange effect. "I am sold." "You got it." The saleswoman nodded and rang them up. A narrow hallway covered in murals of cartoon animals drinking tea led them to the official tearoom. Soaring ceilings revealed exposed beams and brick walls, signaling that the building was likely older and newly restored. Modern, barrel-back walnut chairs were clustered around ultrasleek Scandinavian round tables. Nina felt like she'd followed Jasmine down a rabbit hole and emerged into the modern interpretation of the Mad Hatter's tea party. "This is like..." Nina began. "It's a fun aesthetic." "I know, right?" Jasmine replied as they sat down. "It makes me feel like I'm not cool enough to be here, but glad I got invited." Nina picked up the prix fixe high tea menu on the table. The Jam's version of finger sandwiches were crispy "chicken" sliders, potato-hash tacos and mini banh mi, and in lieu of scones, they offered cornbread with raspberry jam and their signature donuts. "And it's all vegan...?" "Yes, my friendly carnivore, and hopefully delicious.

The European states resembled each other rather closely in their luxuriant growth of antiliberal criticism as the twentieth century opened. Where they differed was in those political, social, and economic preconditions that seem to distinguish the states where fascism, exceptionally, was able to become established. One of the most important preconditions was a faltering liberal order. Fascisms grew from back rooms to the public arena most easily where the existing government functioned badly, or not at all. One of the commonplaces of discussions of fascism is that it thrived upon the crisis of liberalism. I hope here to make that vague formulation somewhat more concrete. On the eve of World War I the major states of Europe were either governed by liberal regimes or seemed headed that way. Liberal regimes guaranteed freedoms both for individuals and for contending political parties, and allowed citizens to influence the composition of governments, more or less directly, through elections. Liberal government also accorded a large measure of freedom to citizens and to enterprises. Government intervention was expected to be limited to the few functions individuals could not perform for themselves, such as the maintenance of order and the conduct of war and diplomacy. Economic and social matters were supposed to be left to the free play of individual choices in the market, though liberal regimes did not hesitate to protect property from worker protests and from foreign competition. This kind of liberal state ceased to exist during World War I, for total war could be conducted only by massive government coordination and regulation. After the war was over, liberals expected governments to return to liberal policies. The strains of war making, however, had created new conflicts, tensions, and malfunctions that required sustained state intervention. At the war’s end, some of the belligerent states had collapsed...What had gone wrong with the liberal recipe for government? What was at stake was a technique of government: rule by notables, where the wellborn and well-educated could rely on social prestige and deference to keep them elected. Notable rule, however, came under severe pressure from the “nationalization of the masses." Fascists quickly profited from the inability of centrists and conservatives to keep control of a mass electorate. Whereas the notable dinosaurs disdained mass politics, fascists showed how to use it for nationalism and against the Left. They promised access to the crowd through exciting political spectacle and clever publicity techniques; ways to discipline that crowd through paramilitary organization and charismatic leadership; and the replacement of chancy elections by yes-no plebiscites. Whereas citizens in a parliamentary democracy voted to choose a few fellow citizens to serve as their representatives, fascists expressed their citizenship directly by participating in ceremonies of mass assent. The propagandistic manipulation of public opinion replaced debate about complicated issues among a small group of legislators who (according to liberal ideals) were supposed to be better informed than the mass of the citizenry. Fascism could well seem to offer to the opponents of the Left efficacious new techniques for controlling, managing, and channeling the “nationalization of the masses,” at a moment when the Left threatened to enlist a majority of the population around two non-national poles: class and international pacifism. One may also perceive the crisis of liberalism after 1918 in a second way, as a “crisis of transition,” a rough passage along the journey into industrialization and modernity. A third way of looking at the crisis of the liberal state envisions the same problem of late industrialization in social terms.

The initial eruptions in Morocco released clouds of carbon dioxide, a powerful greenhouse gas, which rapidly warmed the planet. It got so hot that strange ice formations buried within the seafloor, called clathrates, melted in unison all throughout the world’s oceans. Clathrates are unlike the solid blocks of ice we’re used to, the ones we put in our drinks or carve into fancy sculptures at parties. They are a more porous substance, a latticework of frozen water molecules that can trap other substances inside it. One of those substances is methane, a gas that seeps up constantly from the deep Earth and infiltrates the oceans but is caged in the clathrates before it can leak into the atmosphere. Methane is nasty: it’s an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, packing an earth-warming punch over thirty-five times as great. So when that first torrent of volcanic carbon dioxide increased global temperatures and melted the clathrates, all of that once-trapped methane was suddenly released. This initiated a runaway train of global warming. The amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere approximately tripled within a few tens of thousands of years, and temperatures increased by 3 or 4 degrees Celsius.