Holt Best Quotes

Telling lies is a bit like tiling bathrooms - if you don't know how to do it properly, it's best not to try.

We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach it to them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions -- if they have any -- and helping them explore the things they are most interested in.

And in this moment, I realize one reason it's so great to have a best friend is sometimes, like right now, Cal and I are thinking the very same thing.

Among the gods, there is a dispute as to which one of them originally thought of Christianity; or, as they call it, the Great Leg Pull. Apollo has the best claim, but a sizeable minority support Pluto, ex-God of the Dead, on the grounds that he has a really sick sense of humour. How would it be, suggested the unidentified god, if first we tell them all to love their neighbour, pack in the killing and thieving, and be nice to each other. Then we let them start burning heretics.

For many years I have been asking myself why intelligent children act unintelligently at school. The simple answer is, "Because they're scared." I used to suspect that children's defeatism had something to do with their bad work in school, but I thought I could clear it away with hearty cries of "Onward! You can do it!" What I now see for the first time is the mechanism by which fear destroys intelligence, the way it affects a child's whole way of looking at, thinking about, and dealing with life. So we have two problems, not one: to stop children from being afraid, and then to break them of the bad thinking habits into which their fears have driven them. What is most surprising of all is how much fear there is in school. Why is so little said about it. Perhaps most people do not recognize fear in children when they see it. They can read the grossest signs of fear; they know what the trouble is when a child clings howling to his mother; but the subtler signs of fear escaping them. It is these signs, in children's faces, voices, and gestures, in their movements and ways of working, that tell me plainly that most children in school are scared most of the time, many of them very scared. Like good soldiers, they control their fears, live with them, and adjust themselves to them. But the trouble is, and here is a vital difference between school and war, that the adjustments children make to their fears are almost wholly bad, destructive of their intelligence and capacity. The scared fighter may be the best fighter, but the scared learner is always a poor learner.

It's a most serious mistake to think that learning is an activity separate from the rest of life, that people do it best when they are not doing anything else and best of all in places where nothing else is done. p.278

Granted that I know little of my real self, still, I am the best evidence for myself. And though, when I have quitted this world, it will matter nothing to me what people say of me, up to the moment of death we should strive to leave behind us something which can either Comfort, Amuse, Instruct, or Benefit the living; and though I cannot do either, execpt in a small degree, even that little should be given.

I'm saying that people can be mad at each other and they can forgive each other and they can be mad at each other again and they can do stupid things and they can do smart things. The best part of being human, Amelia, is being a human. We are all whiteboards that can be covered in terrible words, erased, and re-covered in better words.

We think in terms of getting a skill first, and then finding useful and interesting things to do with it. The sensible way, the best way, is to start with something worth doing, and then, moved by a strong desire to do it, get whatever skills are needed.

What are the deeds of heroes, except a few frightened people doing the best they can in the circumstances?

The danger of letting people ask, "Is this the best way to do this job?" is that after a while they may ask, "Is this job worth doing?

Zachary smiles, and I wonder if he's felling different. Because standing out here waist deep in Gossimer Lake, next to my best friend, I'm feeling different-light and good and maybe even holy.

Perfection is perception..my perception views I'm perfect.. perfect to achieve the best of my abilities..my abilities shoot high above the sky beyond the rainbow

It’s the damnedest thing: The dead abandon you; then, with the passage of time, you abandon the dead.

You persuade yourself that all is well even though you are feeling bored or unfulfilled and you are not sure if your husband or wife is your Soul mate. You have tried your best and you have created a pretty good life for yourself despite your circumstances. ‘At least you are safe’ your damaged self whispers. ‘At least no one suspects how wounded you are. In fact, I do not even think you are damaged anymore. Look at your nice home, your spouse, your career status, your wealth and all of your nice possessions. You are a success, you fool.

It might sound like a contradiction at first, but it isn’t; collective processes make the best sense when participants are acting as individuals. Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Posición en Kindle670-671). Henry Holt and Co.. Edición de Kindle.

But Mandelbrot continued to feel oppressed by France’s purist mathematical establishment. “I saw no compatibility between a university position in France and my still-burning wild ambition,” he writes. So, spurred by the return to power in 1958 of Charles de Gaulle (for whom Mandelbrot seems to have had a special loathing), he accepted the offer of a summer job at IBM in Yorktown Heights, north of New York City. There he found his scientific home. As a large and somewhat bureaucratic corporation, IBM would hardly seem a suitable playground for a self-styled maverick. The late 1950s, though, were the beginning of a golden age of pure research at IBM. “We can easily afford a few great scientists doing their own thing,” the director of research told Mandelbrot on his arrival. Best of all, he could use IBM’s computers to make geometric pictures. Programming back then was a laborious business that involved transporting punch cards from one facility to another in the backs of station wagons.

is my family. Do they read my books? Absolutely not! But they are the best public relations team in the world. From my daughter Amy who tells all her clients about me to my son Steve who makes sure he lets everyone he knows when I have a book released to my younger daughter Suzanne who is my good right hand and my granddaughter Kayla who is my wonderful left hand. Guys, I could not do it without you. If you see me at a convention,

It is the best of times in physics. Physicists are on the verge of obtaining the long-sought theory of everything. In a few elegant equations, perhaps concise enough to be emblazoned on a T-shirt, this theory will reveal how the universe began and how it will end. The key insight is that the smallest constituents of the world are not particles, as had been supposed since ancient times, but “strings”—tiny strands of energy. By vibrating in different ways, these strings produce the essential phenomena of nature, the way violin strings produce musical notes. String theory isn’t just powerful; it’s also mathematically beautiful. All that remains to be done is to write down the actual equations. This is taking a little longer than expected. But, with almost the entire theoretical-physics community working on the problem—presided over by a sage in Princeton, New Jersey—the millennia-old dream of a final theory is sure to be realized before long. It is the worst of times in physics. For more than a generation, physicists have been chasing a will-o’-the-wisp called string theory. The beginning of this chase marked the end of what had been three-quarters of a century of progress. Dozens of string-theory conferences have been held, hundreds of new Ph.D.’s have been minted, and thousands of papers have been written. Yet, for all this activity, not a single new testable prediction has been made; not a single theoretical puzzle has been solved. In fact, there is no theory so far—just a set of hunches and calculations suggesting that a theory might exist. And, even if it does, this theory will come in such a bewildering number of versions that it will be of no practical use: a theory of nothing. Yet the physics establishment promotes string theory with irrational fervor, ruthlessly weeding dissenting physicists from the profession. Meanwhile, physics is stuck in a paradigm doomed to barrenness.

The only thing I can’t figure out is why you still eat the food your captors fed you. Why don’t you hate it as much as you hate them?” Fila glanced down at her plate. It contained a strange mixture of Afghan and Mexican dishes. She held up a flatbread. “This isn’t Taliban food—it’s Afghan food. It’s my mother’s food. I grew up eating it before I was ever captured. To me it means love and tenderness, not hate and violence.” “Taliban, Afghan—it’s all the same.” She waved the bread. “No, it’s not. Not one bit. Afghan culture is over two thousand years old. And it’s a conservative culture—it’s had to be—but it’s not a culture of monsters. Afghans are people like you, Holt. They’re born, they grow up, they live and love and they die just like we do. I didn’t study much history before I was taken, but I know this much. America’s story is that of the frontier—of always having room to grow. Afghanistan’s story is that of occupation. By the Russians, the British, the Mongols—even the ancient Greeks. On and on for century after century. Imagine all those wars being fought in Montana. Foreign armies living among us, taking over your ranch, stealing everything you own, killing your wife and children, over and over and over again.” She paused to catch her breath. “Death is right around the corner for them—all the time. Is it any wonder that a movement that turns men into warriors and codes everything else into rigid rules might seem like the answer?” She still wasn’t sure if Holt was following her. What analogy would make sense to him? She wracked her brain. “If a bunch of Californians overran Chance Creek and forced everyone to eat tofu, would you refuse to ever eat steak again?” He made a face. “Of course not!” “Then imagine the Taliban are the Californians, forcing everyone to eat tofu. And everyone does it because they don’t know what else to do. They still love steak, but they will be severely punished if they eat it—so will their families. That’s what it’s like for many Afghans living under Taliban control. It’s not their choice. They still love their country. They still love their heritage. That doesn’t mean they love the group of extremists who have taken over.” “Even if those Taliban people went away, they still wouldn’t be anything like you and me.” Holt crossed his arms. Fila suppressed a smile at his inclusion of her. That was a step in the right direction even if the greater message was lost on him. “They’re more like you than you think. Defensive. Angry. Always on the lookout for trouble.” Holt straightened. “I have four sons. Of course I’m on the lookout for trouble.” “They have sons, too.” She waited to see if he understood. Holt shook his head. “We’re going to see different on this one. But I understand about the food. Everyone likes their mother’s cooking best.” He surveyed her plate. “You got any more of that bread?” She’d take that as a victory.

It was in postwar Paris that Mandelbrot began this quest in earnest. Uncle Szolem urged him to attend the École Normale Supérieure, France’s most rarefied institution of higher learning, where Mandelbrot had earned entry at the age of twenty (one of only twenty Frenchmen to do so). But the aridly abstract style of mathematics practiced there was uncongenial to him. At the time, the École Normale—dite normale, prétendue supérieure, says the wag—was dominated in mathematics by a semisecret cabal called Bourbaki. (The name Bourbaki was jocularly taken from a hapless nineteenth-century French general who once tried to shoot himself in the head but missed.) Its leader was André Weil, one of the supreme mathematicians of the twentieth century (and the brother of Simone Weil). The aim of Bourbaki was to purify mathematics, to rebuild it on perfectly logical foundations untainted by physical or geometric intuition. Mandelbrot found the Bourbaki cult, and Weil in particular, “positively repellent.” The Bourbakistes seemed to cut off mathematics from natural science, to make it into a sort of logical theology. They regarded geometry, so integral to Mandelbrot’s Keplerian dream, as a dead branch of mathematics, fit for children at best.

I stopped struggling, going limp in his arms. He reached around us and shoved the door closed, spinning around and facing us toward the kitchen. “I was trying to make you breakfast.” It took a moment for his words and their meaning to sink in. I stared dumbfounded across the room and past the island. There was smoke billowing up from the stove and the window above the sink was wide open. Bowls and spoons littered the island and there was a carton of eggs sitting out. He was trying to cook. He was really bad at it. I started to laugh. The kind of laugh that shook my shoulders and bubbled up hysterically. My heart rate was still out of control, and I took in a few breaths between laughs to try and calm it down. He said something, but I couldn’t hear him because the fire alarm was still going off. I had no doubt half the neighborhood was now awake from the sound. He didn’t bother to put me down, instead hauling me along with him, where he finally set me down, dragged a chair over near the alarm, and climbed up to remove the battery. The noise cut off and the kitchen fell silent. “Well, shit,” he said, staring at the battery in his hand. A giggle escaped me. “Does this always happen when you cook?” He shrugged. “The only time I ever cook is when it’s my turn at the station.” His forehead creased and a thoughtful look came over his face. “The guys are never around when it’s my night to cook. Now I know why.” He snagged a towel off the counter and began waving away the rest of the lingering smoke. I clicked on the vent fan above the stove. There was a pan with half a melted spatula, something that may or may not have once been eggs, and a muffin tin with half-burned, half-raw muffins (how was that even possible?). “Well, this looks…” My words faltered, trying to come up with something positive to say. “Completely inedible?” he finished. I grinned. “You did all this for me?” “I figured after a week of hospital food, you might like something good. Apparently you aren’t going to find that here.” I had the urge to hug him. I kept my feet planted where they were. “Thank you. No one’s ever ruined a pan for me before.” He grinned. “I have cereal. Even I can’t mess that up.” I watched as he pulled down a bowl and poured me some, adding milk. He looked so cute when he handed me the bowl that I lifted the spoon and took a bite. “Best cereal I ever had.” “Damn straight.” I carried it over to the counter and sat down. “After we eat, would you mind taking me to my car? I hope it’s still drivable.” “What about the keys?” “I have a security deposit box at the bank. I keep my spare there in case I ever need them.” “Pretty smart.” “I have a few good ideas now and then.” “Contrary to the way it looks, I do too.” “Thank you for trying to make me breakfast. And for the cereal.” He walked over to the stove and picked up the ruined pan. “You died with honor,” he said, giving it a mock salute. And then he threw the entire thing into the trashcan. I laughed. “You could have washed it, you know.” He made a face. “No. Then I might be tempted to use it again.

Inherent in the BUMMER business model is the assertion that there is only one possible way for digital services to work, which is that you, the individual user, must be made subservient. That is not true. The prevalence of this message is one of the best reasons to quit social media. Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Posición en Kindle1309-1310). Henry Holt and Co.. Edición de Kindle.

Norwegian fjords As amazing as it might sound, you can travel the Norwegian coast, viewing astounding scenery, all on public transport – it simply takes planning. By flying into Bergen – an airport bus will take you downtown – you can start a journey that will take you as far as the Arctic Circle. Trains, ferries and buses connect most Norwegian towns and villages. In fact, Norway has one of the best public transport systems in the world. It will take preparation, and it won’t be cheap, although there are bus, train and ferry passes on offer to tourists – usually for packages of five days or ten. Norwegians are polite and some may consider the natives to be a little cold, but they will never harass you or overwhelm you with questions. You will be able to dine alone without a curious stare in your direction. Downside: The ferries can face some wild weather, stick to land transport if you are likely to suffer from seasickness. To read: Norway is famous for its Nordic Noir brand of crime fiction. King here is Jo Nesbo but other great Norwegian crime writers are Anne Holt and Karin Fossum.

Well, all I have to say is that you best just keep going and don’t come back for a very long time. You’ll always be my brother, but right now, I am so ashamed of you.” She hung up before she ended up in tears that were too close to replacing the anger.

My apologies, Wilson," he was stating to her partner, "but her first game was promised to me long ago." He glowered at her, challenging her to contradict him. "Isn't that right?" The onlookers were spellbound by the fascinating display. Not wanting to cause a scene, she lied affably, "I'd given up on you, Mr. Stevens, and decided you weren't coming. How kind of you to finally join me." "I was detained." He ushered her away, efficiently dismissing George. "Perhaps you can have a subsequent match with her, Wilson, although I doubt she'll be inclined. Once she's had the best, it will be hard for her to lower her standards.

Holding only the back of her neck, he didn't deepen the embrace, nor did he caress her or flex against her. He simply merged with her and, as he'd suspected, he was immediately overwhelmed. This is what heaven must be like. The transient concept drifted past, then evaporated. Sweetly, almost chastely, he discovered her best-kept secrets, using scant pressure and bare coercion. With a feeling approximating joy, he teased and trifled.

David made a small head gesture indicative of doubt. ‘Look at it this way,’ he said. ‘They’re all male figures, all of Italian origin. Maybe standing about all day being admired is what they like doing best.

Holt interrupted her anxious thoughts with a gorgeous smile. “You’re the best person on the whole planet.” “Have you met everyone on the planet?” Grabbing her hand, and catching her off guard, he twirled her around as if she were Cinderella. Before she could help it, she let out the biggest belly laugh. “After this, I don’t need to. You’re it, Blair.

Success, like happiness, is best pursued obliquely.

Nobody, not Darwin’s best friend, not even God’s mother could tell him that this was any way to run a universe. The only conclusion Paul could possibly draw was that the whole operation had gone to cock, and a billion years of mutating plankton would be entirely justified in asking for their money back.

She’s my half-brother’s best friend.

No, said a little voice in the back of her head, you can’t. She knew that voice quite well. She didn’t like it much, mostly because it told her the truth, a commodity whose supply had a tendency to exceed demand. For a genuine free spirit, the very best the truth can ever be is a starting point, a fixer-upper in need of a great deal of tender loving imagination. At its worst – like now, for example – it’s a brick wall across the highway, with barbed wire, searchlights and dogs. No, you can’t.

But just be careful that you don’t let the love of worldly possessions get the best of you.