Licence Plate Quotes

The physicist Richard Feynman used to make a joke36 about a posteriori conclusions – reasoning from known facts back to possible causes. ‘You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight,’ he would say. ‘I saw a car with the licence plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of licence plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!’ His point, of course, is that it is easy to make any banal situation seem extraordinary if you treat it as fateful.

The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians—in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear—stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners—a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main—who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice. But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.

In 1956 a rather delicate assignment came my way. I visited Switzerland at the invitation of Nestle but with a very specific brief from the Ministry of Industries, Government of India. Industries and Commerce Minister, Manubhai Shah, wanted me to ask the executives at Nestle what they were up to in our country. Under the excuse of producing condensed milk, they were importing not just milk powder, but also sugar and the tin plate for the cans! On my arrival at the airport at Nestle’s headquarters at Vevey, a Nestle car, about a mile long, was waiting to whisk me off to the best hotel in town where they put me up. I met with Kreeber, one of their two managing directors, and some other officers. The discussions turned pretty heated. I told them that my government had given them a licence to set up a plant in India so that they would produce condensed milk from Indian milk, not from imported ingredients. The Managing Director told me that it was not possible to produce condensed milk from buffalo milk, which was available in India. I said to him, ‘If you don’t know how to make it, come to me. I will teach you because I believe we can make it out of buffalo milk. I know it is more complicated than making it from cow’s milk and there are problems, but they are not insurmountable problems.’ When I assured them that it could be done, they said that their experts would have to come and set up their plant. Then they wanted the entire share capital in their hands. In those days government allowed only 49 per cent share capital to foreigners; 51 per cent had to be Indian. Kreeber said they could not agree to that. So I showed them a way out of that too. I said that 49 per cent could be with Nestle Alimentana and 51 per cent could be owned by Nestle India and in this way the entire project could stay in their hands. I was, in fact, facilitating their entry here. Ultimately, the Director agreed to set up a plant in India. At this point I told him that they could bring in any number of foreign experts they liked but my government hoped that, in five years, Indians who would be trained for the purpose would replace these experts. Kreeber’s response to this was that the production of condensed milk was an extremely delicate procedure and they ‘could not leave it to the natives to make’. At this, I lost my temper. Getting to my feet, I thumped the table loudly and said: ‘Please remember that you are speaking to a damned “native”. If you are suggesting that even after five years of training, the “natives” are not fit to occupy any position of authority in Nestle you are insulting my country. My country knows how to do without you.’ And I stormed out of the meeting – which I hope was what any self-respecting Indian would have done.

One licence plate: Louisiana, Sportsman’s Paradise.

The slogan on provincial licence plates is changing from "Yours to Discover" to "A Place to Grow." "A Place for Grow-Ops" was a close second, but some feared it was too much of a reminder of the premier's formative years.