Manchester Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Manchester. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you Ye are many-they are few.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester)
I staggered into a Manchester bar late one night on a tour and the waitress said "You look as if you need a Screaming Orgasm". At the time this was the last thing on my mind...
Terry Pratchett
As she was putting her boots on Daisy threw a barb over her shoulder that struck Connie right in the middle of her chest. ‘Grow up, Connie! This place is not for faint-hearted romantics!
Sheena Billett (From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life)
The first wave of homesickness caught Connie by surprise. She had not heard or felt its approach until it hit her hard, knocking her to the ground.
Sheena Billett (From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life)
I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable.
Mark Twain
It was almost 3 a.m. before Connie got into bed. Sipping cocoa in the cold daylight and listening to the silence, only punctuated by the distant barking of dogs, she began to wonder what she had done. What if she had made a disastrous mistake?
Sheena Billett (From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life)
I don’t think I’ll ever forget this day,’ Connie said. ‘I want to soak up every single moment, so that I can remember it when I’m old. Remember that I…we, did this. I want to have stories to tell when I’m old. I want to have done things.
Sheena Billett (From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life)
His sadness was almost palpable, like moisture in the air before it rains. Although this was Manchester, it was probably about to rain anyway.
Mhairi McFarlane (You Had Me At Hello (You Had Me At Hello, #1))
The rhythmic motion of the silent paddlers carried her, with a sense of inevitability, to her new life as she heard the Twin Otter take off behind her. There was no turning back now, and Connie gripped the sides of the canoe, her heart beating and her hands sweating.
Sheena Billett (From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life)
The sum of a million facts is not the truth.
William Manchester
Connie followed the tracks of Daisy’s skidoo, passing giant, rosy pink mountains of snow which cast long grey shadows over the ground ahead of them. The sheer vastness of this multicoloured wilderness was hard to comprehend, and Connie was aware of herself and Daisy, speeding along, mere specks in the landscape.
Sheena Billett (From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life)
What does it mean when someone supports Manchester United or whatever it's called?" ... "They always win. So they've started believing they deserve to.
Fredrik Backman (Britt-Marie Was Here)
A thin, flexible, layer of ice had already formed on the water, and the undulating movement caught the light of the setting sun, like a sparkling curtain of light billowing across the bay. Connie tried to capture the moment in her mind as the thin ice shimmered in oranges and reds as it moved between already forming pieces of thicker ice.
Sheena Billett (From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life)
And when our kids grow up and ask about the story of Mummy and Daddy – how we met and how the Might Storm came to be – I’ll sit them down and tell them the story of how, once upon a long time ago, in Manchester, a girl moved next door to a boy.
Samantha Towle (Wethering the Storm (The Storm, #2))
Never forget," a Stranger said to me once in the lobby of the Midland Hotel in Manchester, "that only dead fish swim with the stream.
Malcolm Muggeridge (The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge)
We may not be in Manchester but we will always be united
Morris Gleitzman (Boy Overboard)
Once upon a long time ago, in Manchester, a girl moved next door to a boy...
Samantha Towle (Wethering the Storm (The Storm, #2))
Once you bid farewell to discipline you say goodbye to success
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Lessons in leadership from the legendary Manchester United manager)
But there are no loners. No man lives in a void. His every act is conditioned by his time and his society.
William Manchester
It is the definition of an egoist that whatever occupies his attention is, for that reason, important.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932)
He was a thundering paradox of a man, noble and ignoble, inspiring and outrageous, arrogant and shy, the best of me and the worst of men, the most protean, most ridiculous, and most sublime. No more baffling, exasperating soldier ever wore a uniform. Flamboyant, imperious, and apocalyptic, he carried the plumage of a flamingo, could not acknowledge errors, and tried to cover up his mistakes with sly, childish tricks. Yet he was also endowed with great personal charm, a will of iron, and a soaring intellect. Unquestionably he was the most gifted man-at arms- this nation has produced. -William Manchester on Douglas MacArthur
William Manchester
There’s a reason that God gave us two ears, two eyes and one mouth. It’s so you can listen and watch twice as much as you talk. Best of all, listening costs you nothing.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Lessons in leadership from the legendary Manchester United manager)
C´mon, Manchester, ´says singer Boy George, ´I thought you were supposed to be hip?´ No, we´re just automaton snobs with an excess of intolerance -- you really must forgive us.
Morrissey (Autobiography)
Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number Shake your chains to earth like dew We are many, they are few
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester)
When she was a teenager D’Agostino told a friend that she wanted to go to university to study Death, Stars and Mathematics. Inexplicably the University of Manchester didn’t offer such a course, so she settled for Mathematics.
Susanna Clarke (Piranesi)
If only people realized Corbusier is pure nineteenth century, Manchester school utilitarian, and that's why they like him.
Evelyn Waugh (Decline and Fall)
We live in forgotten Victorian knife-plunging Manchester, where everything lies wherever it was left over one hundred years ago. The safe streets are dimly lit, the others not lit at all, but both represent a danger that you’re asking for should you find yourself out there once curtains have closed for tea.
Morrissey (Autobiography)
I like the city late at night, the blasts of music and the splashes of light cast from bars that are still open, shoals of brightly-dressed clubber, the beeping taxis and the greasy, savoury smell of meat and onions from the burger vans.
Mhairi McFarlane (You Had Me At Hello (You Had Me At Hello, #1))
He glanced at the book in his hand and added, “I think I’d need to be a bit further away to grasp it, mind you. Manchester, perhaps.” Da Silva looked startled for a second, then his face lit with a smile.
K.J. Charles (Think of England)
If I were running a company, I would always want to listen to the thoughts of its most talented youngsters, because they are the people most in touch with the realities of today and the prospects for tomorrow.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United)
But while the climate crisis was engineered in the past, it was mostly in the recent past; and the degree to which it transforms the world of our grandchildren is being decided not in nineteenth-century Manchester but today and in the decades ahead.
David Wallace-Wells (The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming)
You cannot lead by following.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Lessons in leadership from the legendary Manchester United manager)
In the long run principles are just more important than expediency.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United)
John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.
Isaac Asimov
In the sweep of its appeal, its ability to touch every corner of humanity, football is the only game that needed to be invented.
Bobby Charlton (My Manchester United Years: The autobiography of a footballing legend and hero)
It meant that Crowley had been allowed to develop Manchester, while Aziraphale had a free hand in the whole of Shropshire. Crowley took Glasgow, Aziraphale had Edinburgh (neither claimed any responsibility for Milton Keynes,* but both reported it as a success).
Terry Pratchett (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
There was, however, a difference between his mood and that of the rest of the cabinet. They felt desperate; he felt challenged.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932)
A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation; a baboon in a Zoo is an object of public curiosity; but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern.
William Manchester (The Last Lion 2: Winston Spencer Churchill Alone 1932-40)
The experience of defeat, or more particularly the manner in which a leader reacts to it, is an essential part of what makes a winner.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United)
I will not take by sacrifice what I can achieve by strategy.
William Manchester (American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964)
Don’t play the occasion, play the game.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United)
that special Manchester rain that manages to be both vertical and horizontal at the same time.
Mhairi McFarlane (You Had Me At Hello)
Perhaps the most important element of each activity is to inspire a group of people to perform at their very best. The best teachers are the unsung heroes and heroines of any society,
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United)
you learn more from defeats than you do from victories
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United)
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary; it fulfils the same function as pain in the human body, it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874-1932)
Manchester is in the south of the north of England. Its spirit has a contrariness in it -- a south and north bound up together -- at once untamed and unmetropolitan; at the same time, connected and wordly.
Jeanette Winterson (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?)
If there is one thing we try to teach our students when they first arrive at the University of Manchester, ready to learn to be physicists, it is that everyone gets confused and stuck. Very few people understand difficult concepts the first time they encounter them, and the way to a deeper understanding is to move forward with small steps. In the words of Douglas Adams: 'Don’t panic!
Brian Cox (Why Does E=mc²? (And Why Should We Care?))
OK, publishing a book and releasing a movie is all very well, but Tottenham beating Man. U. 3-2... priceless.
Salman Rushdie
Eleven Nobel laureates are not going to win the FA Cup.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Lessons in leadership from the legendary Manchester United manager)
Watching others, listening to their advice and reading about people are three of the best things I ever did.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United)
When I was lost in my own thoughts, Cathy would always say, ‘You’re not listening to me.’ She was right.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Lessons in leadership from the legendary Manchester United manager)
One mark of a leader is his willingness to share information.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Lessons in leadership from the legendary Manchester United manager)
For me drive means a combination of a willingness to work hard, emotional fortitude, enormous powers of concentration and a refusal to admit defeat.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Lessons in leadership from the legendary Manchester United manager)
I always felt that our triumphs were an expression of the consistent application of discipline.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United)
I would like to apologize to the relatives of the fan who gave me 29 books to sign in Odyssey 7, Manchester. I'm a little twitchy towards the end of a day of signing and did not mean to kill and eat him.
Terry Pratchett
The present is never tidy, or certain, or reasonable, and those who try to make it so once it becomes the past succeed only in making it seem implausible.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-40)
I met Murder on the way - He had a mask like Castlereagh
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester)
If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874-1932)
True, hundreds of millions may nevertheless go on believing in Islam, Christianity or Hinduism. But numbers alone don’t count for much in history. History is often shaped by small groups of forward-looking innovators rather than by the backward-looking masses. Ten thousand years ago most people were hunter-gatherers and only a few pioneers in the Middle East were farmers. Yet the future belonged to the farmers. In 1850 more than 90 per cent of humans were peasants, and in the small villages along the Ganges, the Nile and the Yangtze nobody knew anything about steam engines, railroads or telegraph lines. Yet the fate of those peasants had already been sealed in Manchester and Birmingham by the handful of engineers, politicians and financiers who spearheaded the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines, railroads and telegraphs transformed the production of food, textiles, vehicles and weapons, giving industrial powers a decisive edge over traditional agricultural societies.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
Maddie dropped into a curtsy. "It's a pleasure to see you again, Logan's dad." "And you, Manchester's daughter." The president bowed at the waist. "You are a far lovelier sight than your father, I can assure you." "Thank you. My dress wasn't wrinkled when I put it on, you should know. The wrinkles are entirely Charlie's fault." "I'll have a word with Charlie," the president said as Maddie's dad tried to pull her into a hug.
Ally Carter (Not If I Save You First)
His effect on men is one of interest and curiosity, not of admiration and loyalty. His power is the power of gifts, not character. Men watch him, but do not follow him.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965)
Research, of course, is no substitute for wisdom. The sum of a million facts is not the truth.
William Manchester
I never had a problem reaching a decision based on imperfect information. That’s just the way the world works.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United)
Losing is a powerful management tool so long as it does not become a habit.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United)
Please understand that we are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965)
John Kennedy once remarked that “victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan.
William Manchester (American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964)
We had a virus that infected everyone at United. It was called winning.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Lessons in leadership from the legendary Manchester United manager)
Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965)
A man is all the people he has been. Some recollections never die. They lie in one's subconscious, squirreled away, biding their time.
William Manchester (Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War)
Inside his second-rate mind, one felt, a third-rate mind was struggling toward the surface.
William Manchester (Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War)
Madeleine Rose Manchester had absolutely no intention of invading the White House. But she knew seven different ways she could do it if she'd wanted to. After all, Logan had lived there less than a year, and already he and Maddie had found four tunnels, two pseudo-secret passageways, and a cabinet near the kitchen that smelled faintly of cheese and only partially blocked an old service elevator that really wasn't as boarded up as everybody thought.
Ally Carter (Not If I Save You First)
Above all, beware the crowd! The crowd only feels; it has no mind of its own which can plan. The crowd is credulous, it destroys, it consumes, it hates, and it dreams—but it never builds.
William Manchester (The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972)
very often our victories were squeaked out in the last few minutes, after we had drained the life from our opponents. Games – like life – are all about waiting for chances and then pouncing on them.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Lessons in leadership from the legendary Manchester United manager)
Football is the poetry of a motion.
Pubudu Lasal Dissanayake
Individuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying every one we meet under some general head.
William James (A Pluralistic Universe Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy)
A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys.
William Manchester (American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964)
when I call him a son of a bitch I am not using profanity, but am referring to the circumstances of his birth.
William Manchester (The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972)
The bed lets out a slight gasp of air from the mattress like an old cat fart, but it looks like she’s too caught up in herself to notice.
John Bowie (Untethered (Black Viking #1))
One strange feeling, which I remember clearly, was a powerful link with the slain, particularly those that had fallen within the past hour or two. There was so much death around that life seemed almost indecent. Some men’s uniforms were soaked with gobs of blood. The ground was sodden with it. I killed, too.
William Manchester
In many ways Churchill remained a nineteenth-century man, and by no means a common man. He fit the mold of what Henry James called in English Hours “persons for whom the private machinery of ease has been made to work with extraordinary smoothness.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965)
Another memorable performance of ‘Black Sabbath’ was in a town hall near Manchester. The manager was there to greet us in a suit and tie when we climbed out of the van. You should have seen the look on his face when he saw us. ‘Is that what you’re going to wear on stage?’ he asked me, staring at my bare feet and pyjama top. ‘Oh no,’ I said, in this fake-shocked voice. ‘I always perform in gold spandex. Have you ever seen an Elvis gig? Well, I look a bit like him – but of course my tits are much smaller.’
Ozzy Osbourne (I Am Ozzy)
Let me first assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
William Manchester (The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972)
I open the toilet door and step out, my internal fire re-stoked, ready to face my demons, fight if need be and win. I’m raging, focused like a jungle warrior after his second bowl of tiger-cock soup.
John Bowie (Untethered (Black Viking #1))
Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932)
And he despised pedants. A junior civil servant had tortuously re-worded a sentence to avoid ending with a preposition. The Prime Minister scrawled across the page, "This is nonsense up with which I will not put.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill [#1]: Visions of Glory, 1874 - 1932)
[To] mechanical progress there is apparently no end: for as in the past so in the future, each step in any direction will remove limits and bring in past barriers which have till then blocked the way in other directions; and so what for the time may appear to be a visible or practical limit will turn out to be but a bend in the road. (Opening address to the Mechanical Science Section, Meeting of the British Association, Manchester.)
Osborne Reynolds
If you can assemble a team of 11 talented players who concentrate intently during training sessions, take care of their diet and bodies, get enough sleep and show up on time, then you are almost halfway to winning a trophy. It is always astonishing how many clubs are incapable of doing this.
Alex Ferguson (Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United)
The hero acts alone, without encouragement, relying solely on conviction and his own inner resources. Shame does not discourage him; neither does obloquy. Indifferent to approval, reputation, wealth, or love, he cherishes only his personal sense of honor, which he permits no one else to judge.[…] Guided by an inner gyroscope, he pursues his vision single-mindedly, undiscouraged by rejections, defeat, or even the prospect of imminent death.
William Manchester
And many more Destructions played In this ghastly masquerade, All disguised, even to the eyes, Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, and spies. Last came Anarchy: he rode On a white horse, splashed with blood; He was pale even to the lips, Like Death in the Apocalypse. And he wore a kingly crown; And in his grasp a sceptre shone; On his brow this mark I saw - "I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester)
The members of Joy Division likely weren’t meditating on Frank Lloyd Wright when they took the stage in Manchester but those flat-fronted black cotton trousers and narrow cut shirts didn’t come from nowhere. Peter Saville, who designed all of Factory’s records, understood in perfectly well: the iconic weight of black and white balanced against the release of splendour, in this case the dark magnificence of the music itself. Which might describe the tension of Protestant affect more generally: all guardedness and restraint until the eruption of an unextirpated beauty wakes us for a moment from the dream of efficiency.
Adam Haslett (Imagine Me Gone)
yürekten sevdiğim, sana gene yazıyorum çünkü yalnızım ve çünkü kafamın içinde seninle konuşurken senin bunu bilmiyor, ya da bana karşılık veremiyor olmana katlanamıyorum. kısa süreli ayrılıklar iyi oluyor, çünkü hep bir arada olununca her şey hiç ayırt edilemeyecek kadar birbirine benzemeye başlıyor. yan yana durduklarında kuleler bile cüceleşirken, alelade ve ufak tefek şeyler yakından bakınca kocamanlaşır. küçük tedirginlikler onlara yol açan nesneler göz önünden kaldırıldığında yok olabilir. yan yanalık dolayısıyla sıradanlaşan tutkularsa mesafenin büyüsüyle yeniden büyüyüp doğal boyutlarına dönerler. aşkım da öyle. zamanın aşkımı tıpkı güneş ve yağmurun bitkileri büyüttüğü gibi büyütmüş olduğunu anlamam için senin bir an, sırf rüyada bile olsa, benden koparılman yetiyor. senden ayrılır ayrılmaz sana olan aşkım bütün gerçekliğiyle kendini gösteriyor: o, ruhumun bütün enerjisiyle yüreğimin bütün kişiliğini bir araya getiren bir dev. böylece yeniden insan olduğumu hissediyorum çünkü içim tutkuyla doluyor. araştırma ve çağdaş eğitimin bizi kucağına attığı belirsizlikler ve bütün nesnel ve öznel izlenimlerimizde kusur bulmaya iten kuşkuculuk bizi küçük, zayıf ve mızmız kılıyor. ama aşk -feurbachvari insana aşk değil, metabolizmaya aşk değil, proletaryaya aşk değil- sevdiğine aşk, yani sana aşk, insanı yeniden insanlaştırıyor... dünyada çok dişi var, kimileri de çok güzel. ama ben, her bir hattı, hatta her bir kırışığı bana hayatımın en büyük ve en tatlı anılarını hatırlatan bir yüzü bir daha nerede bulabilirim? senin tatlı çehrende sonu gelmez acılarımı, yeri doldurulmaz kayıplarımı bile okuyabilir ve senin tatlı yüzünü öptüğümde acıyı öperim. hoşça kal canım. seni ve çocukları binlerce kere öperim. senin, karl manchester, 21 haziran, 1865
Karl Marx
Later he would say that writing a book “is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874-1932)
The winning formulation was to say, “Nine out of ten people in the UK pay their tax on time. You are currently in the very small minority of people who have not paid us yet.” Notice this short message conveys (truthfully) both that most people pay on time and that you are in the minority of those who don’t. A follow-up experiment found that the message could be further strengthened by making it local, as in “Nine out of ten taxpayers in Manchester pay on time.” The impact of these letters was substantial, increasing the number of people paying within the first twenty-three days by as much as five percentage points.24 That may not sound like a large
Richard H. Thaler (Nudge: The Final Edition)
I mean,’ said Marion happily, ‘it’s a continent in chains, well, isn’t it?’ (Tribune, thought Anna; or possibly the Daily Worker.) ‘And measures ought to be taken immediately to restore the Africans’ faith in justice if it is not already too late.’ (The New Statesman, thought Anna.) ‘Well at least the situation ought to be thoroughly gone into in the interests of everybody.’ (The Manchester Guardian, at a time of acute crisis.) ‘But Anna, I don’t understand your attitude. Surely you’ll admit there’s evidence that something’s gone wrong?’ (The Times, editorializing a week after the news that the white administration has shot twenty Africans and imprisoned fifty more without trial.)
Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)
I have a peculiar affection for McCarthy; nothing serious or personal, but I recall standing next to him in the snow outside the “exit” door of a shoe factory in Manchester, New Hampshire, in February of 1968 when the five o’clock whistle blew and he had to stand there in the midst of those workers rushing out to the parking lot. I will never forget the pain in McCarthy’s face as he stood there with his hand out, saying over and over again: “Shake hands with Senator McCarthy… shake hands with Senator McCarthy… shake hands with Senator McCarthy…,” a tense plastic smile on his face, stepping nervously toward anything friendly, “Shake hands with Senator McCarthy”… but most of the crowd ignored him, refusing to even acknowledge his outstretched hand, staring straight ahead as they hurried out to their cars. There was at least one network TV camera on hand that afternoon, but the scene was never aired. It was painful enough, just being there, but to have put that scene on national TV would have been an act of genuine cruelty.
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72)
Pong had mutated into large stand-up Sega consoles by '82 and here was some extra revenue the guys were well up for. So the space on the left of the entrance was to be the games room. Until two weeks to opening. "Where's the cloakroom?" "The what?" "The cloakroom, the fucking cloakroom." "What's your problem?" "We don't have a cloakroom. We have special polished South African granite bar tops that we haven't told Erasmus about 'cause he has a thing about apartheid, we have a balcony balustrade made of shaped QE-fucking-2 mahogany, but we seem to have built an entire club without a cloakroom." "Fuck." Hence you did not pass the games room but the cloakroom, the only cloakroom in the Manchester with forty-two power points. if you ever wanted to do a bit of ironing, these people were there for you.
Tony Wilson (24 Hour Party People: What the Sleeve Notes Never Tell You)
An even more important philosophical contact was with the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who began as my pupil and ended as my supplanter at both Oxford and Cambridge. He had intended to become an engineer and had gone to Manchester for that purpose. The training for an engineer required mathematics, and he was thus led to interest in the foundations of mathematics. He inquired at Manchester whether there was such a subject and whether anybody worked at it. They told him about me, and so he came to Cambridge. He was queer, and his notions seemed to me odd, so that for a whole term I could not make up my mind whether he was a man of genius or merely an eccentric. At the end of his first term at Cambridge he came to me and said: “Will you please tell me whether I am a complete idiot or not?” I replied, “My dear fellow, I don’t know. Why are you asking me?” He said, “Because, if I am a complete idiot, I shall become an aeronaut; but, if not, I shall become a philosopher.” I told him to write me something during the vacation on some philosophical subject and I would then tell him whether he was complete idiot or not. At the beginning of the following term he brought me the fulfillment of this suggestion. After reading only one sentence, I said to him: “No, you must not become an aeronaut.” And he didn’t. The collected papers of Bertrand Russell: Last Philosophical Testament
Bertrand Russell
There was nothing green left; artillery had denuded and scarred every inch of ground. Tiny flares glowed and disappeared. Shrapnel burst with bluish white puffs. Jets of flamethrowers flickered and here and there new explosions stirred up the rubble. While I watched, an American observation plane droned over the Japanese lines, spotting targets for the U.S. warships lying offshore. Suddenly the little plane was hit by flak and disintegrated. The carnage below continued without pause. Here I was safe, but tomorrow I would be there. In that instant I realized that the worst thing that could happen to me was about to happen to me.
William Manchester
The eccentric passion of Shankly was underlined for me by my England team-mate Roger Hunt's version of the classic tale of the Liverpool manager's pre-game talk before playing Manchester United. The story has probably been told a thousand times in and out of football, and each time you hear it there are different details, but when Roger told it the occasion was still fresh in his mind and I've always believed it to be the definitive account. It was later on the same day, as Roger and I travelled together to report for England duty, after we had played our bruising match at Anfield. Ian St John had scored the winner, then squared up to Denis Law, with Nobby finally sealing the mood of the afternoon by giving the Kop the 'V' sign. After settling down in our railway carriage, Roger said, 'You may have lost today, but you would have been pleased with yourself before the game. Shanks mentioned you in the team talk. When he says anything positive about the opposition, normally he never singles out players.' According to Roger, Shankly burst into the dressing room in his usual aggressive style and said, 'We're playing Manchester United this afternoon, and really it's an insult that we have to let them on to our field because we are superior to them in every department, but they are in the league so I suppose we have to play them. In goal Dunne is hopeless- he never knows where he is going. At right back Brennan is a straw- any wind will blow him over. Foulkes the centre half kicks the ball anywhere. On the left Tony Dunne is fast but he only has one foot. Crerand couldn't beat a tortoise. It's true David Herd has got a fantastic shot, but if Ronnie Yeats can point him in the right direction he's likely to score for us. So there you are, Manchester United, useless...' Apparently it was at this point the Liverpool winger Ian Callaghan, who was never known to whisper a single word on such occasions, asked, 'What about Best, Law and Charlton, boss?' Shankly paused, narrowed his eyes, and said, 'What are you saying to me, Callaghan? I hope you're not saying we cannot play three men.
Bobby Charlton (My Manchester United Years: The autobiography of a footballing legend and hero)
Pointsman is the only one here maintaining his calm. He appears unruffled and strong. His lab coats have even begun lately to take on a Savile Row serenity, suppressed waist, flaring vents, finer material, rather rakishly notched lapels. In this parched and fallow time, he gushes affluence. After the baying has quieted down at last, he speaks, soothing: “There’s no danger.” “No danger?” screams Aaron Throwster, and the lot of them are off again muttering and growling. “Slothrop’s knocked out Dodson-Truck and the girl in one day!” “The whole thing’s falling apart, Pointsman!” “Since Sir Stephen came back, Fitzmaurice House has dropped out of our scheme, and there’ve been embarrassing inquires down from Duncan Sandys—“ “That’s the P.M.’s son-in-law, Pointsman, not good, not good!” “We’ve already begun to run into a deficit—“ “Funding,” IF you can keep your head, “is available, and will be coming in before long… certainly before we run into any serious trouble. Sir Stephen, far from being ‘knocked out,’ is quite happily at work at Fitzmaurice House, and is At Home there should any of you wish to confirm. Miss Borgesius is still active in the program, and Mr. Duncan Sandys is having all his questions answered. But best of all, we are budgeted well into fiscal ’46 before anything like a deficit begins to rear its head.” “Your Interested Parties again?” sez Rollo Groast. “Ah, I noticed Clive Mossmoon from Imperial Chemicals closeted with you day before yesterday,” Edwin Treacle mentions now. “Clive Mossmoon and I took an organic chemistry course or two together back at Manchester. Is ICI one of our, ah, sponsors, Pointsman?” “No,” smoothly, “Mossmoon, actually, is working out of Malet Street these days. I’m afraid we were up to nothing more sinister than a bit of routine coordination over the Schwarzkommando business.” “The hell you were. I happen to know Clive’s at ICI, managing some sort of polymer research.” They stare at each other. One is lying, or bluffing, or both are, or all of the above. But whatever it is Pointsman has a slight advantage. By facing squarely the extinction of his program, he has gained a great of bit of Wisdom: that if there is a life force operating in Nature, still there is nothing so analogous in a bureaucracy. Nothing so mystical. It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of men. Oh, and women too of course, bless their empty little heads. But survival depends on having strong enough desires—on knowing the System better than the other chap, and how to use it. It’s work, that’s all it is, and there’s no room for any extrahuman anxieties—they only weaken, effeminize the will: a man either indulges them, or fights to win, und so weiter. “I do wish ICI would finance part of this,” Pointsman smiles. “Lame, lame,” mutters the younger Dr. Groast. “What’s it matter?” cries Aaron Throwster. “If the old man gets moody at the wrong time this whole show can prang.” “Brigadier Pudding will not go back on any of his commitments,” Pointsman very steady, calm, “we have made arrangements with him. The details aren’t important.” They never are, in these meetings of his.
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)