https://silasjelley.com/feeds/quotes/ /icon/48.ico Silas Jelley reply@silasjelley.com 2026-06-05T16:04:30Z tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:027f9380-98d7-4b0a-bf17-ae633d3ea852 2026-06-05T16:13:21Z 2026-06-05T16:14:30Z <p>I resolved to enable every household to own its own home. If we were going to get the people to take National Service seriously, I could not ask their sons to fight and die for the properties of the wealthy. We worked out a personal savings scheme that allowed them to own an apartment painlessly through instalments over 20 years. We sold the apartments to them at below cost to enhance their assets. Today, 95 per cent of Singaporean households are homeowners. It has immeasurably increased their wealth and our social stability. Without home ownership, we would have become like Tokyo, Seoul or Hong Kong, where the voters in the cities are disaffected because they pay a large proportion of their salaries in rents</p>4:13pm on June 5, 2026 from Tinchlik, Fergana, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First, Ch. 6, The Roof Over Every Head, 2000, Harper Collins”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:b10528e1-96cf-4885-a9a5-7f791ae62c43 2026-06-03T11:03:51Z 2026-06-03T11:04:51Z <p>The sufferings of the present were aggravated by the dread of the future.</p>11:03am on June 3, 2026 from Navgarzan, Fergana, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game, 1992”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:ac90f7eb-4dd4-4670-8724-ca2974b3916a 2026-06-02T15:33:19Z 2026-06-02T15:33:33Z <p>When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.</p>3:33pm on June 2, 2026 from Angren, Tashkent Region, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Kikuyu people of central Kenya, Swahili proverb”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:7ae7c997-4c10-4e7d-9358-e3b6d766fb88 2026-05-28T23:36:05Z 2026-05-28T23:36:38Z <p>Back home, I just can’t be myself.</p>11:36pm on May 28, 2026 from Tashkent, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Bin from Singapore, met in Tashkent”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:b0a03c4f-8356-4813-8ff9-ec238811acc0 2026-05-21T20:20:21Z 2026-05-21T20:20:37Z <p>Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.</p>8:20pm on May 21, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, 1995, Random House”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:e817cdca-8fd0-4351-b30e-9bfeca7bbef6 2026-05-21T15:35:16Z 2026-05-21T15:35:56Z <p>To grasp the meaning of the world of today we use a language created to express the world of yesterday. The life of the past seems to us nearer our true natures, but only for the reason that it is nearer our language.</p>3:35pm on May 21, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. 3, The Tool, 1939, Harcourt Brace (1992 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:eb31abee-b66d-46f2-b116-a63da228a586 2026-05-21T00:06:03Z 2026-05-21T00:06:30Z <p>The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.</p>12:06am on May 21, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Jack London in E. J. Hopkins's, Jack London's Philosophy, San Francisco Bulletin, 1916”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:21a11c5c-06f4-4cea-af00-1fc3c83a08de 2026-05-20T13:21:04Z 2026-05-20T13:21:04Z <p>What can we make of any of this? It is the surreal and unique condition of our age. But these facts hold the same intensity and mystery as any lonely peak. The world is as rich as it ever was. Any belief less is cowardice and self consolation - Gerard Manley Hopkins <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur">opened and closed that question</a> 150 years ago. Whenever we feel most keenly that “all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil”, a second, greater voice replies: “And for all this, nature is never spent”.</p> <p>Distance has been destroyed. The world lurches forward in phantasmagoric collage. We can run from this fact, seeking ever deeper tracts of jungle to relive the idyll of the Victorian explorer - window shopping online for the last “vision quests” on the market - or we can accept the eternal and unvarying charge of the traveler: to remake the world as we experience it - and to be drowned, laughing, in the new.</p>1:21pm on May 20, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henry Weikel, Like shining from shook foil, 2024”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:0909487b-be72-4221-a3a8-7fad103a001a 2026-05-20T13:14:20Z 2026-05-20T13:14:20Z <p>To be saturated in any aspect of the world is noble.</p>1:14pm on May 20, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henry Weikel, Like shining from shook foil, 2024”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:1d81664e-0426-4a91-a62d-ce25e8351aef 2026-05-20T13:09:30Z 2026-05-20T13:09:30Z <p>When he began to travel as a student he first went to Iceland and Norway - distant northern lands, places with icy and volcanic landscapes - but he felt isolated by language, and they did not answer precisely his imagination of northness. In contrast, Scotland offered the first real places to correspond to his inner world. Minutes after his arrival in 1979 on the Hamburg to Newcastle ferry, he saw his first British road sign reading simply ‘The North’. This generalization, as opposed to the precise reckoning of kilometers on Continental signs, struck him as transformational, poetic.</p>1:09pm on May 20, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Peter Davidson, The Idea of North, 2004, Reaktion Books”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:c806596e-7a94-4dbc-b820-aa6ecca26c44 2026-05-20T12:10:28Z 2026-05-20T12:10:28Z <p>Enough! Have some dignity and leave that stone unturned. Suck down whatever’s at hand and quick, back to your oars! There will be time enough for Yelp reviews in the grave. Fly wherever’s cheapest and learn to throw knives in the first bar you find. Take a ferry to an island off the coast and miss the day’s last return. You’ll meet a woman there with clairvoyant eyes who will press a warm stone into your palm. Your leisure should be ferocious. It should take more from you than you thought you had to give, but too many face their vacation like a period of mourning.</p>12:10pm on May 20, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henry Weikel, Like shining from shook foil, 2024”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:39b4cbe0-c5d2-40f8-acc9-9b10f65f0c7f 2026-05-19T14:38:57Z 2026-05-19T14:38:57Z <p>It would be impossible to guess at a man’s way of living his life without being locked in it with him.</p>2:38pm on May 19, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. Prisoner of the Sand, 1939, Ukemi (2016 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:0d51d2bb-e66a-4cb0-b422-16bff9af4012 2026-05-18T19:36:13Z 2026-05-18T19:36:13Z <p>You don’t make over a life the way you sew on a button.</p>7:36pm on May 18, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:62e59c99-f60f-481d-b38e-4ac830ecf8d4 2026-05-18T19:35:37Z 2026-05-18T19:35:37Z <p>We have too much technological progress, life is too hectic, and our society has only one goal: to invent still more technological marvels to make life even easier and better. The craving for every new scientific discovery breeds a hunger for greater comfort and the constant struggle to achieve it. All that kills the soul, kills compassion, understanding, nobility. It leaves no time for caring what happens to other people, least of all criminals.</p>7:35pm on May 18, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:11b327eb-4405-4c11-9aca-7ed2b52f5adc 2026-05-18T19:21:01Z 2026-05-18T19:21:01Z <p>I must rehabilitate myself in my own eyes first, then in the eyes of others.</p>7:21pm on May 18, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:b4dd345e-0ab3-4a8d-82dd-1ab42e492ae8 2026-05-18T12:47:15Z 2026-05-18T12:47:15Z <p>On working days, that’s how I feel when I have to call, say, my bank. Too much movement. <em>Entirely</em> too much movement. Calling the bank. Listening to the dial pad options. Going through all the details with the bank person. Too much movement.</p> <p>It’s a kind of death for the creative part of the mind. The ability to enter into Bookworld is murdered by saying your account number out loud. I don’t know why that’s so, it just is. Maybe it has something to do with the confined particularities of accounts, of banking, of paying bills, for example. How these systems are now more and more complex. Intricate in ways that bring no pleasure or satisfaction of completion. Are never complete. Convenient, yes, in some ways but all necessitating that you: pick up the Mediation Device in order to engage.</p> <p>Touching the device is too much movement. The device is tricky like that. It looks inert, the black mirror. There on the counter. Very demure. It’s a Stone of Terrenon made modern. It will teach you the name of the shadow that haunts you while binding you twice over. To make the call you must touch the stone. To move your hand to the stone is not a few feet, it’s a few lifetimes. You touch the stone and lose a life, lose a path. You are rewired. It’s so much more movement than you could ever imagine.</p>12:47pm on May 18, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Craig Mod, Phone Calls vs. Creative Work, Zero Milestone, 2026”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:fd308c39-f83b-45bd-b632-7883eb3d6156 2026-05-17T23:05:14Z 2026-05-17T23:05:14Z <p>So don’t be a tourist or a disappointed explorer; be something else. Have a reason for each place you go - or better still, have no reason at all. But be sure to avoid that unhallowed middle ground: the week off work with a list of someone else’s recommendations, the expedition that attempts to claim someone else’s heroism. Unlike the early 20th century, the present day reserves fewer spaces for the intrepid alone. Institutional backing and a high tolerance for discomfort no longer guarantee a serene or transformative experience. Today’s travel requires different sensitivities.</p>11:05pm on May 17, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henry Weikel, Like shining from shook foil, Shore Leave, 2024”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:bf010723-6969-4232-8e29-47a390416cb8 2026-05-17T14:14:13Z 2026-05-17T14:14:13Z <p>I’ve met many abroad who are addicted to this form of freedom; I stayed adrift for many years partly to cling to it myself. But for its brief compensations, it’s almost always a trap, a poor substitute for simply enjoying the desert and then passing-by.</p>2:14pm on May 17, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henry Weikel, Summer in the Kingdom II, Shore Leave, 2023”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:b602ee75-0a5a-4316-8304-97372bf94465 2026-05-16T20:58:41Z 2026-05-16T20:58:41Z <p>Those who trust others are trustworthy themselves.</p>8:58pm on May 16, 2026 from Saryaghash, Turkistan, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:e6d0222d-671d-480a-ade7-493852347194 2026-05-11T09:03:36Z 2026-05-11T09:03:36Z <p>One could say in the first quarter-century of my life, that while I was always fascinated by programming, I could never overcome the guilt of not really knowing whether the tool I am building right now isn’t already superceded by some much better implementation someone else has already written 30 or 40 years ago; I could write a TSV-aware search and replace, or I could find out about awk and solve that entire class of problems in one fell swoop, for example. My central conceit is that this is a trap. You need to reinvent a couple of wheels to get to the edge of what we know about wheel-making, not a thousand wheels, and not zero; probably four or five is sufficient in most domains, maybe closer to twenty or thirty in the most epistemically rigorous and developed fields like mathematics or computer science. Each wheel you reinvent, and every directed question you ask along the way, will propel you faster to the true frontier than that same amount of time spent in idle study, or even five times that amount.</p>9:03am on May 11, 2026 from Jizzakh Region, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Andrew Quinn, Replacing a 3 GB SQLite database with a 10 MB FST (finite state transducer) binary, 2026”">Reply via email</a></p>