Quotes by John Morley

“I've been frozen solid against the wall in Mazzo's, staring at my index finger for a couple of hours, when my dead brother Morton shows up. He does that literally. I mean, I look down on one side and see him coming up through the floor. Nothing special about that. People have been showing up through the floor all evening. They pop up and mushroom in bursts, clumps of people that explode and disappear. In the Mazzo theme park it's another of those acid nights.””

“It is worth while to take the pains to find out the best way of doing a given task,.....'to scorn delight and live laborious days' in order to make as sure as we can of having the best opinion.””

“Night, I have discovered, has a faintly bitter taste, caused by its large ingredient of Un-attained Possibility.””

“Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” John 3:3””

“Fitzgerald had noticed that if this sqrt(I-v^2/c^2) correction factor was applied to the analysis of Michelson's apparatus fixed on the earth's surface as it moved around the Sun, it could explain why Michelson measured no effect from the ether. The arm of the interferometer contracts by a factor sqrt(I-v^2/c^2) in the direction of its motion through the ether at a speed v. At an orbital speed of 29 kilometers per second this results in a contraction of only one part in 200,000,000 in the direction of the Earth's orbital motion. The length of the arm perpendicular to the ether's motion is unaffected. This small contraction effect exactly counterbalances the time delay expected from the presence of a stationary ether. If the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction occurred then it allowed the existence of a stationary ether to be reconciled with the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Space need not be empty after all.””

“Success depends on three things: who says it, what he says, how he says it; and of these three things, what he says is the least important.””

“The modern emancipation will profit us very little if the status quo is to be fastened round our necks with the despotic authority of a heavenly dispensation, and if in the stead of ancient Scriptures we are to accept the plenary inspiration of Majorities.””

“You will find that most books worth reading once are worth reading twice.””

“1973 was the year when the United Kingdom entered the European Economic Union, the year when Watergate helped us with a name for all future scandals, Carly Simon began the year at number one with ‘You’re So Vain’, John Tavener premiered his Variations on ‘Three Blind Mice’ for orchestra, the year when The Godfather won Best Picture Oscar, when the Bond film was Live and Let Die, when Perry Henzell’s film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, opened, when Sofia Gubaidulina’s Roses for piano and soprano premiered in Moscow, when David Bowie was Aladdin Sane, Lou Reed walked on the wild side and made up a ‘Berlin’, Slade were feeling the noize, Dobie Gray was drifting away, Bruce Springsteen was ‘Blinded by the Light’, Tom Waits was calling ‘Closing Time’, Bob Dylan was ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’, Sly and the Family Stone were ‘Fresh’, Queen recorded their first radio session for John Peel, when Marvin Gaye sang ‘What’s Going On’ and Ann Peebles’s ‘I Can’t Stand the Rain’, when Morton Feldman’s Voices and Instruments II for three female voices, flute, two cellos and bass, Alfred Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style for violin and piano and Iannis Xenakis’s Eridanos for brass and strings premiered, when Ian Carr’s Nucleus released two albums refining their tangy English survey of the current jazz-rock mind of Miles Davis, when Ornette Coleman started recording again after a five-year pause, making a field recording in Morocco with the Master Musicians of Joujouka, when Stevie Wonder reached No. 1 with ‘Superstition’ and ‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life’, when Free, Family and the Byrds played their last show, 10cc played their first, the Everly Brothers split up, Gram Parsons died, and DJ Kool Herc DJed his first block party for his sister’s birthday in the Bronx, New York, where he mixed instrumental sections of two copies of the same record using two turntables.””