Citation Quotes

“Perhaps the most powerful and appealing aspect of another's words, however, is simply their convenience. Whether distilled in the briefest apophthegm, or spread out across some voluminous tome, the thought is ready-made, the heavy lifting done. It's there to be used like a weapon or tool, and as time wanders on, seemingly leaving us fewer and fewer new things to say, it becomes ever more useful. As technology moves forward, as well, it also becomes much easier. Indeed, in this "information age" where so much is available to so many so quickly that enlightenment nearly verges on light pollution, it can sometimes appear that expression has been reduced to nothing more than a mad race to unearth and claim references. As such, the citation is also there to be donned, like some article of fashion from which we may reap the praise of discriminating taste without ever exerting ourself in the actual toil of manufacture.”

“In my opinion, the author-level metric can distort a real author's citation impact. For example, an author who has an h-index = 2 obtained on the basis of two published papers of which each is cited twenty times is more influential than an author who has an h-index = 3 obtained on the basis of three published papers of which each is cited three times.”

“It is precisely, if paradoxically, because reversal is in the service of repetition (so as to ensure, alongside its companion strategies, a dizzying proliferation of citations) that it gains a subversive power rather than remain a mere dependent (and thus conservative) form of social discourse. Reversal plays a double role in this novel (MONSIEUR VENUS), for it is not only a formal strategy bearing on citation, but itself a citation as well; one more cliché mobilized from the fin-de-siecle reserve.”

“Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring. This citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is not an accident or anomaly, but is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could no longer even have a so-called “normal” functioning. What would a mark be that one could not cite? And whose origin could not be lost on the way?”

“Beginning in 1519 and continuing until the end of his life, Luther expounded a theme that the Sacrament brings and means a fellowship of love and mercy: "This fellowship consists in this, that all the spiritual possessions of Christ and his saints are shared with and become the common property of him who receives this sacrament. Again all sufferings and sins also become common property; and thus love engenders love in return and [mutual love] unites . . . It is like a city where every citizen shares with all the others the city's name, honor, freedom, trade, customs, usages, help, support, protection, and the like, while at the same time he shares all the dangers of fire and flood, enemies and death, losses taxes and the like. For he who would share in the profits must also share in the costs, and ever recompense love with love . . ." For Luther, unity with respect to the Sacrament meant both doctrinal agreement and love. When the prerequisite to church fellowship is defined merely (however important!) in terms of doctrinal fellowship, it can end in a Platonic pursuit of a frigid and rigid mental ideal. Doctrinal unity, true unity in Christ's body and blood, is also a unity of deep love and mercy. If I will not lay down my burden on Christ and the community, or take up the burdens of others who come to the Table, then I should not go to the Sacrament. Close(d) Communion is also a fellowship of love and mercy with my brother and sister in Christ as Luther taught in the previous citation.”

“To return to nature is to embrace extinction.”

“Only in sleep, where there's nothing but mind, can the mind clearly process all of the day's experiences/memories - without distraction. And, perhaps, only in sleep, where there's nothing but mind, can the mind truly understand the meaning of these memories, as well, and assimilate them with all the other memories you've accumulated over time, forming greater meanings - unintelligible in the light of day - building, perhaps, to some ultimate meaning at the culmination of life - unintelligible in the light of living.”

“That black, maddening firmament; that vast cosmic ocean, endlessly deep in every direction, both Heaven and Pandemonium at once; mystical Zodiac, speckled flesh of Tiamat; all that is chaos, infinite and eternal. And yet, it's somehow the bringing to order of this chaos which perhaps has always disturbed me most. The constellations, in their way, almost bring into sharper focus the immensity and insanity of it all - monsters and giants brought to life in all their gigantic monstrosity; Orion and Hercules striding across the sky, limbs reaching for lightyears, only to be dwarfed by the likes of Draco, Pegasus, or Ursa Major. Then bigger still - Cetus, Eridanus, Ophiuchus, and Hydra, spanning nearly the whole of a hemisphere, sunk below the equator in that weird underworld of obscure southern formations. You try to take them in - the neck cranes, the eyes roll, and the mind boggles until this debilitating sense of inverted vertigo overcomes you...”

“Anything you try to quantify can be divided into any number of "anythings," or become the thing - the unit - itself. And what is any number, itself, but just another unit of measurement? What is a 'six' but two 'threes', or three 'twos'...half a 'twelve', or just six 'ones' - which are what? (attrib: F.L. Vanderson)”

“The problem with living forever, of course, is you have to live forever before you know you're immortal...or invincible. Even the gods, in this way, must always remain uncertain. Time trumps immortality just as uncertainty trumps omniscience, for a knower can only ever know what it knows, never what it doesn't. (attrib: F.L. Vanderson)”