“ ‘If it’s nearly right, but it isn’t quite, better to have none, than make do with one,’ ” — : 515
Fights are much taxonomised. They have been subject over centuries to a complex, exhaustive categoric imperative. Humans like nothing more than to pigeonhole the events & phenomena that punctuate their lives. Some bemoan this fact: “Why does everything have to be put into boxes?” they say. & fair enough, up to a point. But this vigorous drive to divide, subdivide & label has been rather maligned. Such conceptual shuffling is inevitable, & a reasonable defence against what would otherwise face us as thoroughgoing chaos. The germane issue is not whether, but how, to divide. Certain types of events are particularly carefully delineated. Such as fights. What ran towards Sham, announcing its presence with throaty jeers, was incipient fightness, carried in the vectors of eight or nine aggressive young men & women. But what kind of fight? — : 1673
Sham saw the old halls his crewmates said were the guildbuildings of spies & ne’er-do-wells, where rumourmarkets were held. “A few coppers’ll get you a questionable assertion from someone drunk & past it.” So Fremlo said. “A handful of dollars, something said with a straight face by one whose information has panned out more than once in the past. More than that, you’re into the realm of the tempting secret. — : 787
‘If Lenin were to talk about a meeting at which he, Zinoviev, Kamenev and five horses were present, he would say: “There were eight of us”’ — 162: 2410-2411
To be a radical was to lead others, surely, to change their ideas, to persuade them to follow you; to go neither too far or too fast, nor to lag behind. ‘To patiently explain.’ How easy to forget that people do not need or await permission to move. — 183: 2736-2738