Former Intel CEO Andy Grove on today’s Silicon Valley:
Intel never had an exit strategy. These days, people cobble something together. No capital. No technology. They measure eyeballs and sell advertising. Then they get rid of it. You can’t build an empire out of this kind of concoction. You don’t even try.
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Source:
Steve Hamm, Whatever happened to Silicon Valley innovation?, BusinessWeek, December 31, 2008.
Ernst Jünger on the brutality of trench warfare:
Auch das moderne Gefecht hat seine großen Augenblicke. Man hört so oft die irrige Ansicht, daß der Infanteriekampf zu einer uninteressanten Massenschlächterei herabgesunken ist. Im Gegenteil, heute mehr denn je entscheidet der einzelne. Das weiß jeder, der sie in ihrem Reich gesehen hat, die Fürsten des Grabens mit den harten, entschlossenen Gesichtern, tollkühn, so sehnig, geschmeidig vor- und zurückspringend, mit scharfen, blutdürstigen Augen, Helden, die kein Bericht nennt. Der Grabenkampf ist der blutigste, wildeste, brutalste von allen, doch auch er hat seine Männer gehabt, Männer, die ihrer Stunde gewachsen waren, unbekannte, verwegene Kämpfer. Unter allen nervenerregenden Momenten des Krieges ist keiner so stark, wie die Begegnung zweier Stoßtruppführer zwischen den engen Lehmwänden des Grabens. Da gibt es kein Zurück und kein Erbarmen. Blut klingt aus dem schrillen Erkennungsschrei, der sich wie Alpdruck von der Brust ringt.
[ source ]
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Here is Basil Creighton‘s 1929 translation:
Even modern battle has its great moments. One hears it said very often and very mistakenly that the infantry battle has degenerated to an uninteresting butchery. On the contrary, to-day more than ever it is the individual that counts. Every one knows that who has seen them in their own realm, these princes of the trenches, with their hard, set faces, brave to madness, tough and agile to leap forward or back, with keen bloodthirsty nerves, whom no despatch ever mentions. Trench warfare is the bloodiest, wildest, and most brutal of all warfare, yet it too has had its men, men whom the call of the hour has raised up, unknown foolhardy fighters. Of all the nerve-racking moments of war none is so formidable as the meeting of two storm-troop leaders between the narrow walls of the trench. There is no retreat and no mercy then. Blood sounds in the shrill cry that is wrung like a nightmare from the breast.
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Source:
Ernst Jünger, In Stahlgewittern, Berlin 1922.
Yuri Manin (Юрий Манин) on abbreviated notation:
If written down, most of the interesting expressions and texts in a formal language either would be physically extremely long, or else would be psychologically difficult to decipher and learn in an acceptable amount of time, or both.
They are therefore replaced by “abbreviated notation” (which can sometimes turn out to be physically longer). The expression “
Ever since our tradition started with Vieta, Descartes, and Leibniz, abbreviated notation has served as an inexhaustible source of inspiration and errors. There is no sense in, or possibility of, trying to systematize its devices; they bear the indelible imprint of the fashion and spirit of the times, the artistry and pedantry of the authors. The symbols 
Translated from the original Russian by Neal Koblitz.
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Source:
Yuri Manin, A Course in Mathematical Logic, Springer, 1977.
Svetlana Boym on communicating with “half-words”:
There used to be a saying among Soviet intelligentsia—”to understand each other with half-words.” What is shared is silence, tone of voice, nuance of intonation. To say a full word is to say too much; communication on the level of words is already excessive, banal, almost kitschy. This peculiar form of communication “with half-words” is a mark of belonging to an imagined community that exists on the margin of the official public sphere. Hence the American metaphors for being sincere and authentic—”saying what you mean,” “going public,” and “being straightforward”—do not translate properly into the Soviet and Russian contexts. “Saying what you mean” could be interpreted as being stupid, naïve, or not streetwise. Such a profession of sincerity could be seen, at best, as a sign of foreign theatrical behavior; at worst, as a cunning provocation. There is no word for authenticity in Russian, but there are two words for truth, pravda and istina. It is possible to tell the truth (pravda), but istina—the word that, according to Vladimir Nabokov, does not rhyme with anything—must remain unarticulated.
In Russian cyrillic: istina = истина, pravda = правда. I would be delighted if any native Russians would care to comment on or critique this passage.
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Source:
Svetlana Boym, Common places: mythologies of everyday life in Russia, Harvard University Press, 1994.
A passage from Oswald Spengler‘s Der Mensch und die Technik:
Wir sind in diese Zeit geboren und müssen tapfer den Weg zu Ende gehen, der uns bestimmt ist. Es gibt keinen andern. Auf dem verlorenen Posten ausharren ohne Hoffnung, ohne Rettung, ist Pflicht. Ausharren wie jener römische Soldat, dessen Gebeine man vor einem Tor in Pompeji gefunden hat, der starb, weil man beim Ausbruch des Vesuv vergessen hatte, ihn abzulösen. Das ist Größe, das heißt Rasse haben. Dieses ehrliche Ende ist das einzige, das man dem Menschen nicht nehmen kann.
A possible translation would be:
We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to our destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.
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Source:
Oswald Spengler, Der Mensch und die Technik. Beitrag zu einer Philosophie des Lebens, München 1931.
