It isnot oftenthat nationslearnfromthepastöevenrarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it. For the lessons of historical experience, as of personal experience, are contingent. They teach the consequences ofcertain actions, but theycannot forcea recognition of comparable situations.

-Kissinger, HenryAlfred
  A World Restored: Castlereagh, Metternich and the Restoration of Peace,1812^22.

The point is the seeingöthe grace beyond recognition, the ways of the bird rising, unnamed, unknown, beyond the range of language, beyond its noun. Eyes open on growing, flying, happening, and go on opening. Manifold, the world dawns on unrecognizing, realizing eyes. Amazement is the thing. Not love, but the astonishment of loving.

-Reid, Alastair
  Weathering,'Growing, Flying, Happening'.

No one ever complains if a great artist says that he was driven to create a masterpiece by a hunger for recognition and money.But a scientist? Well, he ismeant to be disinterested, pure, his ambition merely to descry the cement of the universe. He isn't meant to use it to start laying his own patio.

-Self,Will
The QuantityTheory of Insanity and Five Supporting Propositions,'The QuantityTheory of Insanity'.

Mais enfin, bande de critiques, les livres que vous ne comprenez pas ne vaudraient-ils pas au moins que vous les signaliez? For heaven's sake, gang of critics, don't the books which you do not understand at least deserve recognition?

-Vian, Boris
  In La Seine,19 Apr.

The whole basis of the views of architecture prevailing today must be displaced by therecognition that the only possible point of departure for our artistic creation is modern life.

-Wagner, Otto
  Modern Architecture (1895), preface.