This inquisitive magpie

This inquisitive magpie will, from time to time, swoop down to collect objects of interest. But while his feathered contemporaries hoard milk bottle tops, loose change, or mirrored glass, he's far more taken by things that glitter on the web.

"When we see men grow old and die, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay."

— The Preface to Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, first published in 1755 (abridged).

"Teaching children about biology and history but not about their actual environment—the built one—leaves them ill-equipped to participate in the process of respecting and improving the city that so critically affects their lives. We must teach citizenship."

— Architect Richard Rogers in his 1995 Reith Lecture

"Integrity without knowledge is weak
and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and
dreadful."

— Highlighted by Richard Ingram in Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

"The looking glass school teaches us to suffer reality, not change it; to forget the past, not learn from it; to accept the future, not invent it."

— Extracted from Eduardo Galeano’s ‘Upside down: a primer for the looking-glass world’.

"I realized that you didn’t really need anything but a tape recorder to make an album. If you had songs you felt strongly enough about, you could just put them on tape, and hopefully people would like them."

— Singer and illustrator Jeffrey Lewis describes how his band’s lo-fi approach to the music business earns them a living. [Source: New York Times]

By replicating Twitter via the postal system, Giles Turnbull and friends managed to restore the postcard to its former role as a short and sweet method of communication.

"How weighed down is public life with its emphasis on certainty. How dumbed down is belief. The big divides are not between different beliefs, but the differing degree of certitude in which those beliefs are held."

— Suzanne Moore writing in the Guardian about how we should embrace uncertainty.

"I was brought up to think of myself as inferior. I didn’t exist unless I was doing something, or could show that I had achieved something. I was forced into neurotic achievement."

— From the late, great animator Oliver Postgate’s appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, showing how much our upbringing shapes the way we think.

"I’d completely remove the personification in terms of the celebration. Celebrate the ideas rather than the people."

— Professor Brian Cox’s response when asked by the Guardian which figure(s) rationalists should celebrate at Christmas. Such sentiments could be applied to any context.

"Though people will readily form their own opinions about what they see on television, there is a certain discomfort when those people are presented with something they are ‘supposed’ to like and appreciate."

— Jack of Kent on art and exhibitions, including the way we often use the exhibits themselves as an aid to understanding their typed captions.