Quotes: Specialist. Speech. Spelling. Spinoza. Spirit. Spring.

Specialist
Common sense applied to complicated problems is like believing that a general practitioner can perform a better operation than a specialist.
Specialist 285 I never understood what common sense meant applied to complicated problems—unless it means that a general practitioner can perform a better operation than a specialist. Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night.

Everyone specializes and all those specialists can’t understand each other any more.
Specialists 295 …because everyone specializes and individual specialists can’t understand each other any more. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg.

Speech
Orchestrating the mass meeting.
Speech 97 The most effective tool was the elaborate rite of the mass meeting, with all its emotional trappings, into which the major speech was cleverly incorporated: high point and release from tension built up almost to the breaking point by means of martial music and songs, mass demonstrations and flags, radical slogans and the belated arrival of the “leader.” Bracher, The German Dictatorship

Goering got the audience’s attention by beginning his speech with a pistol shot to the ceiling.
Speech 115 Goering took charge of the meeting…began his speech with a pistol shot to the ceiling. Bracers, The German Dictatorship.

Spelling
We spell as we pronounce.
Spelling 285 Our insistent spelling-pronunciation shows itself in our habit of preserving the full value of syllables. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience

Adjusting spelling to pronunciation hides the etymologies of words.
Spelling and pronunciation 409 ...this humor of shortening our language...that some of our celebrated authors...began to prune their words of all superfluous letters...in order to adjust the spelling to the pronunciation, which would have confounded all our etymologies.... Addison, 8/4/1711. The Spectator.

Spinoza
Spinoza wanted to unify the chaos of the world.
Spinoza 169 …Spinoza had but one compelling desire--to reduce the intolerable chaos of the world to unity and order. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza.

Spirit
The Vikings contributed the spirit of Columbus to the western world.
Spirit 14 Of course they [the Vikings] were brutal and rapacious [but]...they have a place in European civilization, because these pirates were not merely destructive, and their spirit did contribute something to the western world...the spirit of Columbus. Clark, Civilization.

The person who searched the heavens with a telescope looking for God would not have found a mind by using the microscope to study the brain.
Spirit vs. material 495 Santayana: Lalande, or whoever it was, who searched the heavens with his telescope and could find no God, would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Santayana.

Spring
The word “spring” calls to mind all that is pleasant in nature.
Spring 169 The first of May! There is a merry freshness in the sound, calling to our minds a thousand thoughts of all that is pleasant in nature and beautiful in her most delightful form. Dickens, Sketches by Boz.

We need to revivify our winter-deadened senses for the coming of spring.
Spring 32 It’s time to fine tune our winter-deadened senses and look around for spring. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.

In spring, the earth becomes a concert hall.
Spring 43 The earth has become a great concert hall. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.