Bill Bryson Quotes - Page 2

At one time he [Cornelius Vanderbilt] personally controlled some 10 percent of all the money in circulation in the United States.

Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn't turn black naturally, they blackened them artificially to show how wealthy and marvelously self-indulgent they were.

...and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that's really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things.

The real significance of Magellan's voyage was not that it was the first to circumnavigate the planet, but that it was the first to realize just how big that planet was.

Vitamin B proved to be not one vitamin but several, which is why we have B1, B2, and so on. To add to the confusion, Vitamin K has nothing to do with an alphabetical sequence. It was called K because its Danish discoverer, Henrik Dam, dubbed it "koagulations viatmin" for its role in blood clotting.

It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.

The whole system was based upon getting kids to a certain standard and packing their minds with information so they could go on to a good university ... The great failure in education, much of the time, is a lack of excitement and stimulus.

Mr. Schlubb, the pear-shaped PE teacher, sent us all out to run half a dozen laps around a preposterously enormous cinder track. For the Greenwood kids - all of us white, marshmallowy, innately unphysical, squinting unfamiliarly in the bright sunshine - it was a shock to the system of an unprecedented order.

In my day the principal concerns of university students were sex, smoking dope, rioting and learning. Learning was something you did only when the first three weren't available.