“We cannot improve the world if we are conformed to the world.”
Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader
Freedom Evolves (2003)
“We cannot improve the world if we are conformed to the world.”
Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader
Lila Tretikov (1978) Russian–American engineer, manager and former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation
Lila Tretikov (2014) as quoted by [Jemima Kiss and Samuel Gibbs, Wikipedia boss Lila Tretikov, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/06/wikipedia-lila-tretikov-glasnost-freedom-of-information, The Guardian, 2014-08-06] and repeated in the closing statement in [Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), http://www.worldcat.org/title/facebook-nation-total-information-awareness/oclc/885416529, Springer Science+Business Media, 2014-10-17, 361]
“What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist
Dying words of Nicholas Saunderson as portrayed in Lettre sur les aveugles [Letter on the Blind] (1749)
Variant translation:
What is this world of ours? A complex entity subject to sudden changes which all indicate a tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings which follow one another, assert themselves and disappear; a fleeting symmetry; a momentary order.
Context: What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days. You judge of the continuous existence of the world, as an ephemeral insect might judge of yours. The world is eternal for you, as you are eternal to the being that lives but for one instant. Yet the insect is the more reasonable of the two. For what a prodigious succession of ephemeral generations attests your eternity! What an immeasurable tradition! Yet shall we all pass away, without the possibility of assigning either the real extension that we filled in space, or the precise time that we shall have endured. Time, matter, space — all, it may be, are no more than a point.
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India
As quoted in Building A Life Of Value : Timeless Wisdom to Inspire and Empower Us (2005) by Jason A. Merchey, p. 74
Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms
54
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.
One can disintegrate the world by means of very strong light. For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes anyone who dares to gaze upon it.
“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”
Jean Baudrillard book Simulacra and Simulation
Source: Simulacra and Simulation
John S. Bell Introduction to the hidden-variable question
"Introduction to the hidden-variable question" (1971), included in Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (1987), p. 29
Phillip E. Johnson (1940–2019) American Law clerk
American Family Radio (10 January 2003)
2000s
Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician
Interview with Monte Leach, Peace is possible, peace is inevitable, Share International (July 2003) http://www.share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2003/july_03.htm#voice.